Building a better governor

Without access to the traits files we can't manage easy and certain conclusions, but with enough observations piled together we might spot a pattern.

What makes a governor get good job related traits? What makes a governor get bad job related traits?

My own experience, playing a VH campaign with the English and a H campaign with Venice, neither gone past 38 turns and both in progress at the same time depending on what I feel like playing with:

Tax level/trait gain in cities doesn't work as it did in RTW. I've had all my cities on very high taxes since turn 1, save for the odd turn or two where an individual city dropped to a lower tax level due to enemy spy activity causing unhappiness. All of my governors now have the equivalent of the old "useless assessor" family, giving them tax penalties. I have no one with tax income bonuses. I would hope that governors in castles are immune to tax traits given by tax levels – castle taxes can’t be altered.

I've also got plenty of governors with penalties on trade income, despite setting up thriving trade networks and building trade enhancing buildings very quickly. I do have one chap in my Venetian game with a trait which gives 10% bonus to trade; he's been doing the same thing as all my bad trade governors, and sitting in his city as I build the necessary stuff to have a decent economy.

So far I have no farm related traits or ancillaries, despite covering my lands in farms ASAP.

I have not found any buildings which appear to have an educational effect. I expect universities and the like will; they are late game and I'd hope there will be buildings which can influence governors for the better early on in the game. It'd be nice if churches had this sort of effect, after all churches were a main source of education in the period.

Pagan magicians are very common ancillaries. I get them even when I have level 1 churches. Level 2 churches seem to make them less common … or that could be because only my youngest characters haven’t got them.

If you build a brothel you have a very high chance of getting the adulteress ancillary. In the 3(?) turns it takes to build the next level building (inn) all my governors in cities with brothels picked up an adulteress. Annoying. It appears it may be best to evacuate the city while the inn is constructed - I'm hoping the inn doesn't dump adulteresses on your governors, since the description describes a reputable inn, not a brothel in disguise.

Still being in the stage where I’m spending my money as fast as I can get it, I haven’t built up a large treasury and so can’t give any observations as to the effects of that on governors.

Hmm, I actually tend to follow my own way of making good governors, which is NOT to place them in cities....
A bit contradictory you think? I tend to do lots of battles with all my generals, which seem to raise their stats considerably, a crusade does wonders as well.

The point is everytime I put one of those generals in a city they start turning to the dark side. Traits like mean ruler, useless tax assessor, bad farmer and a lot of foreign fruitcakes and adultresses pop up immediately.
I don't know what causes this, but maybe we should only put them in cities that don't have brothels.

Yep, been having similar experiences with my cities on High tax. Anyone tried putting them on Normal? Maybe that's the "sweet spot" in M2. Or maybe it's just bugged or screwey, as a bunch of the traits seem to be. Not a single good governor! And not only do they suck at raking in the cash, they cause a lot of unrest with a lot of negative effects on public order for various reasons. Hope this stuff gets figured out soon.

Generals seem to acquire good traits from being in the field, fighting battles, in the case of your faction leader recruiting agents, etc. While in settlements they acquire useful retinue members and negative traits.

This is however subject to a disclaimer that it has not been carefully tested and is based on purely anecdotal evidence.