Is the Newest Version of RotK More Flexible in Character Development?

[Pooploop]

When I played the 3.0 version of the mod YEARS ago I was so happy that such an immersive mod rooted in Chinese history (this was way before even the conception of Three Kingdoms Total War) existed. Unfortunately, something about it really irked me. As the devs greatly took inspiration and borrowed material from the Dynasty Warriors series, which in turn based itself on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, all named characters (meaning generals) in the mod have already set traits, dispositions and abilities. So Lu Bu is truly the best among close combat generals, Sun Ce is already dashing, and Cao Cao has excellent command stats. Various scripted events also hammer in their abilities and central role in the whole campaign. This begs the question, however - how about all those "side characters/scrubs"? One of the most satisfying experiences in Total War is shaping some untalented mook with zero command stars into an Alexander-esque figure by forcing him to lead armies into something like 40+ heroic victories. Watching him reap and earn all those beneficial stats and traits after plunging him into near-death situations and rout armies is just so damn satisfying. This is what the decision by the devs for super adherence to the Romance version of three kingdoms totally stonewalls. Side characters are just side characters and will remain so even after dozens of hair-raising heroic victories. A very good example of this in THIS mod is Cao Ang. The guy who in the romance was summed up as the unremarkable eldest son of Cao Cao, and despite his intense filial piety, was mourned less by his father than Dian Wei, the vassal who perished alongside him trying to keep pursuers from reaching their leader. The devs translated this to Cao Ang being a dude with super bland and average stats with no real trait that distinguished him martially. Added to that was some timed debuff that INCREASES its minuses the closer Cao Ang gets to his "in plot" demise! To cap all of it off, even if you bring this guy through fire and water, and win 20 or so heroic victories - there are barely any positives to his stats or traits! I think back in that old playthrough he got ONE, just ONE extra command star! He is stuck being some sacrificial regular general!

So, in the 4.0 version of this mod did you guys address this problem? Don't get me started on the genetics and inheritance of traits in 3.0...back then sons were ALWAYS worse than their fathers. Even if the father was Ma Chao, or Zhang Liao, or whoever...their kids were always super bland, average generals. I really hope these issue were improved upon.

[Seether]

Since version 3.0, we have made quite a few changes to characters being able to increase their battle related traits. Basically, characters can increase their leadership, attack and defense traits (and others, but those are the main three) by fighting in battles and gaining “experience”. When those traits are at lower levels, both the experience gained from battles and the thresholds to raise the traits are set much lower, while the opposite is true when those traits are at higher levels. For example, if a character with 3 leadership wins a battle where the odds are about even, they would gain significantly more experience (maybe even raising their leadership a point or two) than a character with 7 leadership. In that regard, the latter will gain little experience from small battles or ones where they have an advantage - in order for a character to reach the elite levels of battle traits, they will need to prove they are elite by soundly winning many difficult battles. Also, a character’s Potential trait must be kept in mind. Potential will allow them to increase different traits, like battle traits, at the expense of potential. Once potential reaches zero, they will not be able to increase specific traits any more - in essence, they have reached their peak potential. Finally, as I have commented numerous times in the past, do not give a lot of weight to command stars. Vanilla has a much different way of dealing with leader efficiency compared to this mod and how Medieval 2 assigns command stars, using our trait system, is out of our control. Since we use numerous traits when just dealing with battles, the correlation to command stars is not going to be the same as in vanilla. You have to look at an individual character’s battle traits to see how effective they are as a field commander both in general and in specific situations. But, if you are looking to take a generic character and max out all of his battle traits, it won’t happen - not even the best historical commanders of the era can max out all of their traits.