Traits, ancillaries, and law bonuses.

[Krampus]

So I noticed that my FMs with law bonuses do not have any impact on public order. I could have sworn that they did in EB1. With influence being nerfed to no longer improve order, I'm really at a loss as what to do about selecting and grooming FMs to be administrators.

So what good is the +1 law bonuses from Supervisor and Cackling Crone?

[Kull]

So I noticed that my FMs with law bonuses do not have any impact on public order. I could have sworn that they did in EB1. With influence being nerfed to no longer improve order, I'm really at a loss as what to do about selecting and grooming FMs to be administrators.

So what good is the +1 law bonuses from Supervisor and Cackling Crone?

Law absolutely does work. Start a game and open any city, go to settlement details, and look at the "Public Order" section. Law is definitely there ("manacles" pip), and does contribute to total order.

Edit: The two bonuses that don't work are "Morale" and "Population Loyalty". Both were present in v2.2 (may still be) but have been completely removed from v2.3

Worth noting that bonuses can never be "negative" in total, so if you have structures in a settlement (as an example) which give -10% Law and you send in an FM with +5% Law, it will appear that nothing happened. You would need +15% before you finally start to see a positive impact.

[Paltmull]

On a similar note; I haven't been able to play any campaigns for that many turns for various reasons, but I get the impression that city income bonuses caused by governing FMs are often negligible. Generally, it seems that FM's have very little effect on the economy (often none at all) while they have a much higher effect on public order. Is that a correct assessment? If so, is that by design or a consequence of the fact that there, unlike in RTW, is no "management" skill in M2TW?

From what I remember, in EB1 governors would have a much greater effect on the economy (I know that EB2 is not based on EB1 in design, but EB1 is by far my most played TW mod so it's my main point of reference).

By the way, I really don't understand CA's choice to replace the very clear concepts of influence and management in RTW with the very confusing piety and chivalry/dread in M2TW. Oh well...

[Kull]

On a similar note; I haven't been able to play any campaigns for that many turns for various reasons, but I get the impression that city income bonuses caused by governing FMs are often negligible. Generally, it seems that FM's have very little effect on the economy (often none at all) while they have a much higher effect on public order. Is that a correct assessment? If so, is that by design or a consequence of the fact that there, unlike in RTW, is no "management" skill in M2TW?

From what I remember, in EB1 governors would have a much greater effect on the economy (I know that EB2 is not based on EB1 in design, but EB1 is by far my most played TW mod so it's my main point of reference).

By the way, I really don't understand CA's choice to replace the very clear concepts of influence and management in RTW with the very confusing piety and chivalry/dread in M2TW. Oh well...

It's possible to get ancillaries that help reduce the cost of building improvements, but otherwise you are correct, FMs primarily have +/- traits for order (happiness & law).

Oddly enough I was just looking at this yesterday, as there are a number of construction time/cost bonuses that could go into traits or ancillaries, but we use them primarily (if at all) with buildings. The main concern is that the human player is better able to take advantage of FMs with these bonuses, whereas the AI does not. An old EB1 exploit was to get an FM with good management traits and then give him several cost reduction ancillaries and have that guy travel from city to city, building the most expensive improvements.

That said, we can probably do a bit more in this area, especially by making the traits rare, and prohibiting swaps of ancillaries that give such bonuses.

Edit: This is not really my area, so I have to be careful about assuming that EDB bonuses work as traits. Some do, but many do not.

[Paltmull]

It's possible to get ancillaries that help reduce the cost of building improvements, but otherwise you are correct, FMs primarily have +/- traits for order (happiness & law).

Oddly enough I was just looking at this yesterday, as there are a number of construction time/cost bonuses that could go into traits or ancillaries, but we use them primarily (if at all) with buildings. The main concern is that the human player is better able to take advantage of FMs with these bonuses, whereas the AI does not. An old EB1 exploit was to get an FM with good management traits and then give him several cost reduction ancillaries and have that guy travel from city to city, building the most expensive improvements.

That said, we can probably do a bit more in this area, especially by making the traits rare, and prohibiting swaps of ancillaries that give such bonuses.

Thanks for the reply! Is it intentional that traits/ancillaries affecting taxes/trade/farming etc are rare or are they on the to-do list? I personally don't know what effects individual governors would have on province economies but I don't imagine they were non-existent.

[Kull]

Thanks for the reply! Is it intentional that traits/ancillaries affecting taxes/trade/farming etc are rare or are they on the to-do list? I personally don't know what effects individual governors would have on province economies but I don't imagine they were non-existent.

Traits and ancillaries is something that we are definitely working on, albeit our primary guys in this area have other things going on at the moment.

[Krampus]

Law absolutely does work. Start a game and open any city, go to settlement details, and look at the "Public Order" section. Law is definitely there ("manacles" pip), and does contribute to total order.

Edit: The two bonuses that don't work are "Morale" and "Population Loyalty". Both were present in v2.2 (may still be) but have been completely removed from v2.3

Worth noting that bonuses can never be "negative" in total, so if you have structures in a settlement (as an example) which give -10% Law and you send in an FM with +5% Law, it will appear that nothing happened. You would need +15% before you finally start to see a positive impact.

To clarify, I know that law bonuses from buildings are working properly. For a particular settlement I note the sum of all positive and negative law bonuses from buildings, and the public order summary for the settlement correctly notes this number (I.E. -5 from market, -5 from mine, +10 from governors temple, +5 from road garrison, settlement displays +5 net bonus).

However, the law bonuses from the FM that I assign to that settlement have no impact. Ex: I have a FM with the Supervisor trait (+1 law bonus), no other traits or ancillaries affecting law. I remove him from the settlement (no other FM members there, so without a governor) but the net law bonus to public order in the settlement display is unaffected. This concerned me, so I repeated this with other settlements where I had a single FM with law bonuses, again no impact on public order.

Note, the traits and ancillaries that reduce unrest and famine seem to work just fine.

One thing I also noticed, I tested with an FM who had no bonuses or penalties to law from traits or ancillaries, when I removed him from a settlement the law bonus actually increased. When I returned him, the bonus for the settlement decreased. Are there's other hidden variables from FMs that cause negative law bonuses? I.E. culture penalties?

[Kull]

One thing I also noticed, I tested with an FM who had no bonuses or penalties to law from traits or ancillaries, when I removed him from a settlement the law bonus actually increased. When I returned him, the bonus for the settlement decreased. Are there's other hidden variables from FMs that cause negative law bonuses? I.E. culture penalties?

Sorry I misunderstood the original post - as you can probably tell, I spend a lot more time with buildings than with Traits! Anyway, I think your last paragraph (quoted above) indicates there's something else going on. By pure coincidence I spent all day running Squid's Trait and Ancillary validator tool, and it did not call out trait-based law bonuses as a problem. I posted your question in the team room, so hopefully somebody smarter at this than me will answer the question.

[Krampus]

Thanks, I appreciate!!!

I did some more checking and at least one FM who had law bonuses did increase the law of a settlement. but it seems like nearly all of my FMs have a base level hidden penalty conferred by something other than their traits/ancillaries.

[Aleksander the Average]

Thanks, I appreciate!!!

I did some more checking and at least one FM who had law bonuses did increase the law of a settlement. but it seems like nearly all of my FMs have a base level hidden penalty conferred by something other than their traits/ancillaries.

it's possible that there's something going on with the script, though i haven't really looked it over. are you playing a faction with more scripted mechanics like the romans?

[Kull]

I just ran a couple tests, and I'm not seeing this problem:

1) Start a new game as Seleukids (M/M), and look at Achaios, the FM who is governor of Sardis. He has a variety of traits and ancillaries, including the "Politician" trait (+2 Law) and the "Aged Retainer" ancillary (+1 Law). Now open the Settlement details screen for Sardis, and among other things it will show that Law is "25%" (5 pips). Now while that window is still open, move Achaios out of the city. Law IMMEDIATELY drops to 10%, indicating that 3 points of Law have been removed. Move him back in and it rises back to 25%.

2) Start a new game as Epeiros (M/M), and look at Alexandros, the FM who is governor of Ambrakia. He has a variety of traits and ancillaries, but only one (the "Aged Retainer") has a Law Bonus (+1). Now open the Settlement details screen for Ambrakia, and among other things it will show that Law is "20%" (4 pips). Now while that window is still open, move Alexandros out of the city. Law IMMEDIATELY drops to 15%. Move him back in and it rises back to 20%.

Seems pretty clear cut, and it clearly indicates that law works as BOTH an ancillary bonus and a trait bonus.

If you are seeing an issue, I'd need a LOT more detail as to specifically where it's happening - and it needs to be from Turn 1 of a new game so I can try to replicate what you are seeing. Examples from an ongoing save game won't work, as I only have access to the dev build and can't replicate your settings.

[QuintusSertorius]

it's possible that there's something going on with the script, though i haven't really looked it over. are you playing a faction with more scripted mechanics like the romans?

The Romans don't have scripted mechanics regarding order or anything else. They have a trait system that underpins how their FMs govern, and that's all.

[Krampus]

I just ran a couple tests, and I'm not seeing this problem:

1) Start a new game as Seleukids (M/M), and look at Achaios, the FM who is governor of Sardis. He has a variety of traits and ancillaries, including the "Politician" trait (+2 Law) and the "Aged Retainer" ancillary (+1 Law). Now open the Settlement details screen for Sardis, and among other things it will show that Law is "25%" (5 pips). Now while that window is still open, move Achaios out of the city. Law IMMEDIATELY drops to 10%, indicating that 3 points of Law have been removed. Move him back in and it rises back to 25%.

2) Start a new game as Epeiros (M/M), and look at Alexandros, the FM who is governor of Ambrakia. He has a variety of traits and ancillaries, but only one (the "Aged Retainer") has a Law Bonus (+1). Now open the Settlement details screen for Ambrakia, and among other things it will show that Law is "20%" (4 pips). Now while that window is still open, move Alexandros out of the city. Law IMMEDIATELY drops to 15%. Move him back in and it rises back to 20%.

Seems pretty clear cut, and it clearly indicates that law works as BOTH an ancillary bonus and a trait bonus.

If you are seeing an issue, I'd need a LOT more detail as to specifically where it's happening - and it needs to be from Turn 1 of a new game so I can try to replicate what you are seeing. Examples from an ongoing save game won't work, as I only have access to the dev build and can't replicate your settings.

Thanks for checking this out, I really appreciate it.

I really don't know what to say then. I'll try and start another test Boii campaign from turn 1 to see what might be causing it.

Just recently had a new FM marry into the family with no real stat bonuses, and he seems to have no impact on law (unlike my FMs with hidden law penalties) so I'm going to sit him in a city and see how his stats develop/impact unrest.

Aside from the listed bonuses from traits and ancillaries, do you know of any other stats that might impact the public bonuses/penalties that an FM has? A lot of mine have battle related traits, does collecting those traits have an impact? What about FM stats like command?

[Kull]

Not ignoring you, but leaving today for over a week+, so won't have time to delve into this. But in general, order is affected by law, happiness, and culture (M2TW religion). Battle/Command traits have no impact on order.

[Jurand of Cracow]

It's possible to get ancillaries that help reduce the cost of building improvements, but otherwise you are correct, FMs primarily have +/- traits for order (happiness & law).

Oddly enough I was just looking at this yesterday, as there are a number of construction time/cost bonuses that could go into traits or ancillaries, but we use them primarily (if at all) with buildings. The main concern is that the human player is better able to take advantage of FMs with these bonuses, whereas the AI does not. An old EB1 exploit was to get an FM with good management traits and then give him several cost reduction ancillaries and have that guy travel from city to city, building the most expensive improvements.

That said, we can probably do a bit more in this area, especially by making the traits rare, and prohibiting swaps of ancillaries that give such bonuses.

The traits and ancillarie have been important for me since I’ve started playing EB1 so I’d like to make a few comments.
· “human player is better able to take advantage of FMs with these bonuses, whereas the AI does not” – I think we make AI getting bonuses in other ways so this effect is not so important. Getting Vs&Vs is fun for a player but not for the AI (I assume the AI doesn't have feelings). If we may counterbalance the player's advantages with the other bonuses for the AI, thank it's ok. In my modding I assign default bonuses for the AI while the player has to make an effort to get them. For instance, the player is supposed to train his young generals in the schools but the AI doesn't know it, so at CoA I artificially add to the AI generals random education points. The result is as the AI has trained them. Of course, I add probabilities so that at the end the average looks like for the players' generals. The exploit may surface after bribing/marrying an AI general – the player can get very powerful young generals. Again, it's the question of careful modding, you can avoid by introducing some code.
· “old EB1 exploit was to get an FM with good management traits and then give him several cost reduction ancillaries and have that guy travel from city to city, building the most expensive improvements” – I don’t perceive "traveling" as an exploit but as a part of the game. You play the game, you care to train your general to get benefits out of him. Again: the modders have to set probabilities of getting the traits rightly: only very skilled general should be able to get the highest level of a relevant trait. It’s fun for a player to „shepherd” a general: making him first learning at school, then finishing many buildings to excell in building at the end of his life (if he's intelligent and lucky). Stacking ancillaries can be a problem if in the mods are there such, so:
· prohibiting swaps of ancillaries that give such bonuses is a good solution – if implemented in a right way. On one hand, there’s the „reality” aspect: the „human” and „animal” ancillaries should indeed be made non-transefrable (otherwise you make them immortal: by passing from an old general to a young one you can use an architect for 100 years), but some „object” ancillaries should not (why not to pass a book or a piece of weapon from father to a son?). On the other hand, there’s the gameplay aspect you’ve got in mind in this entry: swaping ancillaries is also part of fun for the player.

I find generals with many order/money bonuses very plausible and “historical” – in reality the way a governor would manage the order in a city could vary hugely with significant effects. There were good and bad governors in history and this should be reflected in the game. This is an incentive for a player to get to know his generals and appreciate the best. If the modders don’t make traits meaningful then the players will not bother to develop them or to make particular generals doing particular things. Then the role-playing-of-the-generals aspect of the game disappears. But if generals have varied traits then there’re choices for the players: you’ve got little money so you try to develop a good governor to add to the income. You’ve got a great governor so he’s taking care of you best provinces. But if you're in dire situation he would fight - are you ready to sacrifice income he provides? Are you ready to take the risk of having him killed? In another situation - you can conquer another province but you don’t have a good order-making general so you’ve got to give up. These decisions are part of fun of the game.

[Krampus]

I just ran a couple tests, and I'm not seeing this problem:

If you are seeing an issue, I'd need a LOT more detail as to specifically where it's happening - and it needs to be from Turn 1 of a new game so I can try to replicate what you are seeing. Examples from an ongoing save game won't work, as I only have access to the dev build and can't replicate your settings.

Ok, so I started a new game as Bosphoros, turn 1:

Capital is Pantikapaion, net happiness and law bonuses from buildings cancel each other out. Civil unrest 4 pips. Regular (flames and pitchfork) unrest 3 pips. Famine 1 pip.

First FM, Diodoros, is sitting in Pantikapaion. He has 2 loyalty, 1 influence, no retinue. No traits affecting public order, just Green and Mature. Ethnicity is Leukonides.

I remove Diodoros from Pantikapaion, no effect of public order.

Next FM, Arkhon Leukon, is faction heir. 4 loyalty, 3 influence. Retinue is shieldbearer (+1 valor bodyguards). Also no traits affecting public order, just Green, Feeling His Age, Bureacrat (+10% tax), and Diadokhos (+1 influence, +2 personal security). Same ethnicity, Leukonides.

When I move him in to govern Pantikapaion, regular unrest increases from 3 to 4 pips! I have no clue what the hell is going on with my game. It's like my FMs just have random bonuses and penalties to public order, completely unrelated to their traits and ancillaries.

[Kull]

Ok, so I started a new game as Bosphoros, turn 1:

Thanks, I was able to recreate your results.

I have no clue what the hell is going on with my game. It's like my FMs just have random bonuses and penalties to public order, completely unrelated to their traits and ancillaries.

OK, after some digging I figured out what's going on. All characters have two sets of personality traits, ICE (Intelligence, Charisma, Energy) and STL (Selfishness, Temperament, Loyalty). Five of them exist entirely as "thresholds" which in turn govern the sorts of traits a character can acquire during the game. But the 6th, Loyalty, also has a visible component (pips in the character portrait box) AND - at the two lowest levels of loyalty - an invisible effect on unrest.

So to make it explicit, if a character has a base level loyalty threshold of 1 ("Rebellious"), that provides 0 loyalty pips and an unrest modifier of -2 (which appears as 2 pips of "regular" civil unrest on the settlement details screen). A base level loyalty threshold of 2 ("Seditious") provides 1 loyalty pip and 1 city unrest pip.

On one level I can see where poor loyalty should have an unrest effect, but the problem is that not only is it invisible, but the initial loyalty effect remains, even if a character acquires additional positive loyalty modifiers. In your example, Arkhon Leukon has a base loyalty level of 2 (resulting in 1 loyalty pip and 1 city unrest pip) but he also has the faction heir trait which adds 3 loyalty pips (alas, not mentioned in the trait description) for a total of 4. Unfortunately, the additional loyalty has no effect on the base level and the city unrest pip remains. Not very intuitive, obviously.

Anyway, thanks for persisting and providing a testable example. The team will need to look at this.

[Krampus]

Thanks, I was able to recreate your results.



OK, after some digging I figured out what's going on. All characters have two sets of personality traits, ICE (Intelligence, Charisma, Energy) and STL (Selfishness, Temperament, Loyalty). Five of them exist entirely as "thresholds" which in turn govern the sorts of traits a character can acquire during the game. But the 6th, Loyalty, also has a visible component (pips in the character portrait box) AND - at the two lowest levels of loyalty - an invisible effect on unrest.

So to make it explicit, if a character has a base level loyalty threshold of 1 ("Rebellious"), that provides 0 loyalty pips and an unrest modifier of -2 (which appears as 2 pips of "regular" civil unrest on the settlement details screen). A base level loyalty threshold of 2 ("Seditious") provides 1 loyalty pip and 1 city unrest pip.

On one level I can see where poor loyalty should have an unrest effect, but the problem is that not only is it invisible, but the initial loyalty effect remains, even if a character acquires additional positive loyalty modifiers. In your example, Arkhon Leukon has a base loyalty level of 2 (resulting in 1 loyalty pip and 1 city unrest pip) but he also has the faction heir trait which adds 3 loyalty pips (alas, not mentioned in the trait description) for a total of 4. Unfortunately, the additional loyalty has no effect on the base level and the city unrest pip remains. Not very intuitive, obviously.

Anyway, thanks for persisting and providing a testable example. The team will need to look at this.

Thank you for your patience, this has been very enlightening! I'm always interested in learning about all of these hidden mechanics and variables


I also want to get to the bottom of why some of my Boioi FMs had law penalties (separate from loyalty and its effect on unrest), so if I find any replicable turn 1 examples I'll bring to your attention?

[Krampus]

Started a few turn 1 campaigns of various factions, including Boioi and Lugiones, I was unable to replicate the hidden penalties I've been experiencing with almost every one of my FMs in the ongoing Boioi campaign.

it's possible that there's something going on with the script, though i haven't really looked it over. are you playing a faction with more scripted mechanics like the romans?

Are there any Celtic or other scripts that cause FMs to have law penalties/bonuses across the board? Does something like this happen when your empire grows to a certain size/# of settlements? Does my faction leader's authority or influence have an effect?

[Kull]

TI also want to get to the bottom of why some of my Boioi FMs had law penalties (separate from loyalty and its effect on unrest), so if I find any replicable turn 1 examples I'll bring to your attention?

At this point I have a pretty solid understanding of the problem, so no need to identify other FMs with similar issues. Until the team decides how to address this, it's relatively easy to figure out where the hidden maluses lie:

- An FM with ZERO loyalty pips (and no plus/minus loyalty ancillaries or traits) will generate two pips of Unrest

- An FM with ONE loyalty pip (and no plus/minus loyalty ancillaries or traits) will generate one pip of Unrest

- The Faction Heir trait provides THREE visible loyalty pips and you can calculate their "base level loyalty" (assuming no other plus/minus loyalty ancillaries or traits) by subtracting three from the visible total to determine if they will have a base level unrest issue (i.e. a faction heir with three visible loyalty pips *probably* is generating two points of unrest)

Faction Leads are problematic, since they don't have visible loyalty pips (it's replaced by "authority", which is different - not loyalty renamed), and although the starting FLs have high loyalty, eventually they die off and you get new ones who have hidden, underlying loyalty levels that *may* include the unrest malus. You'll have to play that by ear for now.