Research: the effect of Academies

At the request of SilverRusher, this is a thread to discuss the effects of academies. Specifically, SilverRusher raises the following questions:

1) Do they affect only generals coming of age/being adopted/being married into the family in the town, or the generals already in the town over a period of time, or both?

2) In what way do Academies boost the abilities of generals? Is it just as simple as for example adding 1 command, 1 influence and 1 management?

3) What, if any, traits to Academies bestow upon the generals?

4) Other than the loyalty bonus and the ones covered above and below, what bonuses are gained from academies?

5) How much to these "bonuses" differ between the different Academy levels?

6) If it is over a period of time that generals are affected (see question 1) then what time is it? Does it vary, and if so, how?

7) Do the Academy buildings affect a town's income in any way?

8) And the most important question, is the Academy simply about loyalty bonuses, making all the other questions here irrelevant?

Hitherto, my understanding was that Academies led to resident governors obtaining ancillary characters for their retinues at a faster rate over time. This is what I have observed from playing my games, but I have not looked for other effects (on traits or attributes). I would be interested to hear what other people have learnt on this subject.

The one and only thing an academy structure does in vanilla is giving generals ancillaries. This applies to all generals, young and old, just as any ancillary trigger does. There is no mention of the buildings in EDCT.txt, so they grant no traits, and neither do they give any effects whatsoever to the city itself in EDB.txt. They give ancillaries, that's it.

-Simetrical

Perhaps some of it is hardcoded. But it seems an academy does help increase traits over a period of time.

I just don't believe that. I don't believe that trait triggers are hardcoded.

-Simetrical

The Cherry Vanilla Pack has several academy triggers, but there weren't any in vanilla that I could find (neither the traits file from 9/04 or 12/04). I also don't remember seeing any effect from having an academy (besides ancillaries) until I installed the CVP.

However, it is conceivable that some effects of the academy have been hard-coded, in the same way that I believe some of the crazy traits will produce the crazy prebattle speeches. Do I have any evidence? Only anecdotal.

The ‘Academy’ buildings generate a relatively small proportion of the 190 different ancillaries: the Chirurgeon, the Doctor, the Geographer, the Historian, the Librarian, the Mathematician, the Philosopher, the Scribe, and (conditionally on other buildings) the two Freeman Clerks, the Geomancer, the Geometer, the Military Engineer, and the Mining Engineer. In addition, the academies educate the 42 ‘named’ ancillaries (such as Archimedes, Livy, Ariston of Cyrene), who can only appear in your retinue during the years of their historical lifetime. Contrary to belief in some circles, the Academies have no influence on traits at all.

Very modestly quoted from this treatise here........

To the best of my knowledge, the Academies have no other influence on traits, loyalty, income or anything else. I can't speak for the hardcoding, but I think it's pretty unlikely.

Does anyone know the effects of upgrading the academy? The basic building seems to provide quite a lot of ancillaries, so the upgraded versions don't seem that much of a priority to build (especially when exponential population growth prevents you building everything you'd like).

But academy and its upgrades give retinues only.

Also, exemot ordinary retinues you can get famous people which are unique (only one per campaign).

Benefits of upgraded buildings is a bit limited though.
Scriptorium add greatly to poor of famous people, but just several retinue members.

While Ludus Magnus is almost useless.
Total two of them, including one famous person.




P.S.
CVP and bug-fixer do give some chance to increase some of the traits.

By the way, if you have installed player1's Bugfixer patch (which is becoming more like a low-grade mod), you will find that the Academies DO affect character traits.

Added to prevent some of the skills never improving after birth (mathematics, philosophy, etc...)

Maybe what you said is true and academies don't affect traits, but my 2 family members who lived in cities with academies are the 2 best 16 year-olds I have ever had: one had so many traits that I needed to drag down to see them all, and he had the highest command and influence ratings in the entire faction. Another was born as my best governor(best governing traits, and best management when all management boosting ancillaries were given to him).

Now thats an interesting thought.

Children growing up in a city with an academy will join the game already possessing academy related traits. Never expected this.

.02 the governor of my capital, which has an academy, seemingly randomly got a trait increase to influence or management (can't remember which) on my start of the turn reports. i'm only on my first long campaign, but fairly well along, and haven't had that happen to anyone anywhere else.

oh! here is something relevant from EDCT
Trigger education
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and SettlementBuildingExists >= academy
and Trait Ignorance < 1
and Trait Insane <= 1

Affects PhilosophySkill 1 Chance 1
Affects NaturalPhilosophySkill 1 Chance 1
Affects RhetoricSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects GoodEngineer 1 Chance 1

;------------------------------------------
Trigger education2
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and SettlementBuildingExists >= scriptorium
and Trait Ignorance < 1
and Trait Insane <= 1

Affects PoeticSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects TacticalSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects ArchitectSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects Stoic 1 Chance 1
Affects LogisticalSkill 1 Chance 1

;------------------------------------------
Trigger education3
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and EndedInSettlement
and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
and Trait Ignorance < 1
and Trait Insane <= 1
and SettlementBuildingExists = ludus_magnus
and CultureType roman

Affects BoringSpeaker 1 Chance 1
Affects MathematicsSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects StrategicSkill 1 Chance 1
Affects PhilosophySkill 1 Chance 1
Affects PoliticsSkill 1 Chance 1


ha ha! the ludus magnus has the chance of turning your general into one of those annoying academic gits (boring speaker)!