How characters work - A FAQ about character mechanics
Hi all,
When I started playing TWR2, one of the most confusing parts was the new character system. In this guide I'll try to answer the questions that most troubled me. I don't have all the answers so feel free to comment if you think that something is wrong is missing.
This is not an exhaustive guide, it simply contains my observations and some advise. All numbers are on hard difficulty, on easy and normal you seem to give certain bonuses / discounts.
Character mechanics
What's a character?
The main characters are your agents: Spies, nobles (or dignitaries or patricians), champions (or warmaidens or veterans). The names may vary depending on the faction you play, but apart from that they are identical between fanctions.
Apart from that each general or admiral (they are interchangeable) has his own attributes and skills. Towns have attributes (no skills) and armies can have skills (named military traditions) but no attributes.
What are these attributes and how do I raise them?
There are three attributes, authority, cunning and zeal.
Each agent and general increases their attributes when you select a new skill. You can increase a town's attributes by building buildings, as it is explained in their info cards.
Armies don't have attributes but they share their general's attributes.
OK, but what does each attribute does?
They main use is to determine the chance of success of a given action.
Your agents can target enemy characters (including armies and towns) with some given action. Each action can be performed with three different methods, each one using a different attribute score. The success chance for each method depends on your agent's attribute score vs the enemy's same attribute score.
For example if you select a spy and you target (right click) an enemy city you can perform and act of sabotage, that will stop production for a turn. After that you have to select a method to carry out this action. Each method produces a secondary result and depends on a particular skill which is shown by the icon next to its name. The Poison Wells method has the eye next to it, meaning that the agent will use his cunning score, whereas the Commit arson shows the fist icon, meaning it will use its zeal score.
By default each town has 3 in each attribute. If your spy has a cunning score of 3 and you choose the Poison Wells method he will have a success chance of 50% (on hard difficulty level and excluding skills that may raise or lower his chances). For every extra point of cunning his success chance will increase more, or it will decrease by an extra amount for every extra point of cunning that the town has. Remember that there are too many skills that influence these numbers and you will rarely see clean cut percentages.
The actual scores seem to have little impact, so a cunning score of 3 vs 3 will produce the same chance of success as a 8 vs 8. However character ranks seem to have a little (~5-10%) impact.
If you are performing an action against a city your agent's attributes are compared with the city's attributes (even if there is an army there).
If you are performing an action against an army your agent's attributes are compared with the general's attributes. (That's why armies don't have attributes).
Do the attributes have any other roles?
(Thanks to Daeworn for pointing this out)
Especially for generals and admirals, they seem to add some other effects pertaining to their battle abilities. Some of these are shown below but the list is not exhaustive.
Authority increases or decreases their area of influence by +5% for every point over 3 or by -25% for every point below 3.
Cunning is related to special abilities. Every point over 3 decreases the cool down of all special abilites by 5% (not sure if it affects whole army or only the commander, probably the latter). It also enables the ability Second wind (at 5), Battle Rhyme (at 7) and Brace (at 9).
Zeal increases the commander's unit abilities, by +5% for every point over 3 or by -25% for every point below 3. It also enables some abilities, War Cry at 5 and Intimidate at 7.
I think that a score of 5, 7 and 9 respectively certain abilities but since I only have cunning generals I cannot confirm that. The abilities are the same for generals and admirals.
Are there limits to the chance of success of each action?
Yes, the maximum success chance is 95%. I'm not certain about the minimum chance of success, the lower I've seen is 13%.
What are skills and traits?
When your characters perform successful actions they level up, and you can select a new skill from their skill tree or level up an existing one. The exception is a random skill that your character gets at the beginning, that you can also level up. Note that in order to level up some existing skills your character must be over a certain rank (level).
Traits are skills that your characters may randomly acquire at the beginning or as time passes. You can't level them.
Where is the skill tree?
You have to open the encyclopedia (press F1 or right click on a skill), click on the characters button on the top bar (the one showing the face icon) and select the character type.
What about age?
Every character has an age, in years. It is important in order to get an idea when this character will die. You can except a character to die after he gets 65 years old, although it's random. I've seen character die by natural causes as early as 50 or as late as 87 years old.
There is also gravitas and ambition.
What about gravitas and ambition?
Although there are traits that modify these stats on every agent, they are only important for Generals / Admirals.
Gravitas is the character's influence with the senate, the higher it gets the more senators will support its house. I believe that in order to use (or at least to use all of it) it a General must be in the senate and not in the field. However a general in the field seems to gather support for his faction every time he wins a battle, as well as gravitas.
Ambition probably affects a General's chance to rebel or to join the opposing faction on the civil war, but I can't say for certain. I've never seen anyone rebel.
Ambition also seems to act as a multiplier to gravitas. (Thanks to Krasnaļa Zvezda for pointing this)
Can I change gravitas and ambition?
They change through traits and random events, although there are some household cards that modify gravitas.
What's a household?
It's a collection of cards that give extra skills to a character, usually with some minor benefits. You randomly acquire household members as the game progresses and they go into a pool. Your generals share the same pool, whereas each agent has its own. After a while you will have filled the generals' pool, but it's very rare to get household members for agents.
Each character can have one active household member that you can swap with another one from its pool.
And what about military traditions?
They are skills that influence an army. Since armies cannot die, they are invaluable but hard to level up.
Even if an army is destroyed you can recreate it (the Reinstate Legacy option when you raise a new army) and it will have kept its traditions.
How to level up my characters?
With generals and armies you have to win battles.
Cities cannot level up, you build buildings to increase their attributes.
As for agents, there are some buildings that increase their starting rank (level) if you recruit them in that province. Apart from that you have to perform actions (even unsuccessful ones) to get XP.
Note that each agent has a passive skill (the first button in their toolbar) that are free to use and give them 6 XP each turn they are active. An unsuccessful action gives 4 XP, whereas a successful one gives 10 XP. A critical success (when you assassinate instead of wounding the target or when you immobilize instead of halfing an army's move) will give 16 XP. So even if your agent does nothing (active) you get quite enough XP for the first couple of levels.
I' m bored!
So am I, I plan to give some practical advice when I have time.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by epimitheus
