Possible issue with VnVs (points being awarded in duplicate)

[Jambo]

Ok, I don't know if any of you have noticed, but sometimes it seems all too likely to progress up the trait levels quickly, so I did a test.

My fresh Julii general on the campaign successfully defended a battle against an equally strengthed Brutii army (I've been outlawed). When it came to my next turn, I looked at the traits awarded parchment and noticed that my general had been awarded the Confident Commander (+1) AND the Good Commander (+2) trait. It should require 2 points to reach the second level of this trait and from looking at the triggers only 1 point should be being received!

I have also had a general go from fresh to Superior Defender in one go. That normally would require 4 points to reach the Superior threshold. Again, I looked at the trigger and the trigger is supposed to award only 2 towards the Good Defender trait. Again this appears to be doubled.

So far I haven't found out whether this is for all traits, and it's conceivable that it would be, but it is certainly there for (all?) the combat traits.

More testing needed to done to verify.

[The Stranger]

what are you talkin about

[Jambo]

heh, sorry.

Basically, that the rate at which traits are being awarded appears to be doubled, i.e. a victory with a fresh general will raise a him straight to GoodCommander (+2 Command) rather than ConfidentCommander (+1).

If you've had a look at the export_descr_character_traits file you'll notice that victories should be only awarding a single point to the GoodCommander trait, and as explained above, this doesn't appear to be the case.

What I was saying is that this could also be the case for a lot more than just the combat traits (GoodCommander, GoodAttacker, GoodDefender, GoodSiege Defender, etc); only I haven't tested them yet.

If this IS the case, then we're looking at having to double all the threshold values to achieve what things used to be like in 1.1.

[Sinner]

EU, he's talking about a possible bug in the awarding of vice & virtue points.

From your question, I'll make an assumption you're not familiar with how the VnVs are awarded and attempt to roughly explain...

Each vice/virtue has one or more levels - eg. Sane has only one level, while GoodCommander has five - with each level being awarded once a certain amount of points have been accumulated, eg. it takes 1 point to get Confident Commander the first level of GoodCommander, 2 points to get Good Commander, 4 points to get Superior Commander, 8 points to get Great Commander & 16 points to get Legendary Commander, the fifth and final level of the GoodCommander trait (Note: these are v1.1 figures, not sure if they changed in v1.2).

Each vice/trait will have one or more triggers, events that can cause a character to gain point(s) providing certain conditions are met, with an element of random chance.

A typical simple trigger to gain GoodCommander (again under v1.1) is as follows...

Trigger V0090_Standard_Battle_Any_Victory_VnV_Trigger
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition IsGeneral
and WonBattle

Affects GoodCommander 1 Chance 100

The trigger event occurs after a battle (WhenToTest PostBattle), only effects the character commanding the army (Condition IsGeneral) - so will not effect any additional characters in the army - and will only occur if the battle was a victory (and WonBattle). If those conditions are met then there is a 100% chance (Chance 100) that the character will earn 1 point towards his GoodCommander trait (GoodCommander 1).

A character doesn't have to gain all the points to go up by one level with a single event, instead they are accumulated over time. So a general with Superior Commander, requiring 4 points, would have to win 4 more battles to get to Great Commander, requiring 8 points, which he could do in a single turn if he can fight that many battles, or it could take 50 turns if he's rarely used in combat.

That's a quick & dirty guide, not taking into account opposing traits and other features, but hopefully it should make Jambo's concerns clearer.

[Jambo]

Thanks sinner for the basic run-down.

Those are indeed the values for 1.1 and 1.2. Doubling those threshold values is the most likely way to fix this anomaly in how traits are awarded, if indeed it is confirmed a bug by others. So far only myself and another working on the CVP at TWCenter have actually confirmed it.

[Sinner]

I've been thinking this morning about the 'scarface' issue & I think that it might also confirm this. I'm fairly certain that I've had a brand new general become Cruelly Scarred after just one battle. That level of BattleScarred requires 4 points and it's meant to be only possible to get 2 points per battle for a Roman (ignoring that the whole trigger appears to be bugged anyway) so that would match wih your findings.

[Jambo]

YEah, that would figure. From memory I think I've had the same occur to me too.

For the combat traits it's relatively easy to confirm as from the triggers the awarding of the traits can be tracked easily, e.g. 1 Chance 100 is a 100% that 1 point will be awarded. For the traits with lower chances (%) of being awarded, things are much more difficult to track. Although jumping the first two levels of any trait (assuming thresholds go up 1, 2, 4, 8) should be easy enough to spot for a naive general (i.e. level 0).