How can i avoid certain traits?

[unseen11]

Every time i seem to play, my governors always seem to get the useless assesor and bad farmer traits.

These two traits seem to be always popping up and i was wondering how i could avoid these?

[sapi]

I think bad harvests and low taxes/high corruption give those traits.

[therother]

All the character trait triggers are listed in the lower half of Rome/data/export_descr_character_traits.txt. There are also various trait guides in the Colosseum Forum Index.

A few notes on interpreting this file for Useless assessor - level 1 of the Bad Taxman trait line:

You can get it at birth (RandomBirth), and there is also a 10% chance of getting it when a Governor building is built/upgraded in a settlement and the following conditions are met:

Condition GovernorLoyaltyLevel > loyalty_disillusioned
and GovernorTaxLevel < tax_high

In other words, if your taxes aren't high, and your people are still quite happy (content and above), the game thinks you haven't been taxing hard enough, and there is a 1 in 10 chance the game will penalise your Governor for it.

Further offences will add more points to the trait, leading to Inefficient Taxman (-20% to tax) and finally Tax Farmer (-30%). However, GoodTaxman trait points will cancel BadTaxman points (GoodTaxman is the anti-trait), and there is not a NoGoingBackLevel which would fix the trait at a particular level.

Barbarian factions are excluded from both traits.

Many traits only work on certain circumstances, and building/upgrading a Government building is a common one used. If you do not want to risk the trait, either set the taxes to high, or remove the Governor from the settlement before the building is completed. Also, many traits require the Governor to have stayed in the settlement for the entire turn ("RemainingMPPercentage = 100"). So if you take him for a little trip around the countryside, he shouldn't get any of these particular traits, be they good or bad.

[unseen11]

Oh ok, thanks for clearing that up

So if i keep taxes at high and build a farming upgrade before upgrading governor houses ill be ok?

I still dont get why someone is all of a sudden a useless taxman just cause he leaves the taxes at normal, i mean sure maybe on low but normal?

[kendonosensei]

So if i keep taxes at high and build a farming upgrade before upgrading governor houses ill be ok?

Well some people are born or start with that characteristic. There isn't a lot you can do about it, sadly. As to building farm upgrades, I have no idea about that. I find those things can be a bit random.

If you ever get a priest of Bacchus or something that makes your general podgy, lazy, etc then don't build the health variety of temples. They aren't that great anyway.