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).

[Camp Freddie]

Yeah, I've noticed this. It's completely wierd.

In testing my scarface fix, I used only one trigger, which gave a 100% chance of getting 1 scarred level when the general was injured.
It worked fine (i.e. it only awarded scarred when the general was hurt in battle), but the general got 3 battlescarred points (Horribly Scarred) in one go!

The general also got 4 points of goodattacker (Superior Attacker), when he should have got a max of 2 for a crushing victory.

With the increased numbers of barbarians, all my generals are rapidly becoming legendary!

[Jambo]

Ah, hi Freddie, I've just responded to your other thread in the twcenter with this stuff! :lol:

I'm going to try out your new coward trait suggestion and I've also modded the heroic saviour ancillary too.

Since you're more than able with traits and their files, would you perform some of these tests and see if you can replicate and prove whether some of the trait awards are being doubled? It's obviously easier to test the traits that we ourselves can control and have a 100% chance of being awarded, e.g. the combat traits.

Cheers

[Droplede]

On the scarring issue: It seems the double test there comes in the test for Roman Hero.

Trigger battle1R
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition GeneralHPLostRatioinBattle < 0.7
and CultureType roman

Affects BattleScarred 1 Chance 30
Affects RomanHero 1 Chance 15

For me, I've just taken the BattleScarred line out of this trigger test. That way the system only looks for it in the first battlescarred test, just once a fight -- or it should, anyway.

Thoughts?

[Sinner]

I was already considering that, Droplede - hence '...possible to get 2 points per battle for a Roman ...' - but that still doesn't account for all the points that people see occuring. With both post battle triggers, a Roman should get at most 2 points in BattleScarred per battle, but it appears that sometimes 3 or 4 are being gain, with the apparent cause being that triggers are being checked twice.

[Paul Peru]

Traits and stars are indeed being handed out generously in vanilla 1.2

My Carthaginian generals were all-scars all-stars, and my current Seleucids are routinely getting 2 stars per victory (+ a couple of decorated item-carrying saviours and sugar on the top) or none at all.
I like the heroic saviours, though. I imagine that when the general gets up in the morning, he greets that particular ancillary with a casual "Mornin', saviour!"

I guess a Trivium Chocolate Chip Pack will fix this, if it hasn't already.