Bad traits due to excessive cash!

[sik1977]

I read on these forums on more then one occassion that having more then 50,000 dinarii in the bank gives your generals bad traits.

After a while, if your economy is well managed, 50,000 is a very easy figure to hit, infact very difficult to stay under with some factions. This however starts to give horrible traits to the generals and makes them both useless for Governor duties as well as field work. My current situation is that every Governor is atleast an embezzler, and there is zero, yes zero income from tax in most governed cities.

I would like to know the following:

1. What are the exact numbers where the bad traits start, i.e., 50k or more?
2. Is there a way to mod out this effect of gaining bad traits due to excessive cash.

BTW, I do give out huge cash grants to many a weak faction in order to make them stand against Roman power, so its not like i like to roll in the dinarii i collect. I would nevertheless want my generals to be not useless due to an obvious issue which effects each and every one of them. Its hard to imagine them all having the exact same traits... which this issue usually causes.

Thanks for the replies.

[professorspatula]

I wish I had loads of cash. My empires are seldom flowing with cash for long. Maybe my army is too big. But 60,000 upkeep a turn is a fair price to play for secure borders on every front. You could just keep churning out Praetorians or Silvershields or whatever your most expensive unit is to keep profits lowered, whilst simulatenously building up a strong military. Or fill your building queues with buildings, even if you aren't planning to build them. IIRC, money goes from your treasury whenever you put something into the queue even if it won't be built for another 10 years or more. This means your money is tied up in construction and won't contribute to your governor's bad traits. When you need the money back, remove the buildings from the build queues. That's the theory anyway.

It doesn't matter a great deal if you're making silly amounts of money and your governors get bad traits because you obviously weren't using all that money anyway, so a bit of wastage isn't disasterous.

The bad traits tend to start at 50K, then increase at 100K, and again at 150K if I remember correctly.

You can mod the character traits file to change the probabilities of picking up bad traits but I personally wouldn't change it that much. You need some disecomonies of scale to help keep your empire from getting endlessly powerful. That said, once you're massive and your empire is a money making machine, nothing can stop you anyway.

[sik1977]

@ professorspatula

Thanks for the reply. I am well aware of all the ways of spending or throwing money away. I am however interested in knowing the exact manner in increasing the 50k/100k/150k limits if at all possible.

[gardibolt]

And my understanding is that the bad trait testing kicks in at a mere 11,000 in BI.

[professorspatula]

Probably should be a modding question then.

Anyway, edit the export_descr_character_traits.txt file.

Then find this:
Trigger corruption1

That's the first trigger test for corruption.

The next few triggers are under that one.

The effects of the 50K, 100K and 150K corruption trait tests are cumulative.

You can increase the amount of denarii required for the trigger to kick in, or you could remove the traits affected, or lower the chance of receiving an increase in the trait. Or you could even edit the threshold level for each of the traits. The Corrupt trait for example could be edited so you need 12 points in it to reach the maximum level of the trait. At the moment you need just 6 points.

But er, yea, going back to your original question, to change the denarii limits,
edit these parts:
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 50000

And up it to whatever you want. Do it for all the triggers that check for denarii in your treasury.

[sik1977]

Thanks Professorspatula.

I found the problem with my charater traits file. The mod I am using seems to have borrowed the triggers from BI and they have the decreased treasury threshhold of 11k, 17k and 23k with higher chances of gaining these bad traits.

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption1
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 11000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 10
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects BadAdministrator 1 Chance 3

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption2
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 17000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 10
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 10

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption4
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 23000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 7
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 15
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 15

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption3
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 15000
and CultureType roman

Affects ApicianRomanVice 1 Chance 13

I have now changed them back to the original. Which isn't all that bad it seems. I dont mind 1 out of three embezzlers, just not all three.

[x-dANGEr]

Hmm.. I have more than 150k in my reasury and till now I haven't got any of those traits...

[TinCow]

Thanks Professorspatula.

I found the problem with my charater traits file. The mod I am using seems to have borrowed the triggers from BI and they have the decreased treasury threshhold of 11k, 17k and 23k with higher chances of gaining these bad traits.


:jawdrop: I can deal with the 50k limit because at that point slowing down my income is reasonable. 11k though??? What mod is this?

[sik1977]

:jawdrop: I can deal with the 50k limit because at that point slowing down my income is reasonable. 11k though??? What mod is this?

I think this was unintended. I have changed it back to normal, so it shouldnt be too bad now.

[gardibolt]

But it is the standard for BI (which tends to have much lower income generally anyway).

[x-dANGEr]

Upkeep for units in BI is really higher than in RTW. (Or so I think)

[fallen851]

Well crap, I have upwards of 500,000 dollars in my campaign, and I've been wondering why the traits of all my governors has gone to absolute crap...

Hmm...

[x-dANGEr]

You have 500k denarii!! Don't you have an army?

[player1]

Note that in BI with patch 1.6 these triggers got tweaks so they happen slightly later, plus chances to gain those traits are much lower.

Here is the whole listing for anybody interested (BI):


;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption1
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= proconsuls_palace
and Treasury > 13000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 1
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 1
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 1
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 1
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 1

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption2
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= proconsuls_palace
and Treasury > 18000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 2
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 2
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 2

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption4
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= proconsuls_palace
and Treasury > 24000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 4
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 4
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 4

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption3
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= proconsuls_palace
and Treasury > 24000
and CultureType roman

Affects ApicianRomanVice 1 Chance 5
Affects Loyal 1 Chance 3

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption4_western_empire
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= proconsuls_palace
and Treasury > 13000
and Treasury <= 24000
and CultureType roman
and FactionType empire_west

Affects ApicianRomanVice 1 Chance 4
Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 2
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 2

Notice they all now require 4th level cities.
And that romans can gain Loyalty benefits this way too.

and:


Trigger luxurious_lifestyle3
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and SettlementBuildingExists >= city_plumbing
and Treasury > 5000

Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 2
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 2
Affects Gambling 1 Chance 2
Affects Generous 1 Chance 5

;------------------------------------------
Trigger luxurious_lifestyle5
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and SettlementBuildingExists >= silk_rd
and SettlementBuildingExists >= governors_palace
and Treasury > 8000

Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 2
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 2
Affects Gambling 1 Chance 1
Affects Girls 1 Chance 3

;------------------------------------------
Trigger luxurious_lifestyle6
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and CultureType roman
and Treasury > 1000
and SettlementBuildingExists >= city_plumbing
and SettlementBuildingExists >= curia

Affects Loyal 1 Chance 1
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 1
Affects ApicianRomanVice 1 Chance 2
Affects Gambling 1 Chance 1
Affects Girls 1 Chance 1

[Monarch]

I wish I could have these problems. I had a nice big treasury as Egypt until the plague that is the Scipii started expanding, I was happily tackling Scythia but then suddenly I needed lots of troops on two fronts. I struggle to break even :(

(But most my cities are very well equiped, most possible buildings that can be built have been built)

[Captain Fishpants]

Hmm.

With the benefit of hindsight it was probably not that clever to peg VnVs to a set amount of cash for a faction. It would have been better to consider the faction's wealth as a proportion of the total cash in the game world for all factions, at least for some of the corruption traits. For some of the governor traits, a similar check for the proportion of wealth his city generated for the faction would have been equally valid.

That way, "rich" would have been a relative thing, not an absolute.

[Mooks]

The upkeep for units in BI is usually 100-200 for barbarian factions.

[player1]

Captain Fishpants:
Hmm.

With the benefit of hindsight it was probably not that clever to peg VnVs to a set amount of cash for a faction. It would have been better to consider the faction's wealth as a proportion of the total cash in the game world for all factions, at least for some of the corruption traits. For some of the governor traits, a similar check for the proportion of wealth his city generated for the faction would have been equally valid.

That way, "rich" would have been a relative thing, not an absolute.

Well, it is something to think of for next game.

By the way, thanks for having VnV system modable in RTW.
It really means a lot.

[Goofball]

You can increase the amount of denarii required for the trigger to kick in, or you could remove the traits affected, or lower the chance of receiving an increase in the trait. Or you could even edit the threshold level for each of the traits. The Corrupt trait for example could be edited so you need 12 points in it to reach the maximum level of the trait. At the moment you need just 6 points.

Okay, I see what you mean, but I'm vague on the details. For example:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption1
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 11000

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 10
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects BadAdministrator 1 Chance 3

I take the above to mean that at the end of any turn where a character ended in a settlement and the faction's treasury exceeds 11,000, he will be tested for vices and has (to use the first one on the list) a 1 in three (or 33.33%) chance of being assigned the corrupt vice.

So, if I were to change:

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3

to:

Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 500

would he then only have a 1 in 500 (or 0.20%) chance of obtaining the corrupt vice?

[orangat]

Why don't you change the trigger to 1,000,000 instead of changing the probability.

And corrupt 1 chance 3 is level 1 corrupt at 3% not 33% I think.

[Goofball]

Why don't you change the trigger to 1,000,000 instead of changing the probability.

And corrupt 1 chance 3 is level 1 corrupt at 3% not 33% I think.

Because I also want to mod the chances of getting vices like "Poor farmer," for which there are no monetary triggers.


And corrupt 1 chance 3 is level 1 corrupt at 3% not 33% I think.

You think or you're sure?

[orangat]

........

You think or you're sure?

I'm quite sure. With your postcount I'm surprised you aren't sure.

[Goofball]

I'm quite sure.

Really? Because I modded the following text from:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 2 Chance 3
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 8
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 4
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

to:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 1 Chance 999
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 999
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 999
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

If what you're saying is correct, I would think that everytime one of my characters marries he should be getting the Cuckold trait, because his chance of getting it is now 999%. But none of my characters have received that trait yet, and they're all married.


With your postcount I'm surprised you aren't sure.

With your postcount I'm surprised you're already being sassy to long-time members.

~;p

At any rate, I've only been playing RTW for a couple of months, so I'm still by no means an expert at it.

So are you really sure about your earlier statement? I'm not trying to be a smart-arse, but what you say doesn't seem to be correct and I would hate to assume it's true and end up all screwed up because of it.

[player1]

Really? Because I modded the following text from:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 2 Chance 3
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 8
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 4
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

to:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 1 Chance 999
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 999
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 999
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

If what you're saying is correct, I would think that everytime one of my characters marries he should be getting the Cuckold trait, because his chance of getting it is now 999%. But none of my characters have received that trait yet, and they're all married.

Well, there is no such thing as 999% chance, but I personally wonder why it doesn't CTD.

It should be 100 if you want it always on.
Although, not forget that it gives 1 point of the trait.
Some traits need more then 1 point (look at the threasholds at first half of file) to get the trait.


P.S.
And before 1.5/1.6 character married trigger didn't worked anyway (was bugged), so if you've done testing long ago no wonder it didn't worked.

[player1]

Really? Because I modded the following text from:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 2 Chance 3
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 8
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 4
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

to:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger family8
WhenToTest CharacterMarries

Affects Cuckold 1 Chance 999
Affects FaithfulWife 1 Chance 999
Affects Fertile 1 Chance 4
Affects Infertile 1 Chance 999
Affects WellConnectedWife 1 Chance 5

If what you're saying is correct, I would think that everytime one of my characters marries he should be getting the Cuckold trait, because his chance of getting it is now 999%. But none of my characters have received that trait yet, and they're all married.

Well, there is no such thing in probability as 999% chance, so I personally wonder why it doesn't CTD for you.

It should be 100 if you want it always to happen.
Although, not forget that it gives 1 point of the trait.
Some traits need more then 1 point (look at the threasholds at first half of file) to get the trait.


P.S.
And before 1.5/1.6 character marries trigger didn't worked anyway (was bugged), so if you've done testing long ago no wonder it didn't worked.

[Goofball]

Well, there is no such thing as 999% chance, but I personally wonder why it doesn't CTD.

It should be 100 if you want it always on.

I still am not convinced that the number after the word "chance" represents a % (because as you point out, it is impossible to have a probability higher than 1, so my inserting 999 should be causing the game serious problems). I'm not saying I know what the number after the word "chance" represents, but from the modding I've already done, it does not appear to represent the probability of obtaining the vice.

[player1]

From moding I'm done I'm 100% sure that it is probabilty of gaining one point in the trait line.

[Goofball]

From moding I'm done I'm 100% sure that it is probabilty of gaining one point in the trait line.

Okay, I'll take your word for it. So if I want a trait never to show up, all I should have to do is change that number to 0?

[player1]

You could completly remove that line in that case.

[Goofball]

You could completly remove that line in that case.

Let me just give that idea a great big "DUH!"

I'm an idiot. I can't believe I didn't figure that out on my own...

[Goofball]

Okay, something is wrong here. I moded the Aesthetic trait description in the export_descr_character_traits.txt file as follows:


;------------------------------------------
Trait Aesthetic
Characters family
ExcludeCultures barbarian
NoGoingBackLevel 2
AntiTraits Austere
Level Lover_of_Beauty
Description Lover_of_Beauty_desc
EffectsDescription Lover_of_Beauty_effects_desc
Threshold 1000
Effect Influence 1
Effect Command -1
Level Connoisseur
Description Connoisseur_desc
EffectsDescription Connoisseur_effects_desc
Threshold 2000
Effect Influence 2
Effect Command -2
Level Aesthete
Description Aesthete_desc
EffectsDescription Aesthete_effects_desc
Threshold 3000
Effect Influence 3
Effect Command -3

I also moded the Embezzler trait description as follows:


;------------------------------------------
Trait Embezzler
Characters family
ExcludeCultures barbarian
AntiTraits Upright
Level Financially_Irregular
Description Financially_Irregular_desc
EffectsDescription Financially_Irregular_effects_desc
Threshold 2000
Effect Management -1
Level Fiscally_Flexible
Description Fiscally_Flexible_desc
EffectsDescription Fiscally_Flexible_effects_desc
Threshold 3000
Effect Management -2
Level Embezzler
Description Embezzler_desc
EffectsDescription Embezzler_effects_desc
Threshold 6000
Effect Management -3

So as I understand it, a character should have to have 2000 points of the Aesthetic trait before getting the Connoisseur vice, and 2000 points of the Embezzler trait before getting the Financially Irregular vice, which should make it all but impossible (or at least make it take a very long time) to get either vice.

Yet by the end of the fourth turn in my new game, my faction heir was a crook who enjoyed fine wine and rich food.

What gives?

[player1]

Maybe those values are way of the normal range.
Try something more normal like 10, 20 or 30.

[Goofball]

Probably should be a modding question then.

Anyway, edit the export_descr_character_traits.txt file.

Then find this:
Trigger corruption1

That's the first trigger test for corruption.

The next few triggers are under that one.

The effects of the 50K, 100K and 150K corruption trait tests are cumulative.

You can increase the amount of denarii required for the trigger to kick in, or you could remove the traits affected, or lower the chance of receiving an increase in the trait. Or you could even edit the threshold level for each of the traits. The Corrupt trait for example could be edited so you need 12 points in it to reach the maximum level of the trait. At the moment you need just 6 points.

But er, yea, going back to your original question, to change the denarii limits,
edit these parts:
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 50000

And up it to whatever you want. Do it for all the triggers that check for denarii in your treasury.

Could you not just delete the whole following section and then have no corruption triggers kick in due to excessive cash?


;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption1
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 50000
Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 3
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects BadAdministrator 1 Chance 3
;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption2
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 100000
Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 3
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 3
;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption4
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 150000
Affects Corrupt 1 Chance 3
Affects Aesthetic 1 Chance 3
Affects ExpensiveTastes 1 Chance 3
Affects Epicurean 1 Chance 3
Affects Embezzler 1 Chance 3
;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption3
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition EndedInSettlement
and Treasury > 50000
and CultureType roman
Affects ApicianRomanVice 1 Chance 3

[orangat]

It might work in this case since its not the only trigger section for corruption.
I'm wondering if there must be at least one trigger for a trait or a ctd occurs.

[Goofball]

It might work in this case since its not the only trigger section for corruption.
I'm wondering if there must be at least one trigger for a trait or a ctd occurs.

I'm going to try it when I get home tonight. I'll let you know.

[Malrubius]

It might work in this case since its not the only trigger section for corruption.
I'm wondering if there must be at least one trigger for a trait or a ctd occurs.

You can have traits without having a trigger for them. That doesn't cause CTDs.

If you don't want the trait to appear, just comment out or delete the triggers.

[player1]

But never, and I say never comment out or delete traits themselfs (1/2 half of the file) since that can lead to saves incombatibility.

For triggers, it's fine.