The trait system is really beginning to grate on my nerves!

[Excalibur Bane]

I've about had my fill of these useless fools that fancy themselves my generals and governors. Their all wildly extragant and incomptent in management and command utterly.

I don't understand how they can all end up like this. What the hell am I building all the Academies for? I thought they were supposed to train better people. It doesn't seem to help at all.

I'm currently playing as the ERE on normal/normal and I don't have a single useful general or governor save my faction leader. One of them is so terrible, I had to remove him from the town because he was causing more damage then good. He's camping in a little fort in the middle of Sassind land. Hopefully they'll put him out of my misery before he dies of old age. Ugh. What's the deal with this? How do I generate decent characters?

For example, I managed to crush 3,000 Huns that were laying siege to one of my towns with just a general and about 700 men. He didn't gain anything from the battle at all. That doesn't make sense. Command experience should be gained not only by the number of battles, but by the quantity of enemies faced. That should have at least gained him a star or two!

Someone help me out here and tell me the secret to nurturing good generals and governors, please before I go insane.

[econ21]

Yes, I was playing a game recently and ended up shunting out my generals from towns, they had become so atrocious.

From what I've gathered, setting taxes high can be best for traits and also not having more than 50,000 in gold. I suspect keeping them in the field rather than governing also reduces the risk of bad traits. But I tend to have one or two that are field generals and just hope for the best with the rest.

[Excalibur Bane]

I wish someone would just make a mod to strip out all the bad traits. It'd be so much more pleasant to play. Sadly, I have about 100,000 denarii or so I think. I just haven't had much to spend it on.

[Severous]

Govenors should move out of their city each turn and back in again. Provided they have spent some movement points they wont trigger some of the bad trait checks the computer does each turn.

Exception is in the turn the city is going to complete a building. Now you want the governor to remain stilll and have a very high tax rate. This will gnerate various positive trait checks. I will allow my city to riot (removing most troops to avoid damage) in order to achieve the high tax element of a building completion turn.

Spend that money. Who is fighting an enemy of yours ? Do they need any money ? Gift it to them, buy maps from them. Or use the money to bribe enemies that your field armies cannot deal with easily.

(these are RTW V1.5 tips...think they apply to other versions)

Good luck

[Papewaio]

Ships/Troops are a good way to use money or you can use diplomats and give money away.

[Celt Centurion]

I wish someone would just make a mod to strip out all the bad traits. It'd be so much more pleasant to play. Sadly, I have about 100,000 denarii or so I think. I just haven't had much to spend it on.

Yeah, and the riots too. I've taken Artaxarta 3 times just tonight, and the people are rioting so badly that they kill more of my soldiers than they have got people! So there I am with an Army of just under 1700, and the next turn each infantry unit is reduced by about 15 men, and cavalry by about 8. What I wound up doing is destroyed all of the buildings, and withdrew my Army to Kotais to retrain them.

I've noticed that on average, I lose a lot more soldiers to rioting than I do to combat. Same with buildings. The idiots rioting damage more than any besieging army.

I put forth an idea about a year ago, for these riots that go nonstop for 3-4 turns, be able to go into "Battle Map" mode, cruise around the city, and where we find the rioters, "kill them all." Surely this would save a lot of buildings being damaged, and would prevent revolts by getting rid of the people committing them.

One thing I could not understand was in the last revolt I had in Artaxarta. The town population was only 420 just before I was thrown out. They then had an army of 1300 or so when I re-besieged it. When I took it back, they had 520 citizens, 120 of which I exterminated. The place is more trouble than it's worth. I'll probably continue to besiege and exterminate it until I win, although it's hardly worth the effort. I'd expected it to revolt and have the light blue Sassanid color, but thus far, it has been coming up as ERE Rebels.

Somehow, all of my enemies except the Rebels and ERE Rebels have achieved a Neutral status with me, but I don't remember accepting any cease fire.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[x-dANGEr]

Get a high influence general around, along with an enough garrison to take the full bonus, make sure it is under Sass' religion, and make temples your first priority with taxes set to low.

[Cras]

be careful guys,... you might have enemy spies in your cities that make also has a big effect on your cities hapiness!

[Quillan]

The bad manager traits come from having excessive treasury. That will be checked every turn for a governor, with one check each at 50K, 100K, and 150K in the treasury. That number includes the income you just got, so if the end turn processing puts you over the top, your governors check. I don't recall whether or not that particular one happens only if they have full movement points or not. If you have 150K or more, it'll check 3 times a turn for every governor, so your management goes in the crapper pretty quickly.

The bad taxman traits come from having a tax rate other than Very High and still having 105 or greater public order. I don't know how often that checks, it might only be when a building is completed, but I haven't dug into the files to see.

[lars573]

Hmm, looks like I'll be trying that very high taxes thing. Also if you wanted to mod the bad manager traits it would be better to make the checks happen at say every 100,000 to 300k or 250k to 750k or at 1 million to 3 million.

[Kralizec]

I know Malrubius made a trait mod for 1.2, sadly that's not going to help you. There might be some other trait mods for 1.6, a good place to search would be the Forge.

[gardibolt]

The original poster said he's playing ERE, which means he's playing BI. The threshold for negative traits coming is was dropped in BI, I think to 12,000d. Since he said he has a 100,000d treasury, it's no wonder his family is full of fools, drunkards and dotards. You can't have that kind of treasury in BI and expect to have any usable family members. I just finished an ERE game, and all of my family was good Romans, each and every one of them. I almost never finished a turn with more than 1000d in the bank. It's too late for this game, but try the ERE again following that rule and see if your family doesn't prove to be better behaved and less like the scions of a wealthy family.

[orangat]

I've about had my fill of these useless fools that fancy themselves my generals and governors. Their all wildly extragant and incomptent in management and command utterly.

I don't understand how they can all end up like this. What the hell am I building all the Academies for? I thought they were supposed to train better people. It doesn't seem to help at all.
................

Academies are overrated. In vanilla RTW, the probability of an academy improving traits is miniscule.

The main problem with bad traits developing is generals/governers sitting idly during turns. Every idle turn has a small chance of them developing bad traits whether they are in a city or in the field. You can either accept it as an inevitable consequence of managing a big empire (hence realistic) or mod the traits file.

And there is a whole guide explaining traits on this website.

[econ21]

Academies are overrated. In vanilla RTW, the probability of an academy improving traits is miniscule.

But the benefit of academies is farming ancillaries, rather than fostering traits. A chirurgeon (sp?) alone is worth building an academy for, IMO.

[orangat]

But the benefit of academies is farming ancillaries, rather than fostering traits. A chirurgeon (sp?) alone is worth building an academy for, IMO.

What does chirurgeon (sp?) do - BI or RTW vanilla?

[Excalibur Bane]

Well, the game is actually starting to turn around. I've isolated at least one good general. He's about 6 stars I think now. I managed to take my revenge out on the Sarmations for capturing Constantinople. They horded it awhile back, so I brought an army of heavy onagers forward to assault the city. He had around 3,000 men and instead of storming my onagers, they all huddled in the city. I brought forward my ten onagers, set them on fire at will, set them to use fire and watched the show. I have unlimited ammo on. The city ended up being their funeral pyre by the time I was finished, I sent in some infantry to mop up the survivors when the battle time limit was close to expiring. Very satisfying and a whole lot of fun :)

Where is the guide on editing traits here on the site? I'd like to modify them without wiping all of them out.

[Slug For A Butt]

Personally, I think the bad traits system is a good counter to having too much money and too much opulance. When you are at a stage where you have too much money the game becomes too easy, this is a little bit of a leveller thats all.
Edit it out and you are just making the game easier still. Then, no doubt, you will be complaining that there is no challenge in the game.
There is a reason these things are in the game, just overcome them and win. Much more satisfaction dude.

EDIT: How the h*ll can anihilating a city using ten onagers with unlimited ammo be satisfying? I think we are very different people, I prefer a challenge.

[Divine Wind]

What does chirurgeon (sp?) do - BI or RTW vanilla?

Its in both i think.

It either increases the likelihood of you having children or increases the revival rate of troops after a battle. Cant remember which.

[SpencerH]

The trait system was a good first try by CA but it fell a bit short. Look to player1's bug fixer to correct some of the more bizarre errors.

[Dt3r]

(Chirurgeon) either increases the likelihood of you having children or increases the revival rate of troops after a battle. Cant remember which.

It's the second one. I don't remember, but it may have had a morale effect too.