A barrelful of crappy Governors

While playing my third game and going into the mid game, I noticed that all but three of my governors sucked real bad. The reason for this was that I didn't rotate my general from the frontier to my core provinces, I didn't move them once a turn and other tedious micro management I felt made the game boring. Almost all my Characters had the drink vice and were also useless in battle.

Seing this, I took action. I went into the export_descr_ancillaries.txt and export_descr_character_traits.txt files and lowered the probability of getting bad traits and increased the chance of getting good traits and Ancillaries. It's quite time consuming but it's worth the work. I started my 4th game now and I can already see the improvement.

Try it out and let me know how it works out for you.

Of course you can modify some files to change traits, etc. But in my mind, creating good governors or generals isn't unpleasant micromanagement, but rather a fun part of the game. If you don't want certain traits, you can learn how to manage the character to avoid them, and to do the right things to get good traits.

Some of the factors for giving negative points to traits make perfect sense to me. If you leave a general sitting around in some stinkhole backwater province with a tavern, it shouldn't surprise you to see him take up drinking. If you build temples that increase trade and leave governors there, they become greedy moneymongering cheapskates. Again, that isn't surprising.

I think the negative trait issue is very similar to the squalor issue: it is beyond many players to understand the way it works or to really enjoy solving the problem through gameplay. I was always able to deal with squalor without revolts before the 1.2 patch dumbed it down so people wouldn't complain. The same holds true for negative traits. It isn't very challenging to have positive traits develop by default for characters left to rot in a settlement, now, is it?

Managing generals is easy. Just send them to the field and give them experience. If you choose to let them develop some retinue first, then place them in a town with an educational institution and temples of law, but never temples of fun, love, war, trade, fertility, because they almost always cause problems. Temples of healing are a crapshoot for good or bad traits, but you can't go wrong with law.

I found it sufficient to change the bad farmer, bad trader and scarred traits as these were the ones cropping up with wild abandon.

Now things feel more balanced- no longer do i get all my governors gaining horrendous financial traits within 2 turns of the games start. Some governors still turn out as bad eggs, but that keeps things interesting.

Well Old Celt... What a cleverly masked way to call me an idiot.

If your idea of fun is clicking on every single family member and do a little dance for each so they don't get bad traits every single turn, then by all means, click away.

I, on the other hand, like this game for it's strategic and logistical command aspect. I love moving my armies around, seizing critical provinces making deals and subjugating whole nations to Roman will. As far as observing the habits of my family members, I have enough patience for approximatively 5 of them and I don't feel (or have time for that matter) like managing 30+ governors and general witch have nothing else to do but sit there. I mean just because I set this guy up as a governor for the rest of his life doesn't mean he would normal become a vice ridden, corrupt alchoolic.

Ok... You might say that thats the way it works in real life, but this isn't real life. It's a game. And a good one at that. I think the reason the game is so easily modified is that the developers "wanted" their fans to alter it to their preferences. I think this alteration makes the game more fun without shifting the balance too much. After all... The enemies get better family members too.

I'm not sure he is calling you an idiot (correct me if I'm wrong here ~D ), he is just saying there are trade-offs that have to be made. If you don't want drunkards, destroy the taverns. You lose the happiness bonus, but you don't get bad vices. Same with the fun temples. Do this as part of your overall city management, and you won't have to micromanage your governors, they will not pick up these bad traits just by sitting in a town. If you attempt, through city administration, to turn these backwaters into "enlightened" outposts of [insert preferred faction here] civilization, your governors will reflect this. If you play a barbarian faction, your governors should be drunkards though, it's just part of the fun!

Of course, none of this applies to badfarmer/badtrader, these are just plain bugs.

I don't tend to insult through subtlety, so if you aren't sure, then you know there was no intent :)

I don't understand quite what you mean about having to move the governor every turn, because I don't do that, and never have. Some bad traits are unavoidable, but generals don't get them unless they were born with them, or you did something to allow them to get them. Governors are another matter. Yeah, you can get poor farmer or bad trader through no fault of your own, but even if you do, the actual affects are totally negligible in a campaign.

I focus on developing generals I want to use on the battle front. This means I have a capital city with educational facilities, and always a temple of law. My generals are in the field after they are 20, and they don't languish in towns where they always will pick up negative traits. They can't get any bad ones (other than cowardice and being too bloodthirsty) in battle, so what micromanagement is required there? Zero!

If you think it is a hassle to do anything with governors, then DON'T HAVE ANY! Let the AI manage settlements for you. My point was that there is logic for development of traits if you look for it. Governing settlements since the squalor cap is almost impossible to screw up, so why would you even worry about the traits of non combat administrators? If I want to, I can develop a governor with good farmer, good taxman, etc. But I couldn't be bothered!! I'm interested in military conquest primarily, and have learned enough about the game to avoid debilitating negatives with governors. Other then that, automanage does fine for taxes, and I do the building and unit construction myself.

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Originally Posted by B1ueBa11

Well Old Celt... What a cleverly masked way to call me an idiot.

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LOL.... getting a bit sensitive here?

In all fairness, it's quite random, those negative traits. Due to self-perpetuating, there is little you can do once a governor has 1 except re-load. Notable exceptions, ie things you CAN do something about, are bad farmer, and poor trader.

I like to keep most of governors outside my towns, if i'm growing the game towards a better end-game. They pick up the fewest bad traits possible.

If I'm impatient, my governors dont get any rest at all, and the world is conquered in 50 turns max.

Compared to Medieval, they're an added burden/micro-management, and i do not feel a real connection to their bunch of traits, or their pictures. But i'm not going to let the AI make them drunk (building taverns everywhere tends to make this a sure thing).

In fact i dont use any taverns at all when i'm playing barbarian, because you dont need them and they create vices-only.
I wish i could mod all the character traits more easily rather than looking them up in export_descr_traits.txt

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Originally Posted by drone

Of course, none of this applies to badfarmer/badtrader, these are just plain bugs.

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Not many people realize that it's very easy to remove these traits.

Just take one poor farmer governor to make one farm building and he will lose the trait.

Of course, if he got to loathes farmers then it's too late.


The reason for this is that thresholds not poor farmer are very low. So only one negative point give bad farmer, but also one positive point will remove it.