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

[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.

[Simetrical]

seems like your sentence got cut off?

Yes, because vB 3 is moronically paranoid about less-than signs. The paragraph now reads "gregab25 therefore thought that the ≺= operator was bugged, so he changed it to NOT >. Unfortunately, this made every non-farm building increase his traits, tricking him into thinking that his interpretation of EDCT.txt was right."

Simetrical what did you do? And what was the effect?

I just modded the basic EDCT.txt to have a threshold of 1 for GoodFarmer, then I built a farm building and a non-farm building with different governors. The governor who built a farm building got a point of GoodFarmer, and the one who didn't didn't. This proved that the intuitive reading of SettlementBuildingFinished (that it returned the name of the building constructed) was the correct one. If gregab25 had been right, and SettlementBuildingFinished had just returned the level number of the building constructed, the non-farm building should have given my general a point of GoodFarmer (since its level was equal to the level of farms in the settlement).

Okay, after Simetrical's good, albiet immature, post . . .

Okay, I may have been a bit on the gloating side.

However, in the default setting if you desire to become a good farmer or trader you will want to build all other buildings before the farm or trade buildings.

No. In the default settings, building any farm would give you +1 GoodFarmer, and building any other building might give you +1 BadFarmer. The GoodFarmer trigger doesn't care about which non-farm buildings you've built, and the BadFarmer trigger doesn't care about which farm buildings you've built.

Would someone please look into or explain why reversing the > = to a < = sign in the triggers does not reverse the results in game?

Depends on which sign you're thinking of. If you change "SettlementBuildingFinished >= farms" to "SettlementBuildingFinished ≺= farms", then you'll see no difference at the level "farms" (Land Clearance), since both settings trigger off "= farms". The latter shouldn't trigger on any higher levels of farm, however. Did you observe differently in your tests?

Easiest way is to see it for yourself. It will take less than 5 minutes. Simply set the thresholds for farming to 1, 2, and 3. Then go into the game and build various buildings and look at the results.

This is what i just did with the default triggers, and I was receiving the traits by building all the non farm and trade buildings first.

I suspect your EDCT.txt may have some lingering changes from your earlier modding which are throwing off the results. What's your full trigger for GoodFarmer?

I guess what this saying then is that as long as you have the basic farms in place, it will award you GoodFarmer each time you build another building?

No. I'm not sure that's implementable, actually. You'd have to compare the level of the finished structure to the level of existing farms, and I'm not sure that's possible.

I saw someone say 'good farmer' has a 100% chance if you build [something, a farm most likely].

Close, but one important mistake. If you build a farm, you have a 100% chance of getting one point in GoodFarmer. The threshold for "Grower" is six, so your governor has to finish six farms to get it that way. In other words, it's exceedingly unlikely that you got any GoodFarmer trait from building farms. You probably got them from temples of farming (Ceres, Freyja and the like).

Bad farmer I get on almost every single governor within 10 turns of their appointment.

Another problem with the thresholds. You have an 8% chance of getting BadFarmer every time you build a non-farm building—but the threshold of BadFarmer is only one, as opposed to GoodFarmer's six. The thresholds need to be modded to something reasonable, preferably symmetrical.

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.

I'm pretty sure we understand those queries. "SettlementBuildingFinished" returns the name of the building that was just finished, and "farms" is just a building name. The comparison sign checks the relationship between the finished building and the named building: if they're in the same build tree, their level is compared, and the condition returns true iff the relation is true; if they're not in the same build tree, the condition returns false. I think we have ample evidence to support this interpretation, and nothing seems to contradict it.

-Simetrical

[Pode]

I'd like to look at the vanilla expected trait levels for farming. A 16 yr-old governor who dies at 66 governs for 100 turns, which I like 'cause it keeps the maths easy for me. During that time he can build no more than 5 farms max, right? 5 points of good farmer total.

How many other buildings can he build in that time? It takes 14 turns to build the governors houses, and 15 to build the farms, so he has 71 turns left in which to possibly get bad farmer traits. Anybody know off hand how many buildings he can build in that time frame, max? Until someone posts that number and makes a fool of me, let's assume the average building takes 3 turns, which makes for 27 buildings. 8% of 27 (so much for easy math) is 2.16 levels of bad farmer.

Net: ~2.8 levels of good farmer, from a life spent neutral on the farm subject. I would conclude from this that the threshold for grower should be no less than 3. Considering that the temple of farming adds 6 points every 10 turns on average, he who honors the farm gods gets 60 points of good farmer from that. Thus the threshold for Agriculturalist should not be greater than 62, and probably less.

I conclude from this that good farmer was intended to be a trait that only those with farming temples acquired, and everyone else washed out even in the long haul. I think 3, 18, and 36, would make good thresholds. Someone who builds farms first has a shot at getting grower for a while, even if he will eventually lose it for failing to honor the farm gods properly (which plays for me since he's not the onee actually DOING the farming). A man who is dilligent about farming and is seen to worship the farm gods, otoh, gets grower within his first 2.5 to 5 years, then after 15 years he gets level two, and after 30 years as a farmer, he spends the remaining 20 years renowned as an agriculuralist.

[Sinner]

I'd like to look at the vanilla expected trait levels for farming. A 16 yr-old governor who dies at 66 governs for 100 turns, which I like 'cause it keeps the maths easy for me. During that time he can build no more than 5 farms max, right? 5 points of good farmer total.

He's limited to 5 farms if he stays in the same settlement for his entire life, but how many governors do this? With few exceptions I leave a governor in a city while it's growing or to help deal with unrest, then once the city is established and/or remains loyal with just a garrison I move my governor on to the next settlement or out into the field to lead an army.

...I conclude from this that good farmer was intended to be a trait that only those with farming temples acquired, and everyone else washed out even in the long haul. I think 3, 18, and 36, would make good thresholds. Someone who builds farms first has a shot at getting grower for a while, even if he will eventually lose it for failing to honor the farm gods properly (which plays for me since he's not the onee actually DOING the farming). A man who is dilligent about farming and is seen to worship the farm gods, otoh, gets grower within his first 2.5 to 5 years, then after 15 years he gets level two, and after 30 years as a farmer, he spends the remaining 20 years renowned as an agriculuralist.

Nice reasoning and solution for GoodFarmer, providing some reward for the average governor while still keeping the trait a relatively rare and thus precious virtue to possess, which seems to have been CA's intention.

[therother]

I've opened up a Ludus Magna thread to research trait bug fixes of the type discussed here. I'd greatly appreciate it if those who have devised fixes could post (or in some cases repost) them over there, so that we can have them all in an uncluttered thread.

Thanks.

[Bob the Insane]

To continue Pode's discussion I we should discuss what we want to get out of the Goodfarmer and Goodtrader traits (and their opposites) and who should get them and for what reason...

I also like the concept that the dizzing heights of these traits are reservered for those governors that not only build loads of farms/trade buildings but also builds the farmer/trade temples...

Is it really only a change of the threshold values that is required to achieve this?

One thought I have been considering is a check to see if the the farm or trade build had been built before any other building of the same tech level (looking for which building ware upgraded first). And handing out GoodFarmer or GoodTrader points if those are first... Though thinking about it having Godfarmer and Goodtrader points gained simply by building the coorect building should be pretty easy to balance out with the threshold values.

And for handing out BadFarmer and BadTrader point a check to see whether those building had been upgraded as far as possible before the settlement itself is upgraded... So if you had a large town and a sufficient population to upgrade to a city, if you had not maxed out your farm and or trade buildings before upgrading the settlement you would get poorfarmer and/or poortrader points... This would make the slide into those traits much slower..

[tai4ji2x]

probably got them from temples of farming (Ceres, Freyja and the like).

those are fertility temples, i believe. not farming.