Traits and Ancillaries Brainstorming and Suggestions Thread

[Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom]

What about retarted trait. They have 1 hitpoint and randomly run around on the battlefield and when you put them in your cities your income becomes negative 10000 and buildings are randomly destroyed. For the picture the general should be lke cross-eyed with his toungue out or somehting.

[Malrubius]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=125

Some good ideas. I like the language idea. Perhaps he will let you use it. Just a thought.

That mod started as a submod of the EB system, though they may be doing a complete reworking now, I'm not sure.

I think something should be done about the Gloomy trait line. If your general is has the pessimistic trait, it's pretty likely he'll end up with Melancholic. It just kills my generals influence. I haven't checked the threshold, but I think raising it a tad would be good.

I may add another level that has less severe penalties and do some more happiness triggers tied to buildings. That trait does seem a bit too common, and there should be some triggers to counteract it more.

How about an Architect trait that reduces building build times?

Not possible. We can reduce build costs. As for times, I found out something recently: you can drag and drop buildings in the queue to reorder them, so you can start a Type2 government building, and move roads or temples in front of it when you need one of them built fast. It will slow down your government building a few turns, but it can come in handy.

Any chance we could rename the Merc captain to xenologos (merc recruiter)?

Edit: Ah, good point Trithemius. This would only be for Greek factions, and perhaps you could use it for the Getai as well.

Yeah, we could do that, to have faction or culture-specific ancillaries like that. With Forgus working on the portraits, we've done this with a few of them. Equilibrium has gotten changes like these implemented.

I notice that the Romans have different status classes as their "ethnicities" (at least in the timeframe that my game is in), as well as picking up Optimate/Moderate/Populist traits.

I assume that, later on, Roman adoptees can start to pick up foreign ethnicities and so on - if not would this be something that could be made to happen?

Also, I am curious if the trait system could stand to have particular Families (gens) as traits as well? Or perhaps lesser traits that depend upon their social class?

For now, we don't have the ethnicities for the Romans. There has been discussion of adding some. I would guess Samnites or others might be possibilities.

We do have the Plebeian/Patrician split, as well as a later Senator/Equestrian split, and the 'political parties' you mentioned (Optimate, etc).

We had discussed using the epithet system to apply the gens, but didn't go with that system.

could there perhaps be an iron fist trait for older generals who have spent a very long time governing a city or with huge amounts of influence (obviously they would also need to be corrupt, have a position in government, selfish, possibly the presence of one of the despotic buildings like execution squares or gladiatorial arenas). They would be able to make lots of profit off of the city and avoid the suspicious eyes of those higher up thanks to bribery, making it unlikelyto be censured. obviously their methods of tax collecting and enforcing law would include torture, imprisonment, and "vanishing" political enemies. This might bring a law bonus at first, as well as decreased population growth (representing people being arrested/executed) but soon a second trait could arrive representing how tired the people get of such tyranny. this would cause severe unrest due to unnhappiness, less order due to law, and a decrease in personal security. Maybe their bodyguards might even become less loyal because they've been ordered to do comit too many crimes. it would be easy to look the other way as their leader is hacked to pieces. If possible you could make them likely to die earlier. it would be fun to see that they died from "natural causes" later on.

An interesting idea. With some good descriptions for each level, it would be a nice progression.

another suggestion, a general might lose some command/influence if they relied too much on mercenaries and not enough on native troops. as well there could be an "enjoys foreign culture" or "foreign wife" trait which might give them less influence and less command because his people no longer trust him. at least they would be less likely to get a powerful position in government. there could be a problem with determining what the culture of the general was, but maybe faction-specific buildings might effect this. ie: a roman who spends too much time in settlements with greek buildings might get the "wants to be greek" trait. When this general entered a roman settlement with a romans only building, he would get a trait such as "seen as a traitor" this would last only until he left and went to a city with a greek building, where it would cause the trait "feels right at home"

Tying this to buildings wouldn't work so well, because we can only detect the building level, not the faction or culture it belongs to.

I can tell when a general hires mercenaries, but not how much of a percentage they represent in his army.

The original game had a "foreign tastes" trait for romans (ForeignTasteRomanVice), but it was poorly implemented and didn't work. The CVP disabled it, but I re-enabled it for diplomats.

maybe you could also do this with schools and other cultural buildings. an intelligent general with the trait "philosophically inclined" might start to feel impatient in a city without an educational building. this could lead to all kinds of bad things like "sees others as inferior". The same could be done in reverse.

This would be possible.

oh, just one other thing could perhaps be an "idealist" who could try to take away things like gladiatorial fights or high taxes. If they did implement high taxes, they would be merciful and also work harder to benefit the people. eventually their reforms in the city could lead to population growth and incredible loyalty. they could crack down on corruption and get discounts. Also, the people would be willing to work and fight harder and/or for less pay, since this man was so kind. at the same time, their security might go down when the local aristocracy feels like they've been wronged. on the other hand the people would be so loyal that no one would be able to attack this general. Obviously they would be hard to bribe, and unlikely to be a good military leader, since their morals would contradict military action.

This would be the opposite of the iron fist trait above. These two have some similarities with the current Brutal and Lenient traits, and might represent offshoots of them.

[oudysseos]

I have a trait/ancillary suggestion- but I can't seem to open the .rar docs on the website so if I'm repeating something sorry in advance.

What I'm thinking is some sort of cultural conflict progression- traits like 'Religous Convert', 'Going Native', or 'Forgotten His Roots'. These are all probably negative traits, or maybe mixed- 'Going Native' could be minus influence but a plus on local management. Is there some way to assign traits to generals who have spent a long time away from the core homeland? That's what I'm getting at- generals and governors who are influenced by local culture, losing rep/influence back home but gaining something among the conquered locals. Shouldn't happen automatically though- think of Pausanias (old guard Mak no matter how long away) and Hephaistion (wearing Persian trousers).


Ancillaries to go along with this trait system could be 'Influential Priest' (I'm thinking Rasputin here, actually), 'Local Client'. The idea needs loads of work in the details.



A second one, independent of the above is a trait for Autobiographer/ Memoir Writer. Someone like Xenophon or Caesar should gain Influence from publishing their memoirs/analyses of recent campaigns. Again, sorry if you already have this.


Last question- is there any system in place/coming up to represent the Roman Patron/Client relationships. I dunno how that would work in game but the acquisition of clients was a major part of a Roman's auctoritas/dignitas. Pompey boasted that he had kings as clients, which he indeed did. I'm betting that you already have something on this.

[soibean]

I like your going native idea
maybe instead of losing influence, the general will "govern best the province" of that culture where he "goes native"
something like when a general gets a worshipper of whoever trait and it says they govern best where that god is worshipped

[oudysseos]

So I figured out how to view the traits/ancillaries spreadsheet. Very, very impressive.

I was thinking that expanding on the 'Eleusinian' trait model would be cool- there were other cults that were popular, especially later on in Rome; Isis, Osiris, Dionysus and later on Jesus. Don't know if that will offend anybody but the christians were seen by the Roman establishment as a kind of jewish cult.
The icing on this particular cake would be Divine Rights given to faction leaders. This could be a trait in two ways: if you had a particularly successful faction leader you could have him 'Worshipped as a God' with huge bonuses. And that trait could trigger a 'Cult of Augustus' (whoever) style trait in family members that come after him.
Perhaps 'Worshipped as a God' could have influence, public happiness and law bonuses but decrease loyalty in some generals (jealousy)?

[Bonny]

I don't know if it has been ask earlier, but is it possible to split the attuned gouvenor trait into four different traits, for each type of gouvernment (for each faction) (for each Province)?
For Example Macedon:
"Attuned Govenour" for Level 1, "Satrap" for Level 2, "Garrison Commander" for Level 3, and "Advisor of a Foreign State" for Level 4

[Foot]

I don't know if it has been ask earlier, but is it possible to split the attuned gouvenor trait into four different traits, for each type of gouvernment (for each faction) (for each Province)?
For Example Macedon:
"Attuned Govenour" for Level 1, "Satrap" for Level 2, "Garrison Commander" for Level 3, and "Advisor of a Foreign State" for Level 4

As far as I kniow the attuned governor trait only applies to the settlement the governor has been attuned to. As soon as he spends a turn outside the settlement he is attuned to he must re-attune himself, or attune himself to a different settlement. This is regardless of the settlement's gov type.

Foot

[orwell]

Could you give all the generals that are in settlements a huge tax increase when war is declared by another faction? This would be to simulate a war levy.

jebes, I don't know if that's possible. I'll have to look through the available events. I know you can tell if a faction is on a war footing. Maybe that would be good enough.

Its an interesting concept, but, aren't you generally always at war with another faction? So in effect this might be just raising the total amount of money you would make in the game. If a general moves into a city, for the next X amount of turns, maybe for a year, they recieve a large income bonus, though, theoritically you could just move them in and out as well. Did you mean only when a faction declares war for the first turn or so?

[Bonny]

As far as I kniow the attuned governor trait only applies to the settlement the governor has been attuned to. As soon as he spends a turn outside the settlement he is attuned to he must re-attune himself, or attune himself to a different settlement. This is regardless of the settlement's gov type.

Foot

Yes, this may be, but isn't it possible to have different kinds of this trait for each government building? (like the different relifious ones "worshipper of whatever temple is in the city")

[Malrubius]

Some ethnicities are actually better at governing different types of settlements (depending on the installed government type).

[Crac des Chevaliers]

I just got a few comments. First I would like to thank Malrubius for all the hard work, he has put into the traits system, which is really making a huge positive difference when playing the game.

My first problem is that it seems, I never get the good infantry leader trait any more. That is despite the fact that as the romans, I have won several clear and heroic victories with armies overwhelmingly consisting of infantry and with the same general. Maybe the triggers need a little tweaking.

Also it seems that a lot of my generals are becoming lovers of beauty and therefore suffers a loss of command stars. Since it is very hard to achieve command stars, (which I think make for an interesting challenge) I don’t think that a trait like lover of beauty should cost my generals command abilities, since war historically was a good way to achieve priceless artwork. I think it would be better if that trait contributes to unrest because the population might, rightly so, think that the general/governor cares more about beautiful things than there wellbeing and spend the taxes accordingly.

In my opinion the age related traits for generals could need a little more elaborating. These are of course just suggestions.

Youth: +2 hitpoints, +4 movementspoints, -1 management, -1 influence. This represent the energy, recklessness and good health as a young man making his way in the world, but without the experience and fame/connections still to come.

Adult: +1 hitpoints, +4 movementspoints, -1 management. Not quite as reckless, but still with energy and good health and beginning to build a reputation.

Fully grown: +1 hitpoints, +2 movementspoints, +1 command, +1 influence, +1 management. The leader at the top of his performance with a body still in good condition, and the experience and connections to really make a difference - especially on the battlefield.

Middle aged: +1 movementspoints, +1 command, +2 influence, +1 management. Still a very capable leader also on the battlefield with at lot of experience, and a man of standing, but with a body beginning to slow down.

Getting older: -2 movementspoints, +1 command, +2 influence, +2 management. A lot of power and connections through a long time of serving, and a mind still sharp, but the body no longer able to keep op.

Senior citizen: -4 movementspoints, -1 hitpoints, +2 influence, +2 management. The ordeal of the battlefield are now becoming too hard for mind and body, but a lifetime of experience still counts in other aspects of life.

Elderly: -5 movementspoints, -2 hitpoints, -1 command, +2 influnce, +1 management. The continuing decline of body and mind, but a man that have served his nation for a lifetime still has power through connections and friends.

Decrepit: -6 movementspoints, -3 hitpoints, -1 command, +1 influnce. The grave awaits and body and mind are close to dead themselves.

This is of course a crude generalization of how people evolves, but I think it will fit in nicely with the traits and how most people use their generals and for me it gives the game a bigger element of role-playing which keep it interesting.

I guess this is all for now.

[paullus]

I am certainly a big fan of the aging traits, but giving them too much weight could make them overly deterministic.