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Jorlem

Field Marshal
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May 9, 2012
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Currently, there are many traits that, when the choice to give one to your heir appears, or you have a chance to obtain via event, you either absolutely want them, or absolutely do not. These trait have either all upsides and no downsides, or are all downsides with no upsides. I would like to suggest that the personality traits be rebalanced so the decisions for which to choose will require thought and planning, not be no-brainers. (As a side note, secondary effects from traits, like enabling specific tactics, should be noted in the tooltip of the trait.) To this end, I have gone through the list of traits on the wiki, and put together some suggestions/comments: (Edit: To be clear, these are meant to supplement or tweak the current effects of the traits, not completely replace any of them. For ease of reference, here is the wiki page for the traits. I intentionally made this list in the order the traits are listed in the wiki so it would be easier to follow.)

(Edit 2: I've posted a mod showcasing the suggested changes in the modding subforum, here.)

Chaste: This is fine, the fertility malus balances out the piety and learning boosts. Maybe adding +5 Vassal Opinion could be beneficial, as they don't need to be worried you will sleep with their wives?

Temperate: Have it impart a morale penalty on troops being led by the character, not sure what the exact value should be. Someone who is "not affected by passion or emotion"would have difficulty getting troops fired up.

Charitable: Add a -10% Global Tax modifier, to balance with Greedy's +10% Global Tax modifier.

Diligent: Change the +10 Vassal Opinion modifier to -10. Vassals should prefer a liege that isn't very attentive or organized or looking over their shoulders, most of the time. (That is, they should want the liege to be weaker.)

Patient: Have it enable the Hesitant Commander tactic, and/or give a penalty to Offense of -10%. In battle, sometimes you need to seize the moment.

Kind: Have it enable the Timid Advance tactic, and maybe a penalty to Offense (Edit: or perhaps a -10% or -20% Damage modifier?). Not wanting to hurt the enemy isn't a good quality in a commander. Maybe some method of attempting to befriend vassals could be added?

Humble: This is fine, in my opinion.


Lustful: This could probably do without the Intrigue boost. Intrigue is far more valuable than Learning, which is what the counterpart trait gives, and with both, is just a far better trait that Chaste. Perhaps make seduction attempts easier to discover and disrupt if the seducer is known to be lustful.

Gluttonous: Have this allow the use of the Carousing Focus's Invite to party decision without having the focus active, with lessened chance of characters agreeing to come. If the focus is also active, the chances of characters agreeing should be greater than if only the focus is active, without the trait.

Greedy: This one seems fine to me as is, if the change to Charitable is made.

Slothful: Change the -10 Vassal Opinion to +10 or +15 Vassal Opinion. Vassals should prefer to have a less attentive or active liege.

Wroth: To improve the odds someone will want this trait, I think that when a character acts dishonorably towards the character with Wroth (the imprisonment reason), the Wrothful character should instead have the ability to declare the offending character a Rival, and immediately duel him.

Envious: Maybe have this allow characters to attempt to plot to steal from vassals or lieges who possess more gold than them, or make it easier/faster to fabricate claims on those with a larger demesne?

Proud: I think a -1 Diplomacy should be added. Those who are overly proud of themselves can be hard to get along with.


Deceitful, Honest, Craven and Brave seem mostly fine to me, so long as the secondary effects of the traits (specifically, the changes to the odds of being killed or injured in battle or imprisoned afterward) are added to the tooltips for the traits. Also, I think a Brave character who is at war should suffer a penalty to Prestige or be at risk of negative events that take away Brave or something similar if they or their liege is at war and they are not leading troops.

Shy: Heightened chance of dodging plots, though not as much as is provided by paranoid. Also, I think Shy should allow characters to send themselves into hiding at any time.

Gregarious: This should provide a -1 to Intrigue, and reduce the effectiveness of being in hiding.

Ambitious: I think this should apply a fairly hefty Vassal Opinion penalty, perhaps -20 or -25. Vassals should be worried that their liege might want their land, if said liege is Ambitious. Independent rulers of bordering realms should also be concerned and have an opinion penalty about the Ambitious ruler's ambitions.

Content: Maybe add a +5 Vassal Opinion modifier.

Arbitrary: First, this should have an additional -2 to Diplomacy. Second, I think this should get something special: I think this trait should enable a "no CB" CB. Said CB would target a bordering county or duchy, or a barony that is under a county in the character's realm. Use of the CB would be on a cooldown based on the size of the target it was last used for (one year for baronies, five for counties, ten for duchies?), and would generate Infamy twice, once when the war is declared (the amount of Infamy generated would be the same as if the war is won), and again if the war is actually won. (I'd imagine that the interface would use a targeted decision on the character being declared upon, which would bring up an interface similar to the "grant title" interface that would list all the targetable titles. That would avoid clutter on the normal Declare War interface.)

Just: I think this is fine as is, though maybe the bonus to Stewardship could be increased a bit.

Cynical: I think this should also give a +1 to Learning, and/or grant a lessened version of the effects of the various sympathy traits. If a character doesn't care that much about religion, he shouldn't care as much about other people having different religions.

Zealous: Have this trait boost Revolt Risk in provinces of the wrong religion. Not sure what the exact value of the boost should be, but I think it should be halved by every vassal layer between the character with Zealous and the ruler of the county, who do not also have Zealous.

Paranoid: This trait should allow characters to send themselves or anyone else into hiding at any time, via targeted decisions (the alert should only pop up when appropriate, I think.)

Trusting: Vassals would enjoy having a liege that is easily convinced of things, so I think this should grant +5 or +10 Vassal Opinion.

Cruel: This should, I think, allow for torturing prisoners via targeted decision instead of event, without auto-releasing them like the Greek culture's torture decisions do.
 
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Some of your idea dont make much sense (Ex.: Shouldn´t patient general be good ? In history, isnt the hasty guy who usually screws up?), but I think it could be good.

If all traits are equally good, wouldn´t take some fun away from educating your heir and trying to get the good traits. A great part of the game is to try to get the best traits.
 
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Some of your idea dont make much sense (Ex.: Shouldn´t patient general be good ? In history, isnt the hasty guy who usually screws up?), but I think it could be good.

If all traits are equally good, wouldn´t take some fun away from educating your heir and trying to get the good traits. A great part of the game is to try to get the best traits.

Patient still would provide the constant 20% Defense boost to troops he is leading, so a patient general would still be good. My suggestion would just add the risk that he would occasionally wait too long when he should have seized the moment, by making it possible for a leader with Patient to roll the Hesitant Commander tactic.

As for your second point, I disagree. Most of the time while educating your heir, there isn't much in the way of "trying". Most of the time, an event pops up, offering a good trait and a bad trait, and you automatically pick the good trait without even thinking. These aren't true choices, as there is a blatantly obvious correct response. By making all the traits equally good, it opens up room for players to consider taking traits for other reasons, removing the pressure to make the "right" choice, which results in most player educated characters having almost exactly the same array of traits. Instead, you might decide to give your genius heir craven, as you know that it will help keep him alive, even if vassals don't like it, or take arbitrary for a character that you are grooming as a conqueror, to have access to the CB. Or you might try to match your heirs traits with those of your vassals', instead of just giving him traits that all have vassal opinion bonuses and stat boosts, as currently.

In short, I think that these suggestions would result in more thoughtful choices, instead of just reflexively picking the same traits every time as is the case now.
 
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Some of your idea dont make much sense (Ex.: Shouldn´t patient general be good ? In history, isnt the hasty guy who usually screws up?), but I think it could be good.

If all traits are equally good, wouldn´t take some fun away from educating your heir and trying to get the good traits. A great part of the game is to try to get the best traits.
I honestly think min maxing your heirs traits is one of the worst parts of the game. It keeps your heirs from being their own person.
 
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I wish attributes would defined more clearly in-game, I think that diplomacy represents charisma, martial represents knowledge of strategy and warfare, stewardship represents knowledge of economy, intrigue represents knowledge of scheming, while learning represents knowledge of languages and history.
 
I for one would like to try out a mod that adjusts the traits this way, to see how things play out long term. It could be very interesting, but it does change aspects of the game.
 
I agree with some of these suggestions, but the idea of having all traits balanced doesn't make much sense. The simple fact is that some traits are more beneficial than others; diligent people get more done than slothful people and there are more benefits to being patient than wroth.

I honestly think min maxing your hairs traits is one of the worst parts of the game. It keeps your heirs from being their own person.
I think the solution to this should be to make the education system more complex so the player doesn't just handpick their wards' traits, rather than taking away the player's incentive to give them good traits.

I wish attributes would defined more clearly in-game, I think that diplomacy represents charisma, martial represents knowledge of strategy and warfare, stewardship represents knowledge of economy, intrigue represents knowledge of scheming, while learning represents knowledge of languages and history.
From what I gather, diplomacy represents personal charisma and statesmanship, martial represents both military strategy and personal combat skill (which is weird since they added a separate measure of personal combat skills for the duel system), stewardship represents knowledge of economics and administration, intrigue is scheming, and learning is general knowledge of bookish topics like of history, philosophy, theology, etc. There definitely should be more clarity, particularly between strategy and personal combat skill.
 
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I agree with some of these suggestions, but the idea of having all traits balanced doesn't make much sense. The simple fact is that some traits are more beneficial than others; diligent people get more done than slothful people and there are more benefits to being patient than wroth.
Keep in mind, except when explicitly stated, all of the traits still provide the same bonuses as vanilla. So Diligent still gives +1 to all stats, it just annoys vassals instead of making them like you. Patient also still gives the stat boosts and +20% Defense to led troops, it would just also add the chance to roll a bad tactic as well. As I've said before, the idea here is to make it so there are no "no-brainer" obvious choices when picking traits.
 
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+1 all round, I completely agree that there should be lots more tough minimaxing decisions in the game ("should I take the piety hit to get the prestige bonus, or take the trait increase at the expense of the gold ?"). I also agre that some triats should just be better (eg genius), even if they are counterbalanced somewhat (eg traditional Genius bad luck )
 
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I for one would like to try out a mod that adjusts the traits this way, to see how things play out long term. It could be very interesting, but it does change aspects of the game.
I've just posted such a mod in the modding subforum, so here you go. Enjoy!
 
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I've just posted such a mod in the modding subforum, so here you go. Enjoy!
Haha, funny, I was actually starting to make the mod myself too! I had implemented your suggestions, and begun on making a plot to steal money from your liege, that's only possible if you are Envious.
 
Haha, funny, I was actually starting to make the mod myself too! I had implemented your suggestions, and begun on making a plot to steal money from your liege, that's only possible if you are Envious.
:D
I ended up deciding against the plot, and went with speeding up claim fabricating a bit. I figured that the AI wouldn't know quite how to do the plot, that getting dozens of courtiers involved would be rather silly, and that since most players end up as the top liege it would end up useless to the player most of the time.
 
:D
I ended up deciding against the plot, and went with speeding up claim fabricating a bit. I figured that the AI wouldn't know quite how to do the plot, that getting dozens of courtiers involved would be rather silly, and that since most players end up as the top liege it would end up useless to the player most of the time.
Ok, makes sense (though the AI issue doesn't exist really)! Thanks for making the mod, I'll try it out!
 
Ok, makes sense (though the AI issue doesn't exist really)! Thanks for making the mod, I'll try it out!
It was more like a chain of thought about how the AI wouldn't know how to deal with it, since the system is only for murder plots at the moment. The AI doesn't really make sense with choosing targets for murder plots, but always seems to want to have a plot going, so if half the time they choose murder and the other half this stealing plot, which would be restricted to targeting the liege, well, I'm sure you can see the issue. (It would also be rather unfun for a player liege.) Timing would also be an issue, because it wouldn't make sense to try to steal when the liege has less money than the envious character, and money can swing rapidly if the liege decides to hire mercs or build something. Plus, and this was one of the biggest worries, the AI might spend more on bribes to get people into the plot than he'd actually get from the theft.
 
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So slothful, trusting and content ruler would be able to rise more vassal levy?
Vassals would make more of their levy available to such a ruler, yes, as they'd expect that he wouldn't actually use it.
 
But that makes no sense. Human player and AI would enjoy bigger levy from having bad stats.
And the AI, at least, would be less likely to use it. Content, for example, reduces AI_ambition by 40, and zeal by 10. Trusting increases AI_honor by 10, and slothful decreases AI_ambition and AI_zeal by ten each, while boosting greed by 10. These are all unchanged from vanilla, incidentally. An AI with those traits should be far less likely to use those troops offensively, and if that isn't the case, it is an issue with the AI not respecting the personality weights. (Defensively, there are the massive opinion modifiers that basically guarantee the defender will have vassal levies, so there's really no effective change there.)

That the player isn't bound to roleplay is something I feel is outside the bounds of this list of suggestions, and the mod that I made to accompany it.
 
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Traits don't need to be balanced in my opinion. They're fine as they are -- they are character traits, not some kind of RPG stat/skill thing. Sometimes the 'bad' traits you list here are strictly better for a given situation (if I want a good seer/priest, I don't want anything that negatively affects learning even if learning is supposedly 'bad'). Sometimes it's also worthwhile to purposely educate heirs or other characters to make them poor rulers/amoral/whatever.

So yeah, I don't see any need for this.
 
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Traits don't need to be balanced in my opinion. They're fine as they are -- they are character traits, not some kind of RPG stat/skill thing. Sometimes the 'bad' traits you list here are strictly better for a given situation (if I want a good seer/priest, I don't want anything that negatively affects learning even if learning is supposedly 'bad'). Sometimes it's also worthwhile to purposely educate heirs or other characters to make them poor rulers/amoral/whatever.

So yeah, I don't see any need for this.
Would you be willing to clairify your example? The only two traits that negatively effect Learning are slothful and arbitrary. The game's tooltip outright says that slothful has no redeeming features, and arbitrary isn't much better. Is there any situation in vanilla where you realistically would want to pick either of those traits when educating your heir? The purpose of these suggestions, and the mod I made to accompany and demonstrate it, is to make every trait with considering, making each trait in some way desirable from a gameplay perspective.