Traits that are bugged in 1.2 with fixes. Part 1: Scarred, Farmer, Trader

[tai4ji2x]

Pode, there's a cunning strategy that the CVP uses, which helps this unfortunate doubling problem. Basically, it uses the BadCommander traits as a means to combat the meteortic rise that's possible with the GoodCommander trait. Essentially, the higher a general is in the GoodCommander trait, the greater the BadCommander award he'll receive should he lose a battle. For instance, a general at level 4 GoodCommander will have a bigger fall in the trait should he lose a battle than a mediocre commander at level two would get.

won't this make the AI's generals worse?

[hrvojej]

won't this make the AI's generals worse?

I think so too. I rarely (if ever) lose with 4stars or better, since they command my largest, main, armies. The AI, however, is prone to have them wondering alone etc. Unfortunatelly, from what I can gather this is not the best fix for doubling IMHO.

[gregab25]

Okay, after Simetrical's good, albiet immature, post, and some retesting i must admit I am wrong on the farmer and trader corrections.

I suggest everyone go back to the default triggers for farmer and trader.

However, in the default setting if you desire to become a good farmer or trader you will want to build all other buildings before the farm or trade buildings.

This seems counter intuitive to me personally, and was why i thought the trigger was bugged.

This led me to initially reversing the > = sign to a < = sign in the triggers. However, this did not reverse the results in game.

This led me to the using the NOT condition and > sign because i believed it to be the same arguement as using a < = to sign.

Which has now been shown to be incorrect.

So I do apologize for my mistake and any confusion it led to. I hope you will bear in mind i was trying to help the community with what i thought was a bug.

To follow up I would like to ask 2 questions that maybe the community would be willing to answer in layman's terms:

1) Does it makes sense that a governor becomes a GoodFarmer or GoodTrader by ignoring building the Farm and Trade buildings?

2) Would someone please look into or explain why reversing the > = to a < = sign in the triggers does not reverse the results in game? Especially in relation to the farming triggers. Is a = < arguement a vaild arguement that might work?

Again. Apologies.

And Thanks.

[hrvojej]

1) Does it makes sense that a governor becomes a GoodFarmer or GoodTrader by ignoring building the Farm and Trade buildings?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but on the contrary you *only* get points in GoodFarmer for building the farm buildings, any of them; you get points in GoodTrader for building either traders, roads or ports. It is, however, very unlikely to gain good traits due to high thresholds (unlike the bad traits, and this is why I had modified the thresholds in a first place - the game is in effect punishing you for being successful).

edit: And I'd really like to know the answer to your 2nd question as well. Maybe you used the first level of farms, and both < = and > = include that one?

[tai4ji2x]

so BOTH gregab25's attempted fix AND the default triggers are wrong? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Jambo]

I think so too. I rarely (if ever) lose with 4stars or better, since they command my largest, main, armies. The AI, however, is prone to have them wondering alone etc. Unfortunatelly, from what I can gather this is not the best fix for doubling IMHO.

Have you ever seen a Superior, Great or Legendary AI commander? Personally I haven't in the entire time I've played. Coupled with the fact that they progress more slowly than the human player's generals due to the battle map doubling, the AI generals never live long enough or win consistently enough to reach the higher levels of the combat traits.

Therefore, this is really only relevant for the human player should they slip up in battle with their top commanders.

[Pode]

OK, I'll *try* to explain how I *think* these triggers work, in layman's terms as requested. SettlementBuildingFinished returns the name of the building just built. If that name is not part of the hinterland_farms build tree, a value of zero assigned to whatever temp variable is being used. If the name is part of the hinterland_farms build tree, the temp variable is assigned the number corresponding to that level farm. This number is then compared to the number corresponding to the building name on the other side of the arguement, namely farms (=1). The building name on the other side is also what specifies which build tree to use for the evaluation.
So, if you build a port, SBF = 0 and farms = 1, so the trigger goes to false and nothing happens. If you build a farm, 1=1 and you get a point for good farmer. For farms+1, 2>1 and you get another point. So maxing the farms in a settlement should give you 5 points. Why is the threshold 6? I have no clue. Chalk it up to piss poor playtesting, not that there's any OTHER evidence of that.

[gregab25]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but on the contrary you *only* get points in GoodFarmer for building the farm buildings, any of them; you get points in GoodTrader for building either traders, roads or ports. It is, however, very unlikely to gain good traits due to high thresholds (unlike the bad traits, and this is why I had modified the thresholds in a first place - the game is in effect punishing you for being successful).

Easiest way is to see it for yourself. It will take less than 5 minutes. Simply set the thresholds for farming to 1, 2, and 3. Then go into the game and build various buildings and look at the results.

This is what i just did with the default triggers, and I was receiving the traits by building all the non farm and trade buildings first.

so BOTH gregab25's attempted fix AND the default triggers are wrong? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Mine are definitely wrong.

No one is saying the defaults are wrong though.

I just mentioned that it seemed counter intuitive. But that is just an opinion and very possibly wrong as well.

[tai4ji2x]

wow. this is all very frustrating.

[Jambo]

has anyone tried changing it from "Condition SettlementBuildingFinished >= farms" to "Condition SettlementBuildingFinished >= hinterland_farms" and seeing if that does anything??

[Jambo]

I guess what this saying then is that as long as you have the basic farms in place, it will award you GoodFarmer each time you build another building?

EDIT: Conversely, one can only get BadFarmer if you constuct buildings before you have the basic farms in place?

[Kraxis]

No gregab I think it is very odd really... I doesn't make sense the way we have to do it now and with all the badfarmers out there it can't be right.
But I still wonder how Simetrical could advance the trait he did. And what was the intented result?

[hrvojej]

Have you ever seen a Superior, Great or Legendary AI commander? Personally I haven't in the entire time I've played. Coupled with the fact that they progress more slowly than the human player's generals due to the battle map doubling, the AI generals never live long enough or win consistently enough to reach the higher levels of the combat traits.

Therefore, this is really only relevant for the human player should they slip up in battle with their top commanders.

Well, no, I haven't seen the AI at those levels either, but neither do I "slip" with my generals of that rank. Don't get me wrong, please, I would also like it best if we could get the AI generals to those heights (or at least near the player's general's levels by eliminating doubling), I was just saying that in my opinion this fix unfortunatelly won't help close the gap between the player and the AI.

[hrvojej]

Easiest way is to see it for yourself. It will take less than 5 minutes. Simply set the thresholds for farming to 1, 2, and 3. Then go into the game and build various buildings and look at the results.

This is what i just did with the default triggers, and I was receiving the traits by building all the non farm and trade buildings first.

I did, and it works as I said.
All thresholds are at 1,2,3, all triggers are at 100%. I build anything other than a farm building, regardless of the relative or absolute farm level, I get +1 in BadFarmer. I build a farm of any tier, I get +1 in GoodFarmer.
For example, I build communal farming, I get grower. I build basic trader after that, and I lose grower. Also, I build a temple (the one after the shrine) in a town with land clearance, and I get poor farmer.

Or am I completely off base as to what we're talking about?

[Hambut_bulge]

has anyone tried changing it from "Condition SettlementBuildingFinished >= farms" to "Condition SettlementBuildingFinished >= hinterland_farms" and seeing if that does anything??

No noticable effect, unless you bring the threshold on Grower down to 1, in which case it does work. But then so does "SettlementBuildingFinished >= farms" if the thresholds are low. I've been following this thread with interest, and I'm starting to think that maybe its meant to be that way. Maybe we all have too many generals so that they're sat around in the same city, going out to fight the odd battle, but always remaining in charge of the same province. Thus in the course of a typical general's lifetime he'll never get past the thresholds for traits such as good farmer. Of course, if over the course of his career he's running around all over the place, then'll he'd get up there in no time at all.

[tai4ji2x]

This is what i just did with the default triggers, and I was receiving the traits by building all the non farm and trade buildings first.

which traits are you referring to here that you were receiving?

[Sinner]

Dammit, I just wasted an hour confirming my beliefs? Oh well.

The answer is to copy how the BadMiner triggers work, replacing the current BadFarmer trigger with the following...

;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing6
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = farms
and AdviseBuild = farms

Affects BadFarmer 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing6a
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = farms+1
and AdviseBuild = farms+1

Affects BadFarmer 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing6b
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = farms+2
and AdviseBuild = farms+2

Affects BadFarmer 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing6c
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = farms+3
and AdviseBuild = farms+3

Affects BadFarmer 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing6d
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = farms+4
and AdviseBuild = farms+4

Affects BadFarmer 1 Chance 100

Do the same sort of change with BadTrader's trigger as well.

It seems almost pure chance whether the Advisor will recommend that you build an available farm building out of the possible buildings available to queue, although at least it doesn't recommend you build a farm that simply isn't available. If you don't follow its advice then you're guaranteed you'll be stung, at best you'll just negate one of your hard earned GoodFarmer points, at worst you'll now have an active BadFarmer trait.

In the quick test game I ran just now I avoided farms and built 7 non-farm buildings before I got the BadFarmer trait which sounds about fair to me, but it'd be worthwhile having this tested some more if anybody cares to try as well.

[tai4ji2x]

do you actually have to click on the advisor button to activate this trigger?

[unseen11]

So um let me just get this straight.When I upgrade my Governors house and I firstly build a farm upgrade or trade/port upgrade before anything else i will get the Good Farmer/Good Trader virtue after building a bunch of other buildings that are either less then or equal to in level to the farm/trader? if i mod it

Ok that makes sense to me, just gotta first build farms/traders when i upgrade my governors house

[frogbeastegg]

I tried reading parts of this thread but it made my eyes spin since I don't understand the modding stuff. However the subject is one dear to my froggy little heart, so I'll toss my two [pence in. Apologies if I am repeating or being redundant.

I saw someone say 'good farmer' has a 100% chance if you build [something, a farm most likely]. I have got this trait ... oh, maybe twice. I do build farms, actually I build almost every farm level in all my cities, only avoiding the higher tier ones if the population already has a very high default growth. I build farms quickly; I want the population boost in place as soon as possible, because then it provides the most benefit.

Bad farmer I get on almost every single governor within 10 turns of their appointment. Every governor will have it eventually, within 15 turns, I estimate. That is probably a generous set of estimates; I don't take a count, I just know the traits appear very, very quickly on everyone.

Ditto useless assessor. I always leave taxes on medium unless I have to reduce them for happiness reasons, something very rare. I like the balance between pop growth and income. Low taxes producing useless assessor I can understand, but medium seems quite stupid.

I don't recall ever getting the good taxman family of traits, even in cities I have occasionally run on high taxes.

Scarred and family, well I think everyone is well acquainted with this now. The AI does not appear to be getting this trait in any of my games; it is just me.

Bad/good miner I have not seen, despite always building mines very quickly in provinces capable of them.

Good/bad trader. I see less of these two families, but with a definite lean towards bad trader. No idea why; trade is also one of my high level priorities in almost every city.

I really do hate the way this is currently working; my people are getting the same few repetitive vices over and over, and quite harmful ones too. I am actually far more bothered about the harm this does to the immersion factor provided by the otherwise excellent trait system; having so many people with the same few traits harms the feeling of individual characters, it reduces them to clones.

If CA won’t/aren’t going to fix this I want to mod it, but I have no idea how to. I presume from the mostly incomprehensive modding talk that people are still trying to work out how to edit these trait families for best effect?

[Sinner]

do you actually have to click on the advisor button to activate this trigger?

Nope, I was just queuing up buildings and clicking end turn.

So um let me just get this straight.When I upgrade my Governors house and I firstly build a farm upgrade or trade/port upgrade before anything else i will get the Good Farmer/Good Trader virtue after building a bunch of other buildings that are either less then or equal to in level to the farm/trader? if i mod it

If by mod and the build order you described, you mean the change gregab25 proposed then unfortunately it doesn't work as intended. Completing any non-farm building gave you points towards GoodFarmer, even if the settlement had no farms. Completing the first farm, Land Clearance, also gave you a point towards GoodFarmer, but every other farm level gave you a point towards BadFarmer instead.

With the unmodded game it doesn't matter what order you build farms and trade buildings since the game does not compare the newly completed building with what has already been built. If you complete a farm or a trade building you get a point towards GoodFarmer or GoodTrader respectively, with the latter also getting points for ports and roads. If you complete a non-farm or a non-trade building you run the risk of getting BadFarmer or BadTrader points respectively.

If people are really that worried about getting BadFarmer in the unmodded game then the possible solutions are a pain in the ass, but still just about workable: simply never complete a non-farm building with your governor in the settlement, alternatively get to the third level of GoodFarmer, Agriculturalist, since this is a 'no going back' level and you can't subsequently lose it to BadFarmer.

If you're very lucky your governor will have started with Grower through random chance when he comes of age, although this is rare - only about 2% if I recall. If you have access to a temple of farming greater than shrine level your task just got a whole lot easier: drop your new governor-to-be into the settlement and as long as he doesn't move he has a 10% chance each turn of getting 6 points towards GoodFarmer.

(If your trainee is the governor of the farming temple settlement you perhaps want to avoid completing any buildings so that you don't get any BadFarmer/BadTrader vices, but you can still try to improve him further by setting the taxes to Very High and completing a troop every turn which has a small chance - about 3% - of gaining him a point in GoodAdministrator. You do run a very small risk of getting BadBuilder points with an idle building queue, so to avoid this simply queue up a building that you never allow to complete, removing it from the queue entirely and then restarting it each time it nears completion - this does waste money, but the choice is yours, cash or BadBuilder.)

If you don't have access to a farming temple and you're still trying to get a governor to Agriculturalist then your only option is to send him on a tour of your settlements, stopping off in each one as it completes a farm so that he gets the point of GoodFarmer. Given the micromanagement and build times required this is very awkward to achieve and I personally didn't find the effort worthwhile.

[Sinner]

Frogbeastegg, try the fix I posted for BadFarmer a couple of posts up. While it doesn't make getting GoodFarmer more likely, leaving it a rare and thus valuable achievement, it does avoid governors getting BadFarmer simply for doing their job.

To simplify it for people here's the same change done for BadTrader...

;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing10
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = trader
and AdviseBuild = trader

Affects BadTrader 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing10a
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = market
and AdviseBuild = market

Affects BadTrader 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing10a
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = forum
and AdviseBuild = forum

Affects BadTrader 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing10a
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = great_forum
and AdviseBuild = great_forum

Affects BadTrader 1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing10a
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition not SettlementBuildingFinished = curia
and AdviseBuild = curia

Affects BadTrader 1 Chance 100

For GoodTaxman you need to set your taxes to Very High while maintaining a settlement loyalty level of disillusioned, giving you a chance each turn of gaining 1 point in GoodTaxman. If your taxes are Low or Normal and the settlement's loyalty greater than disillusioned then you risk getting a point in BadTaxman, since your governor is obviously not taking the opportunity to squeeze more money out of the settlement.

Personally I think the GoodTaxman trigger should be changed to allow you to get the trait if the happiness level is disillusioned or higher, not just disillusioned. To do this change the current GoodTaxman trigger as follows...

;------------------------------------------
Trigger governing18
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition GovernorLoyaltyLevel >= loyalty_disillusioned
and GovernorTaxLevel > tax_high

Affects GoodTaxman 1 Chance 75

Overall the problem is that it seems CA don't really intend for you to have family members sitting around for very long as governors, we're instead meant to get them out into the field as generals or at least a mix of the two.

An idea I've been thinking of to totally revamp the traits system is to predispose the majority of characters towards being a general or a governor, with a few rare individuals able to function equally well as both. This does fit real world examples where great generals are often terrible civil leaders and vice versa. This would be done with a couple of new traits, General and Governor, possibly hidden, that are assigned to every character with the former finding it easier to gain combat traits and the latter governing traits. It would be possible for a general to build up his governing skills and even over time gain the Governor trait, possibly even lose his General trait, and vice versa for governors. It's only in the rough planning stage so far and since it'll require a huge increase in triggers to allow for seperate general and governor versions for many of them it might be that I'll hit a possible hardcoded limit... or alternatively I just give up from sheer exhaustion!

[RJV]

My own solution to this whole messy affair is rather simplistic and probably not as God intende, but anyway...

1) Never leave your generals in towns

2) If you get do happen to get new family members either through marriage or birth - leave them in a city with taxes set to HIGH for a few turns (unless they have excellent battle stats of course) , build as normal and see if they get anything good. If they do, keep em there or move them to a good city. If they don't, ship em out to the battle field.


It's a pity that I feel I have to play like that, but I don't trust what is happening with the traits, and it's too easy to get the bad stuff, and seems too hard to get the good stuff. Admittedly it seems that fighting makes it too easy to get the good stuff but you can't have everything...

If we get a definitive answer or relatively simple (ie something that isn't going to take me hours to mod, or a download that isn't going to mess with too many other areas of the game) then maybe I'll re-introduce the governor side of things. As it is, my generals are just fighters.

Cheers,

Rob.

[Jambo]

OK, rather than dwell on and tinker with the current bizarrely operated GoodFarmer/Trader triggers, I thought I'd post an alternative idea for a fix. This involves what is known as "self-perpetuating" triggers. What this will mean is that any character with the GoodFarmer/Trader trait has a small chance at the end of any turn to progress further in this trait. So a character with Grower will have a 4% chance of receiving 1 towards the next threshold level at the end of each turn.

Here's what the self-perpetuating triggers would look like with these traits:

Trigger selfperpetuating49
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition Trait GoodFarmer >= 1

    Affects GoodFarmer  1  Chance  4

Trigger selfperpetuating50
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition GoodTrader >= 1

    Affects GoodTrader  1  Chance  4

Reducing the GoodFarmer and GoodTrader thresholds from 6 and 24 to something like 4 and 16, respectively, would go somewhere in helping these self-perpetuating triggers come into effect.

Lastly, one might also reduce the chance for BadFarmer from 1 Chance 8 to something like 1 Chance 4, so that the BadFarmer trait is relatively less likely to be acquired..

[hrvojej]

I really do hate the way this is currently working; my people are getting the same few repetitive vices over and over, and quite harmful ones too. I am actually far more bothered about the harm this does to the immersion factor provided by the otherwise excellent trait system; having so many people with the same few traits harms the feeling of individual characters, it reduces them to clones.

The problem mostly lies in the fact that it takes several (as in 8 or even 24) instances of triggers to get the good trait up one level, whereas it usually takes way fewer (read: a single one) instances to get one level of the corresponding bad trait. Or the triggers are set up in such a way that it's hard to avoid the annoying VnVs. That's why the game gets this punishing feeling, even if it appears that you're doing everything right.

For example, you'll always get useless assessors for having taxes lower than high. Simply, the trigger is set that if loyalty is greater than disillusioned (the blue face, i.e. 75-80%) and taxes are less than high, you have a chance to get badtaxman vice. You'll never be able to get goodtaxman virtue with the setup you described above (taxes on medium) since you have to have blue face loyalty and very high taxes, and not only that but also you'll never be able to counter the badtaxman progression (it's like a + - scale, one point in positive direction decreases the badtaxman). Another example is goodfarmer vs. badfarmer, where you need to build 6 farm buildings to get the first level of goodfarmer, whereas only a single non-farm building will net you a level in badfarmer. Although each farm building increase the goodfarmer with a 100% probability and the probability of getting a badfarmer from building anything else is 8%, I find that I'm way more likely to build "anything else" despite the apparently low probability than to build 6 farms under the same governor - and hence all the poor farmers out there.
Since I find this imbalance detrimental to my gaming experience, I have modified both the triggers and the thresholds for certain vices (farmer, trader, taxman...) to at least neutralize the effects you were talking about. In other words, it's not just the triggers IMO: you would have to build *24* bleeping farm buildings under the same governor to get the third level of goodfarmer virtue!! I'm tempted to say that most governors don't live that long, not even in 1.2. Of course, that's assuming you never build anything other than farms... or that you always pass the badfarmer check. Naturally, it only takes 3 failed checks (if you haven't build any farms and hence have no positive increase) to get the third level of badfarmer...

Sorry, a bit long and a bit of a rant, but you hit the nail on the head with one of the biggest things that (used to) bother me with the strategic map.

edit:
And from reading the posts after yours I see that I'm not the only one in this feeling. Sorry for the repeats, folks, I went straight to writing without reading on.

[Hambut_bulge]

Self-perpetuating triggers? Now that's a good idea!

I'm not so sure that the issues surrounding the badtaxman traits are necessarily broken though. Remember this is ancient Rome, not a modern democracy. Tax was all about squeezing as much cash as possible out of the newly conquered. Tom Holland touches on the subject in his book Rubicon. I don't have it in front of me right now, but from what I recall his argument was that the Western civilisations originally didn't bother with regular taxation. Why go to all that bother when you could simply beat up your neighbours and take everything they had? Eastern empires, being much larger, had developed the necessary adminstration skills to levy regular taxes. Then, so Holland's argument runs, the Romans acquired Pergamum and everything changed. Now the Romans (particularly in the days of the Republic), if they got hold of a city that had a smoothly functioning administrative service tended to leave that service intact. Pergamum, being a relic of an old Eastern empire had the neccessaries to levy regular taxation on its subjects. And the Romans suddenly realised what an easy, and lucrative, task it actually was.

So in that light, the game is actually correct in punishing those generals who keep taxes too low. What I don't get though is why the tax farmer ancillary pops up if you go down the badtaxman trait tree. Tax farmers were sub-contractors used by Roman governors to increase tax revenues. So I would've thought they should be on the goodtaxman tree

[Pode]

If you had total authority over a city and found that you were no good at taxing, wouldn't you delegate the task to someone who was? I think the tax farmer ancillairy belongs on the bad taxer side.

On the larger issue, is there an agreed upon set of triggers for the farmer and trader traits that doesn't depend on the advisor? I've found her to be more like a trophy wife than an advisor: pretty to look at until she opens her mouth. The woman is utterly daft, and I don't want anything important like economic traits left in her clueless hands.

[Kraxis]

I'm with Jambo. Upping the chance of GoodFarmer (lower threshold) and lower the one for BadFarmer is the way I have followed. Now with the perpetuating trait I have gone a little back towards vanilla but it is much altered still.

[Kraxis]

Damn! Just noticed another badly made traittrigger. Look up the risky battles and you will notice that the battles that are supposed to be won = clear are in fact set to be = crushing. That means that every time you win a crushing victory that is risky you gain no less than 3 points in whatever risky-type you fought. But if you won a clear victory you gained nothing. That is unmodded. Personally I have modded crushing to grant only 1 point but give a 25% chance of skilladvance.

[Bob the Insane]

I think I am in need of a clearer explaination of what the problem is here...

I have been running tests with slightly modified export_descr_ancillaries.txt and export_descr_character_traits.txt files. I have modded them simple to set the chance values to 100 (or in the case of comingofage, marriage and adoption test I have set chance to 1). In export_descr_character_traits.txt I have also modded the trait threshold to be single point steps...

Concentrating on the farmer and Trader triggers the logic appears to be:

1. Build a farm build and get a GoodFarmer point (but you also get a BadTrader point)

2. Build a trade building and get a GoodTrader point (but also get a BadFarmer point)

3. Build a road or a port and you get a GoodTrader point and a BadFarmer point.

4. Build anything else and you get both a BadTrader and a BadFarmer point.

Before arguing whether this is right, is it what everyone else expects with the default trigger setup?