Traits that are bugged in 1.2 with fixes. Part 1: Scarred, Farmer, Trader

[hrvojej]

I really do hate the way this is currently working; my people are getting the same few repetitive vices over and over, and quite harmful ones too. I am actually far more bothered about the harm this does to the immersion factor provided by the otherwise excellent trait system; having so many people with the same few traits harms the feeling of individual characters, it reduces them to clones.

The problem mostly lies in the fact that it takes several (as in 8 or even 24) instances of triggers to get the good trait up one level, whereas it usually takes way fewer (read: a single one) instances to get one level of the corresponding bad trait. Or the triggers are set up in such a way that it's hard to avoid the annoying VnVs. That's why the game gets this punishing feeling, even if it appears that you're doing everything right.

For example, you'll always get useless assessors for having taxes lower than high. Simply, the trigger is set that if loyalty is greater than disillusioned (the blue face, i.e. 75-80%) and taxes are less than high, you have a chance to get badtaxman vice. You'll never be able to get goodtaxman virtue with the setup you described above (taxes on medium) since you have to have blue face loyalty and very high taxes, and not only that but also you'll never be able to counter the badtaxman progression (it's like a + - scale, one point in positive direction decreases the badtaxman). Another example is goodfarmer vs. badfarmer, where you need to build 6 farm buildings to get the first level of goodfarmer, whereas only a single non-farm building will net you a level in badfarmer. Although each farm building increase the goodfarmer with a 100% probability and the probability of getting a badfarmer from building anything else is 8%, I find that I'm way more likely to build "anything else" despite the apparently low probability than to build 6 farms under the same governor - and hence all the poor farmers out there.
Since I find this imbalance detrimental to my gaming experience, I have modified both the triggers and the thresholds for certain vices (farmer, trader, taxman...) to at least neutralize the effects you were talking about. In other words, it's not just the triggers IMO: you would have to build *24* bleeping farm buildings under the same governor to get the third level of goodfarmer virtue!! I'm tempted to say that most governors don't live that long, not even in 1.2. Of course, that's assuming you never build anything other than farms... or that you always pass the badfarmer check. Naturally, it only takes 3 failed checks (if you haven't build any farms and hence have no positive increase) to get the third level of badfarmer...

Sorry, a bit long and a bit of a rant, but you hit the nail on the head with one of the biggest things that (used to) bother me with the strategic map.

edit:
And from reading the posts after yours I see that I'm not the only one in this feeling. Sorry for the repeats, folks, I went straight to writing without reading on.

[Hambut_bulge]

Self-perpetuating triggers? Now that's a good idea!

I'm not so sure that the issues surrounding the badtaxman traits are necessarily broken though. Remember this is ancient Rome, not a modern democracy. Tax was all about squeezing as much cash as possible out of the newly conquered. Tom Holland touches on the subject in his book Rubicon. I don't have it in front of me right now, but from what I recall his argument was that the Western civilisations originally didn't bother with regular taxation. Why go to all that bother when you could simply beat up your neighbours and take everything they had? Eastern empires, being much larger, had developed the necessary adminstration skills to levy regular taxes. Then, so Holland's argument runs, the Romans acquired Pergamum and everything changed. Now the Romans (particularly in the days of the Republic), if they got hold of a city that had a smoothly functioning administrative service tended to leave that service intact. Pergamum, being a relic of an old Eastern empire had the neccessaries to levy regular taxation on its subjects. And the Romans suddenly realised what an easy, and lucrative, task it actually was.

So in that light, the game is actually correct in punishing those generals who keep taxes too low. What I don't get though is why the tax farmer ancillary pops up if you go down the badtaxman trait tree. Tax farmers were sub-contractors used by Roman governors to increase tax revenues. So I would've thought they should be on the goodtaxman tree

[Pode]

If you had total authority over a city and found that you were no good at taxing, wouldn't you delegate the task to someone who was? I think the tax farmer ancillairy belongs on the bad taxer side.

On the larger issue, is there an agreed upon set of triggers for the farmer and trader traits that doesn't depend on the advisor? I've found her to be more like a trophy wife than an advisor: pretty to look at until she opens her mouth. The woman is utterly daft, and I don't want anything important like economic traits left in her clueless hands.

[Kraxis]

I'm with Jambo. Upping the chance of GoodFarmer (lower threshold) and lower the one for BadFarmer is the way I have followed. Now with the perpetuating trait I have gone a little back towards vanilla but it is much altered still.

[Kraxis]

Damn! Just noticed another badly made traittrigger. Look up the risky battles and you will notice that the battles that are supposed to be won = clear are in fact set to be = crushing. That means that every time you win a crushing victory that is risky you gain no less than 3 points in whatever risky-type you fought. But if you won a clear victory you gained nothing. That is unmodded. Personally I have modded crushing to grant only 1 point but give a 25% chance of skilladvance.

[Bob the Insane]

I think I am in need of a clearer explaination of what the problem is here...

I have been running tests with slightly modified export_descr_ancillaries.txt and export_descr_character_traits.txt files. I have modded them simple to set the chance values to 100 (or in the case of comingofage, marriage and adoption test I have set chance to 1). In export_descr_character_traits.txt I have also modded the trait threshold to be single point steps...

Concentrating on the farmer and Trader triggers the logic appears to be:

1. Build a farm build and get a GoodFarmer point (but you also get a BadTrader point)

2. Build a trade building and get a GoodTrader point (but also get a BadFarmer point)

3. Build a road or a port and you get a GoodTrader point and a BadFarmer point.

4. Build anything else and you get both a BadTrader and a BadFarmer point.

Before arguing whether this is right, is it what everyone else expects with the default trigger setup?

[Sinner]

Yup, with the default triggers amended to have a 100% chance to acquire traits if the conditions are otherwise met, that's what I'd expect.

[gregab25]

Yes, Bob. That is how it seems to work with the default triggers.

I spent some time today looking for a solution withot having to change the default threshold values. But I couldn't find one.

Without knowing more about all of the information that is returned from the "SettlementBuildingFinished" and "Farms" queries, I dont think any of us can get it working as CA intended.

To me the Farmer and Trader traits are broken unless CA intended for a governor to not be able to receive these traits without moving your governor from town to town solely building farms and then removing the governor when you build every single other building in the game.

As a player, i have reached my own threshold, and have received "frustration" level 1. This bug kinda ruins the game for me. It whispers to me in the back of my mind when i'm trying to play saying that i'm not actually playing the game. Just some sort of half game.

Anyways If I play anymore with 1.2, I will probably just disable the farmer and trader traits altoghter. Which, when i think about it, doesn't make me any happier really.

I wish CA would fix this stuff.

[tai4ji2x]

As a player, i have reached my own threshold, and have received "frustration" level 1. This bug kinda ruins the game for me. It whispers to me in the back of my mind when i'm trying to play saying that i'm not actually playing the game. Just some sort of half game.

lol, gregab. me too... me too...

"apologists" for CA (somewhat harsh term, i concede) rationalize that just as a good chess player will play with missing pieces or other handicaps against a lesser player, so too must an RTW player do all she/he can to avoid exploiting the AI. i'm fine with that IN THEORY... the problem is, here it's like you're constantly having to add new restrictions and limits on yourself as you realize your opponent is even worse than originally claimed. sometimes you even see that the opponent doesn't even know certain rules or inadvertently breaks them on a consistent basis since it doesn't know any better.

[hrvojej]

To me the Farmer and Trader traits are broken unless CA intended for a governor to not be able to receive these traits without moving your governor from town to town solely building farms and then removing the governor when you build every single other building in the game.

I'm pretty sure that's how they're supposed to work. For example, tell me how many high-star generals in MTW did you have that were also *not* inbred unhinged loons? I think that the rationale behind it is that otherwise it would be too easy.

The simple solution is to just lower the positive trait thresholds, or make the triggers give you more points for the good traits.