King's traits and attributes

[FactionHeir]

Hello,

A few questions about the traits and attributes of kings if you will:

- What determines which attribute is raised on your kings and how are those "inherited" by their heirs? I seem to notice that building churches raises their piety, but I can't seem to figure out how to raise their acumen rating or their dread rating without mass executions. Similarly, my heirs usually have similar attributes, but sometimes vastly different even without negative traits.

- What effects does the king's attributes and traits have on the realm as a whole? I seem to remember that while governors afects their provinces, kings affect all to a certain extent. So a high acumen king raises higher taxes than a low acumen king and a high piety king leads to higher happiness in religious provinces and lower happiness in different provinces. How about dread, influence, and command though? Dread didn't quite seem to affect happiness overall, although governor dread affects their provinces. command doesn't seem to do much either, and influence... factions seem just as unlikely/likely to ally/ceasefire/marry my faction on influence 4 compared to 9... Do any of these traits affect the traits of newly generated captains/generals?

- Many of my governors often end up with ridiculous traits the next turn after they are given a province. Like "religious leanings" "corrupt" "informal merchant" and the like which all reduce tax and trade and sometimes happiness. Some governors seem immune to those while others pick them up in multipacks. What is causing this to happen?


Thanks

[Jxrc]

- What determines which attribute is raised on your kings and how are those "inherited" by their heirs? I seem to notice that building churches raises their piety, but I can't seem to figure out how to raise their acumen rating or their dread rating without mass executions. Similarly, my heirs usually have similar attributes, but sometimes vastly different even without negative traits.

The stats (acumen, piety, command, dread) of your heirs are normally a reflection of the stats of their father with some kind of random adjustmnt. The higher the influence of your king, the better the odds that your heir will be equal or better than you king (an influence of seven is considered the safe minimum). Atfer the stats have been determined that way, one or two random V&V kick in so that the heir's stats are further modified. Note that there is something called the wrap-around bug that implies that if your kind has nine command start and if you have high influence you can end up with a 0 star heir cause you will have had a "good" draw that would raise the stat up to 10. Nine being the max, the computer considers that 10=0, 11=1, etc... This applies to all stats but this is more a pain in the neck when the command rating is involved. Regarding the random V&v that your heirs get, I have not seen any pattern that would lead me to believe that they are influence by the V&v of your king. The only exception is that when your king is a great warrior the is a better chance that your heir will have the same v&v.

- What effects does the king's attributes and traits have on the realm as a whole? I seem to remember that while governors afects their provinces, kings affect all to a certain extent. So a high acumen king raises higher taxes than a low acumen king and a high piety king leads to higher happiness in religious provinces and lower happiness in different provinces. How about dread, influence, and command though? Dread didn't quite seem to affect happiness overall, although governor dread affects their provinces. command doesn't seem to do much either, and influence... factions seem just as unlikely/likely to ally/ceasefire/marry my faction on influence 4 compared to 9... Do any of these traits affect the traits of newly generated captains/generals?

I do not think that the dread of you king has an impact on happiness. Influence increase the loyalty of your general (1 shield be point of influence). The stats of your king do influence the stats of newly generated captains/generals. If your king has four stars or more, it is quite likely that all elite units that you will produce will have between 1 and 3 stars. Likewise, if your king has high Piety or dread, the odds that your general will have a rather high score of the same stat are quite good (for instance if you start an early campaign as England, most of your general with have between 5-6 dread, same for piety if you start as Hungary). WOuld be tempted to say that the same is true with Acumen but in my last French campaign (king with nine acumen) I had a hard time finding enough four quills general to act as governors of my first 5 provinces.

-- Many of my governors often end up with ridiculous traits the next turn after they are given a province. Like "religious leanings" "corrupt" "informal merchant" and the like which all reduce tax and trade and sometimes happiness. Some governors seem immune to those while others pick them up in multipacks. What is causing this to happen??

Normally those V&v only appear once the size of your kingdom is significant (form the top of my head I would say 40 provinces but can be wrong). They are designed to reflect the increase corruption that is bound to cripple a large medieval empire. There is pretty much nothing you can do to avoid those. Some advocate trial for treason and adding spies in all your provinces to avoid it but I have never seen any proof that it actually works.

[Ironside]

A few comments on Jxrc's exellent cover.

Note that there is something called the wrap-around bug that implies that if your kind has nine command start and if you have high influence you can end up with a 0 star heir cause you will have had a "good" draw that would raise the stat up to 10. Nine being the max, the computer considers that 10=0, 11=1, etc... This applies to all stats but this is more a pain in the neck when the command rating is involved. Regarding the random V&v that your heirs get, I have not seen any pattern that would lead me to believe that they are influence by the V&v of your king. The only exception is that when your king is a great warrior the is a better chance that your heir will have the same v&v.

The wrap around bug seems to be only limited to command when it comes to heirs (while the piety one shows up with jihads/crusades), or have anyone seen it for dread, accuman and piety for heirs?

There's some v&v that goes in the family so to say, great warrior is one them (it simply means that it's random, but with higher odds). The rest is random.

I do not think that the dread of you king has an impact on happiness. Influence increase the loyalty of your general (1 shield be point of influence). The stats of your king do influence the stats of newly generated captains/generals. If your king has four stars or more, it is quite likely that all elite units that you will produce will have between 1 and 3 stars. Likewise, if your king has high Piety or dread, the odds that your general will have a rather high score of the same stat are quite good (for instance if you start an early campaign as England, most of your general with have between 5-6 dread, same for piety if you start as Hungary). WOuld be tempted to say that the same is true with Acumen but in my last French campaign (king with nine acumen) I had a hard time finding enough four quills general to act as governors of my first 5 provinces.

Are you sure that it's the stars and not influence (+stars)? I know I've seen the correlation as well, but I think it needed more than stars. Easy to test with a strong 0-star king (aka wrap around suffering) in any case.

I suspect the accuman is code limited to 4 on trained troops to keep it from going too high. Would give too much of an advantage otherwise I guess.

Edit: The only controlled way of increasing accumen without heavy pruning of the family tree is to survive assassin attemts. One of the 4 lines gives more accumen (one lowers it though).

[Jxrc]

Are you sure that it's the stars and not influence (+stars)? I know I've seen the correlation as well, but I think it needed more than stars. Easy to test with a strong 0-star king (aka wrap around suffering) in any case.

Pretty sure though I cannot say that I am 100% sure that influence is not a factor at all.

I would say that if your king has between 0 and 2 stars, all your new general will have 0 stars irrespective of your influence. Remember a few games when my idiot king stayed in the capital with 0-stars while his army smashed everything, influence with very high but no general with any stars (except historical heroes of course)

If your king has more than two, my experience is that you have a good chance (but you do not always get lucky) to see your new elite units come up with a one or two stars general. Perhaps the odds gets better if your influence is high ? Would make sense since it would be similar to what happens with heir ...

I suspect the accuman is code limited to 4 on trained troops to keep it from going too high. Would give too much of an advantage otherwise I guess.

You're most probably very right. Now that you mention it, my guess would be that the same would be true with command since I have never seen a general (except historical heroes of course) with more than four stars appear out of nowhere (even during the few happy campaigns when I had in nine stars king with max influence)

[FactionHeir]

Thanks for the detailed answers, much appreciated.

[Biggus Diccus]

- What determines which attribute is raised on your kings and how are those "inherited" by their heirs? I seem to notice that building churches raises their piety, but I can't seem to figure out how to raise their acumen rating or their dread rating without mass executions. Similarly, my heirs usually have similar attributes, but sometimes vastly different even without negative traits.

Just some additional comments to the above posts:

Dread is easy to increase for king/heir;
- just have him execute prisoners in battle twice and you got +2 dread right there.
- executing rebel prisoners after battle will give the king dread from the rebel suppression line of traits, but only if the province that had a rebellion has no governor. If there is a governor he will get it.
- one line of failed assasination traits increase dread as well.

Piety is also easy if you have access to crusades/jihads. Building churches and having king/heir stay in a high zeal province may help as well.

The only way to directly influence acumen is via failed assassination attempts. One line of traits give +2 acumen at the 3rd failed assassination. So if you want heirs with good acumen you need to have a high influence king and suicide the bad candidates, and you will see results in a few generations.

Command is easy as well; if you get a zero star heir this is quickly fixed somewhat by having him sucessfully lead 8 battles for 4 stars.

Having heirs with good allround stats is very useful because the starting influence your heir get when he is crowned is based upon the stats he have at the time (not counting byzantines who get a influence bonus). I have had heirs that got 8 influence to start with because they had excellent stats.

[FactionHeir]

The line giving acumen from assassination also reduces health though, right?

Any way of incluencing the argumentative and educated line of traits? Some generals seem to pick them up very quickly, others never.

[Biggus Diccus]

The line giving acumen from assassination also reduces health though, right?

This is correct, but not a big deal since you don't need you king to lead a lot of battles anyway. Let him have his chance to execute prisoners twice and then retire him to the capital.

Any way of incluencing the argumentative and educated line of traits? Some generals seem to pick them up very quickly, others never.

Pure luck I am afraid. Generals need to lead their stack to gain random traits though, but they can gain both positive and negative ones this way.

[FactionHeir]

Hmmm is it better to have him gain dread or gain happiness though? I remember releasing a few times giving -1 dread but +20 happiness.

[Biggus Diccus]

Province loyalty is rarely a problem imho. With a proper garrison, watchtower and town watch the loyalty should be good even with a ruler with -20 happiness. Drop a spy in the province as well and you are set.

[Martok]

To add/clarify a few things:

- What effects does the king's attributes and traits have on the realm as a whole? I seem to remember that while governors afects their provinces, kings affect all to a certain extent. So a high acumen king raises higher taxes than a low acumen king and a high piety king leads to higher happiness in religious provinces and lower happiness in different provinces. How about dread, influence, and command though? Dread didn't quite seem to affect happiness overall, although governor dread affects their provinces. command doesn't seem to do much either, and influence... factions seem just as unlikely/likely to ally/ceasefire/marry my faction on influence 4 compared to 9... Do any of these traits affect the traits of newly generated captains/generals?

Influence: Primarily useful for increasing the effectiveness of your faction's emissaries -- they'll have a better chance of successfully getting ceasefires, alliances, marraige proposals, etc. Your princes & generals tend to have better stats (especially Command) the higher your influence is. It also improves one's abilities to retain allies during a war (i.e., when you go to war with Faction X, a high influence rating increases the chance that Factions A, B, & C will remain allied to you instead of X). In addition, having high influence supposedly reduces the chance of civil war (which can happen if you're excommunicated, lose several provinces in the same year, and/or suffer a failed Crusade/Jihad), although I've not really noticed whether this is actually so.

Dread and Acumen: They both work similarly; a faction leader will increase his loyalty & income (respectively) in all his provinces by roughly 2% for each point of dread & acumen he possesses. So a king with 5 dread and 4 acumen will improve his empire's loyalty by around 10%, and its income by around 8%.

Command: Has no direct effect other than when your faction leader is commanding a battle himself. Heirs' command abilities may be somewhat affected by how many stars their father has, but Influence is still the larger factor in this regard. (Sorry to contradict you Jxrc, it's just that's been my own experience.)

- Many of my governors often end up with ridiculous traits the next turn after they are given a province. Like "religious leanings" "corrupt" "informal merchant" and the like which all reduce tax and trade and sometimes happiness. Some governors seem immune to those while others pick them up in multipacks. What is causing this to happen?

As Jxrc said, this is somewhat inevitable once your empire reaches a certain size (usually happens when I control around 1/3 of the map). There are two remedies you can try, however, which I've used with at least partial success:

1.) Keep your governors active. Governors that are involved in battles -- or even just moving around your provinces on the campaign map (in what I jokingly call the "Imperial tour") -- seem to be less likely to pick up Vices than governors that just sit in their provinces doing nothing.

2.) Keep your governors in a higher-ranking general's army stack. If a governor is under the command of another general (especially the faction leader), then he'll pick up traits far less often. This tactic tends to be a double-edged sword, however, as it means a governor probably won't pick any *good* traits either.

[Jxrc]

Influence: Primarily useful for increasing the effectiveness of your faction's emissaries -- they'll have a better chance of successfully getting ceasefires, alliances, marraige proposals, etc. Your princes & generals end to have better stats (especially Command) the higher your influence is. It also improves one's abilities to retain allies during a war (i.e., when you go to war with Faction X, a high influence rating increases the chance that Factions A, B, & C will remain allied to you instead of X).

That's correct but only to the extent that the IA factions do not view yours as too dominant. Once they do, a high influence is no longer an asset in that respect since the AI faction will basically gang up against you, every faction sharing a border with you starting a war at the earliest opportunity.

Command: Has no direct effect other than when your faction leader is commanding a battle himself. Heirs' command abilities may be somewhat affected by how many stars their father has, but Influence is still the larger factor in this regard. (Sorry to contradict you Jxrc, it's just that's been my own experience.)

You dare to challenge me !!!???

Just kidding of course (Can't remember the title of the film where that "You dare to challenge me" line comes from... but whatever)

Still think that I might be right on that one since I have never had a prince with more than one or two stars when my 9 influence king had zero. If anyone ever got a six or seven star prince out of an influencial zero star king, please let us know, it will prove that I was wrong on that point.

One fact that would suggest that I could be right is that in an early campaign when the second Byz emperor has 0 star due to the wrap around bug, the Byz are quite crippled cause, even though they keep that hard-coded high influence afterwards, all the subsequent heirs will have something like 2 or 3 stars at most so that it takes them about two or three generation to get back to their initial level and spam those jedi nine-stars princes.

[FactionHeir]

So Acumen actually increases happiness? I always thought only dread and piety did (and only the latter for leaders). Is it also true that (from my observations) having a low piety governor can be good if few people are of your religion and zeal is low as opposed to the contrary?



Great tips by the way

[Martok]

So Acumen actually increases happiness? I always thought only dread and piety did (and only the latter for leaders).

Gah! Sorry mate, I wasn't very clear in my post. You were correct before; acumen only increases income, *not* happiness. (I simply talked about acumen & dread in the same paragraph since they work the same way.)

Is it also true that (from my observations) having a low piety governor can be good if few people are of your religion and zeal is low as opposed to the contrary?

Yes, you're correct. If you own a province in which the majority of the people are a different religion than your own, then it's best to install a governor there who has little or no piety.

[Spongie]

Your princes & generals end to have better stats (especially Command) the higher your influence is.

Is there a time limit on this, or a handicap when you have more than a certain %age of the map? I have a large empire and usually manage to get my kings back up to high influence (despite the new one only having 3 or 4 when they take the throne... of the largest nation on the map... errrr...) but the princes I've been getting have been pretty awful.

But, as I said in another thread, I was in the habit of leaving my kings off the battlefield as they don't directly carry their hard-earned command stars over when they die of old age... after reading a few threads here I've been building up the current one a bit. Will see what happens in 30-odd years.....

[MJF]

does the king's influence affect the prince's traits when they are conceived or when they actually come of age.

e.g. if king has influence of 3 and his wife gives birth to a sone, but then during the next 16 years gains massive influence, say 9, which influence is used to roughly determine the prince's attributes?

[Martok]

Is there a time limit on this, or a handicap when you have more than a certain %age of the map? I have a large empire and usually manage to get my kings back up to high influence (despite the new one only having 3 or 4 when they take the throne... of the largest nation on the map... errrr...) but the princes I've been getting have been pretty awful.

There's no time limit, no. As for a handicap as you describe I suppose there could be one, but I've never noticed it if there is.

You may want to take those words with a grain or two of salt, however, as I often end my campaigns before getting that large. And in those campaigns where I do get that big, I'm often not paying that much attention -- so long as I have princes to continue the family line, I'm usually not terribly concerned about how good they are.

[Martok]

does the king's influence affect the prince's traits when they are conceived or when they actually come of age.

e.g. if king has influence of 3 and his wife gives birth to a sone, but then during the next 16 years gains massive influence, say 9, which influence is used to roughly determine the prince's attributes?

I *believe* it's the faction leader's influence when the prince comes of age that's the main determining factor, but don't quote on me on that. (caravel or macsen rufus might be better able to answer that question for you; they tend to have a better head for that sort of thing. )

[Biggus Diccus]

Command: Has no direct effect other than when your faction leader is commanding a battle himself. Heirs' command abilities may be somewhat affected by how many stars their father has, but Influence is still the larger factor in this regard. (Sorry to contradict you Jxrc, it's just that's been my own experience.)

I have to agree with Jxrc on this one. In my experience the king's command works just like the other attibutes when determining the quality of princes.

does the king's influence affect the prince's traits when they are conceived or when they actually come of age.

e.g. if king has influence of 3 and his wife gives birth to a sone, but then during the next 16 years gains massive influence, say 9, which influence is used to roughly determine the prince's attributes?

It is definitely the king's influence/attributes when the prince comes to age that determines how good your prince becomes. There is still a random factor involved with stat generation, but a influence of 8-9 your princes stats will almost certainly be better/as good as the king (not counting random v&v's here).

[Ironside]

does the king's influence affect the prince's traits when they are conceived or when they actually come of age.

e.g. if king has influence of 3 and his wife gives birth to a sone, but then during the next 16 years gains massive influence, say 9, which influence is used to roughly determine the prince's attributes?

v&v is when coming of age, while the stats are from when the last time your king (and that can be the heirs brother) had a stat change, even an invisible one due to being too small (aka winning or losing a battle/province).

The prince's attributes are +3--4 of his "father" (in practice his king), with better rolls the higher the influence is. +3 only happens when the influence is high and the king got low stats and the opposite for -4.

Hmmm is it better to have him gain dread or gain happiness though? I remember releasing a few times giving -1 dread but +20 happiness.

They take out eachother, but the dread is inheirited, making it a better stat.

[FactionHeir]

Hmmm does dread actually have any effect on the battlefield as it does in M2TW?

[Ironside]

Hmmm does dread actually have any effect on the battlefield as it does in M2TW?

Rumoured, but never confirmed.

[Martok]

Hmmm does dread actually have any effect on the battlefield as it does in M2TW?

It doesn't, unfortunately. As Ironside has indicated, this was long-rumoured to be so, but eventually it was figured out that dread has no effect in battles.

At one point CA had indeed planned for this feature to be in MTW -- which is what I believe started the rumours -- but sadly, it never actually made it into the game.

[Kenshin the vega bound]

Perhaps dread not having a effect is for the best? I mean it stops us from abusing the feature.