Traits and Ancillaries Frequently Asked Questions

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Hmm. That actually leads to an interesting situation though. You have to believe pretty strongly first of all before you can actually hate them I would suspect. So maybe "hates the gods" could trigger "pious" to turn to "formerly pious" or something.

[paullus]

Or alternately, you could have a really pious general who is also selfish and very successful start thinking he's a god. Give him the title "Theos" or a trait about believing he is a god. You could have some fun bonuses with that sucker. How's that for formerly pious? Even a following trait along the lines of "defiler of temples" or something.

[Malrubius]

In my Karthadast game, an enemy (Ptolmatic) general got the Pious and the Hates the Gods trait at the same time. I don't think that this should happen...

Hmm, somebody else reported this same thing (Jebus, maybe?) Pious and PublicAtheism are antitraits, so I don't understand how you can have both. It should be impossible to have both. I know that making changes to the traits file and reloading a saved game can cause all sorts of weird things to happen. It's also possible that the save file got corrupted. A final possibility is that RTW can't properly handle such large traits files.

Do you have a save from before this showed up, and one from after? Or a couple of before/after screenshots?

   Sweeeet. At the risk of getting flamed........any ballpark figure when well be seeing this?

I don't know and I couldn't even give a ballpark date. If I had my way, a small traits-only hotfix would have been released a month ago.

[Malrubius]

Q. I really want to dive into the traits and ancillaries and learn everything I can about them. What should I do?

A. The best way is to directly consult the relevant files: In your Data folder, they are export_descr_character_traits.txt and export_descr_ancillaries.txt. In the Data\text folder, they are export_VnVs.txt and export_ancillaries.txt.

If you'd like to take a bit easier approach, the compiled HTML documentation will be more user-friendly. Just download and extract one of the following files:

EB VnVs Docs (1.1MB Rar Archive)

EB VnVs Docs (1.5 MB Zipped)

Notes about HTML Documentation:
This documentation lists almost every trait, ancillary, and trigger, and is for someone who wants to dive deeply into the system, for purposes of understanding exactly what is going on, or for the purposes of modding. It consists of several sections, which are self-explanatory, for the most part.

- The Ancillaries page lists each ancillary and the effects for having that man, woman, or animal in your retinue.

- The Effects page lists the various attributes that can be affected by traits and ancillaries, and contains a description of their game effects, and links pointing to research on these attributes.

- The Cultures and Factions pages categorize and list the EB factions and what RTW engine names are used for these factions in the files.

- The Trait Relationships page is very useful. Each trait has two sections, "Condition" and "Affected". Under "Condition" is a list of triggers that have that trait as a condition somehow. Under "Affected" is a list of triggers that add points to that trait. You can click on the trigger name and will be taken to documentation on that trigger.

- The Traits page lists each trait and its effects.

- The Triggers page lists the details of the trigger, such as what level of trait is required in any conditions, and what the chance of affecting a trait is, and how many points towards next level will be awarded.