How to avoid gaining ugly traits ?

[White Knight2]

Many of the roman characters in my campaign gain a lot of ugly traits related to unrest like 'harsh' and 'severe'.Even the characters who come of age end up gaining some of these traits in less than 5 turns. Can anyone tell me how are they gaining these traits so frequently and how to avoid them, bcuz my cities in Italia are on the verge of rebelling. Thanks

[ImperialAquila]

I think some of the traits are inherited from the father. But some bad traits are acquired in (surprisingly) your best cities. I think being raised in such an environment gives birth to characters being decadent and spoiled. Additionally, setting your taxes to very high can increase the probability of gaining traits such as harsh or severe.

Your best option is to "kill" these characters before they start spreading negative traits to their future offspring. Using the bireme trick or using the kill_character code at the console.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Interesting.....

Firstly - you cannot 'avoid' them. The traits are up for a complete overhaul now we know more, however, but they can still be enjoyed now.

Secondly - all the testing I have done has shown that 'really bad' characters are not that common and only a few are ever actually worth removing. What it surprising, given that I have often moved 'not so good' characters back to Italy and swapped Governors, is that you are having trouble in Italy which is so easy to avoid. Don't just build Tax buildings - build some of the 'crowd pleaser' too.

Active management of Governors can be very beneficial - move really good ones away to look after newly conquered settlements and use less good and new ones at 'home'.

[White Knight2]

Sorry, by 'avoiding' I meant what can one do to reduce the chances of them gaining these kind of traits. But one thing I noticed is that once the initial unrest after the capture of a settlement disappears there is no problem at all for sometime, as the public order starts increasing these traits start appearing in those settlements' governors. So I wondered maybe building all those law bonus buildings was actually creating frustration among the populace.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

No worries - but I genuinely meant that there is indeed 'nothing' that you can do to avoid them. There are traits that can be facilitated by the presence of some buildings, but in general most character traits are all chance-based. The older the character the more chance that they will eventually gain all the traits.

Resolving that is the likely thrust of a v2.7 in the future...... I and a couple of the other testers just had to bring additional knowledge of probability & statistics to the table to help understand what was happening.

[White Knight2]

Well I guess I'll have live with it . Hope you succeed with these traits overhaul and give a good thrashing to the guy who developed these damn unrest traits . But we'll have to wait for 2.6 first before moving to 2.7

[JEbach]

I know building academy's and schools and leaving a character in that city adds some good traits and whatnot, I thought it might slow down or stop the rate at which you get crap traits but it sounds like im wrong going by what Lord Tedric said
*Shrug*

[ur-Lord Tedric]

The real thing to note is that it is currently rather 'fair' - it just doesn't make a whole lot of actual sense when looked at cold. Having a Governor is a good thing in general - some need replacing occasionally. Taking things at a Macro-level there are no problems.

Keep an eye on your characters and have plenty of them - and manage the Ancillaries and you'll have a great time.