Traits

[qwertykov]

The traits system is utterly fascinating. It brings much flavour and character and story telling to the game. It has provoked my interest since RTW and EB has totally expanded the scope. Awesome work

From reading the forums and playing the game so far, I understand that spending time in cities with a school gives education which plays a huge part in the acquisition of certain traits and skills. Ethnicity and inherent natural endowments and aptitudes of the individuals as determined by the SCV-UO settings is hugely important. Lastly, traits can be gained due to the actions taken by the character over the course of their careers.

For example, go to war and win often enough will gain them command stars. Govern a city long enough and they become attuned, gaining influence, boost economics but lose command. Gaining loyalty, i'm quite sure its through being put to active use as generals or governors

Or when characters build temples, either that or by being present in a city where a temple is being completed, they could gain the Pious trait and maybe religious ancillaries. Could the same be implied if you build mines or upgrade farming or build markets?? How about ports and roads?

But there are plenty of other interesting traits which are still a mystery. Good character traits, such as Upright, Stoic, Austere, Feck (could go both ways) etc.. Is there a certain method to learn or cultivate them? Put in another way, what are the pre-requisites or actions that need to be performed/fulfilled in order to stand a chance to gain these traits.

Will be nice if there is a guide to show, all the traits (good and bad) and their triggers, I saw the edct.text but it doesn't seem to say much, or it could well be me. Then again, i'm not looking for a formula or algorithm or table coz if everything is revealed, it would take away much of the fun haha... I think would be best if the community can share your observations.

Also, while it could lead to a debate, it would be interesting if someone can share what are the ethnicity traits for different ethnicities.

[mephiston]

Currently the EDCT in the internal dev build is almost 130k lines long, and I'm sure before the next release it will ramp up far beyond that number. If someone ever gets the idea of writing a guide to explain all the traits and triggers, I hope God, Mithras, Zeus, Ahura Mazda and whoever else has an ounce of divine power have mercy on his soul.

An overview of what's in the EDCT is actually rather simple. The trait-dedicated trunk of the EDCT is divided into 9 parts (actually 10, but the last one contains vestigial traits with no triggers).

1 ) Primary Traits - Traits given to FMs upon game entry. Examples include the STICE system of traits (Selflessness-Temperament-Intelligence-Charisma-Energy) or the command experience.

2 ) Ethnicity Traits - Pretty self-explanatory. Ethnicities and Roman family names, for the most part. You always want one of those on your characters. Unless you're Noubaios or Aigyptios in Ptolemaic lands, that sucks.

3 ) Secondary Traits - Name is vague for a good reason. There are all kinds of traits here: the common features they share are their generality (no faction-only traits) and the fact that the player can influence the acquisition (or loss) of these traits, unlike what's in the previous sections. The examples you brought (Upright, Stoic, Austere, Feck) all come from this section.

4 ) Faction-specific Traits - Special mechanisms dedicated to single factions. Faction Leader/Faction Heir traits, governments and political offices, everything specific for one faction comes from here. Spartan Agoge is one clear example. Oh, biggest trait section among the ones listed here by the way.

5 ) Agent Traits - Heh, guess what? Agent traits. Assassins, Diplomats, Spies get better or worse thanks to these traits.

6 ) Ancillary Traits - Traits related to ancillary acquisition. You can't have two priests of different gods in your retinue, after all. I tried once, they wouldn't stop discussing and whining all the time.

7 ) Religion Traits - What kind of god you worship? This section packs together all the worshipper traits. Characters with these traits do not like having a different temple in the city they are in.

8 ) Strabo Traits - Your favourite historian and geographer lends you his secret diary. Actually, almost nothing to see here. Maybe Strabo was not that good after all.

9 ) Game Mechanics Traits - "royal family, loyalty, seasons, biographies, ageing, miscellaneous" (<-- copypasta from the description. Really, either you write this or 100 pages.)


True problems arise when you try to understand how all the traits (more than 20k lines so far) interact with each other. Oh my.

The most important thing to remember when playing is to keep in mind how your characters' personalities are. The STICE system is arguably the most influential factor in the EDCT. So before taking decisions, try to think as if you were that character.
Is he Selfish? Probably he doesn't mind killing someone to reach his goals: getting the Brutal trait is more likely for Selfish characters, for example.
Is he Vigorous? Probably he's confident with swords and horses: why not being Brave too after having tasted blood in a battle?
Is he Sharp? Probably he doesn't mind doing math and stuff, and there's a good chance he likes it too. Maybe he could be a good Supervisor.

All in all, characters tend to lean towards their inclinations. Lifestyle matters in the sense that you can delay vices and encourage virtues following their inclinations. However, once some bad habits kick in, it might be necessary to identify the cause and remove it, otherwise they could get worse and worse.

Even if you have a bad character to work with (Dull/Uncharismatic/Languorous + Selfish/Pessimistic, we all know and love that guy), don't despair. Note that I used the word "probably" in my previous statement: it's all a matter of probability, as in life. If you try hard enough, you can get a decent character out of that drooling imbecile: battle experience, schooling in an Academy, being a decent guy with prisoners, everything helps.

Also, while it could lead to a debate, it would be interesting if someone can share what are the ethnicity traits for different ethnicities.

What do you mean by this? If your sentence is taken literally, there are thousands of lines in the EDCT dedicated to ethnicities, so I don't know if it's feasible

[Lusitanio]

I think what he means by ethnicity traits for different ethnicities is like, for example, Roman having plebeians/patricians and others, Carthage with Lybian, Numidan, Iberian, Greek, Punic, Carthaginian ethnicities, etc

[Kull]

8 ) Strabo Traits - Your favourite historian and geographer lends you his secret diary. Actually, almost nothing to see here. Maybe Strabo was not that good after all.

This was a vestigial remnant of EB1 and never implemented, as they were too long to display properly, so all you'd see was a fragment of the total text. Eventually we migrated most of them over to the province descriptions, where they fit better anyway (and deleted everything in EDCT except the section heading)

[Kull]

I think what he means by ethnicity traits for different ethnicities is like, for example, Roman having plebeians/patricians and others, Carthage with Lybian, Numidan, Iberian, Greek, Punic, Carthaginian ethnicities, etc

The comprehensive list is in mods\ebii\data\text\xml\export_vnvs.xml, and the ethnicity descriptions are all inside that file, organized by faction in section 2.x

Thus the Roman ethnicities are under 2.1, Carthage is 2.2, etc.

Edit: Now if you want to know the effects, look in the mods\ebii\data\export_descr_character_traits.txt file, where they are organized under the same 2.x section numbers.

[Dhamon]

Answering your questions is exactly the reason why I am working on a editor for the EDCT. Using filters and queries, it will be easy to disentangle all the dependencies between the traits!

Probably this will be an essential tool for the writing of a trait guide. The editor is not ready yet, but you can follow the development here!
https://github.com/pietralbi/mtw2-edct/tree/devel
Stay tuned