Player's Guide to Complex Traits

[Thunderbrd]

I have now officially displayed all of the trait descriptions in the reserved posts.

I also added the following to the first post in this thread:
Strategies for combining Traits

Immediately after presenting this trait set, even before the DLL that came with them was debugged enough to allow for the set to be properly played, I got this reply,which you can refer to in this thread if you like:

• Some traits make settled slaves quite OverPowered, remember they also the get the bonuses that the regular specialists also get. In mid game, before industrialization, you can get between 40-70 slaves to settle in a medium-size city easily.

Here's a big part of what this set is about.

It is possible that some strategies may need to be dialed back a little. Surely we don't want any element of the game to overwhelm all others. He's right that this COULD be such a strong strategy that it would be hard to imagine not winning with it.

As I said in response:

That's an entire strategy one can try to play on. I would need to see proof that something is completely OVER powered in comparison to other massively powerful combinations. I'm not going to pretend that these traits do not make a great deal more power possible in a lot of ways. The question that stands on the table here is whether those powers are so much greater than the powers other trait and trait combinations can give.

IF you're going to play that strategy of building up your slave benefits, I'd like to hear the feedback on just how well it works and what the pros and cons of it ended up being. Slaves also mean you get more crime and disease and direct unhappiness and unhealth. Furthermore, though they may be majorly powerful, you can also stunt your growth in a huge way trying to hold onto slavery past the Industrial era, so to get things like Factories and such you'll have to release them all and there goes that whole strategy potentially.

That's what should make this fun... you're going to see tons of ways to make an 'OP' combination and it will be fascinating to see if any are truly superior to another. And as you find more of them, you'll find more reasons to play a new game to see how the next combo you see pans out. That all should lead to lots of interesting discussions here.

If you're going to play to boost your slaves, have you then considered looking to combine with traits that boost capture chances?

Also, consider the opposite. If you don't play with slavery on, could you get away with selecting the opposing negative traits to those positive ones you're talking about? The ones that really reduce their value or even make them costly, and thus spend negative points that you won't suffer from?

To add to that, any trait strategy is made stronger by selecting other traits that would go along with it to fit the concept. As I said above, selecting traits that would boost capture chances, for example, would enhance the power and efficacy of the Slave Empowerment strategy. But what else?

Most slaves are settled into one major mega city, usually the capital. Perhaps a trait like Preeminence, which primarily empowers the capital, might be a great trait to pair with this strategy as well?

Furthermore, it would be beneficial, if you were going to develop out this strategy, that you would identify all the traits that Empower Slaves and list them, as well as identifying which are the strongest at doing so.

There are also traits that should NOT be selected to go with this strategy, right? Anything that erodes the approach would defeat the point. You can't select negative traits that are diametrically opposed to positive traits you've selected and vice versa so you're a little safer there, but that's not to say you can't find some other traits that would run counter to the strategy you're building. It's a good idea to identify them and list those out under your strategy profile as well.

Identifying the negative traits that work well with this approach would be helpful in general, but when you do, and you settle on some 'best selections' for this play style, you would want to take a moment to identify the big detractors to the strategy. There WILL be some - it's unavoidable. When you list those out, however, you can start to get an idea of how you should adjust your game play to minimize the impact of those penalties.

So identify your primary drawbacks. Either try to avoid compacting those with negative synergies that really bring some pain - look at the list of previously identified good choices to combine and make sure they stay as valid as they appeared, or figure out how you're going to play to avoid it being a problem, or find selections that can counter those penalties that you plan to take when you can.

For example, you may find that your strategy is going to lead to a LOT of increased Anarchy time when you change civics. So rather than trying to then find ways to counteract that, which you COULD if you can squeeze in some more trait selections, you could just decide that you're going to only change civics during Golden Ages. So they need to be frequent. Hmm... which traits would enable me to get a lot of Golden Ages...

So now you're looking for other matches that will solve your primary problems, or at least a full awareness of what those problems will be so that you can play in a way that diminishes their impact.


I explain all of this because I think the most fun thing about this set is the metagame of analysis as you look at the potential the traits have. For those who agree, I wanted to really open up this thread for feedback and discussion on various trait strategies that you find emerge for you.

I want to list off the strategies that have been proposed here and start tracking some details in these strategies, like what traits to combine, what to avoid, red flag penalties to address, trait selections to address them, other opportunities that the primary trait selections can lead to and how to capitalize on them.

As we list off these strategies, and arrange the tactical observations beneath them, new poster observations can continuously add to this list and to the details on these strategic approaches.

So I'll keep many of these Reserved slots open for continued compiling of Selection Strategies and their details.


Challenges
Equally as fascinating is how painful the traits can become. While we track Selection Strategies, I'd also like to list off Challenges.

Challenges would be issued by commentators on this forum thread to other players.

I think it's plain to see there are some traits you probably would never want to select, just because they cut too hard to the core of your ability to develop your empire. I'm interested to see if some highly skilled players would be capable of surviving games with certain mega-bad combinations.

So if you can find the worst of the worst selections one can make and define why that selection could completely cripple you, I want you to issue that combination as a 'Challenge'.

We'll track the Challenges that have been issued and any player that successfully plays a game with those challenges selected can come in showing their savegame and how they've done and we can add their name underneath the Challenges listing with a brief description of how they fared and the difficulty and some other game settings they played on.

In a sense, this is a new way to play a harder handicap


Part of the Strategies and Challenges listing and detailing is all about studying what really works and what really does not. This will be important information when I go to apply these traits to leaders, even if its only with some manner of modular edit that only works when the game option is in effect.

Another is to find out if and where some balance editing is truly necessary. I'm sure many of you will quickly find something you feel is OP or too painful. Let's find out if they really are.

And the third goal is to prepare for deeper AI strategic development for Leaders playing the game differently according to selections they make. After a body of discussion builds up on these, and numerous other mod goals are accomplished, this is a big future project I'd love to make be the absolute cherry on top of the C2C experience.





So by all means, start listing off the Strategies and Challenges you see here.

 

[Snofru1]

Wow, I can´t imagine how much work this was to put together. Just reading it is quite some time investigation. Thank you for making this game again a deeper experience!
I ususally have turned off traits totally in my games but I will definitely turn them on in my next game!

 

[IdioticUlt1mara]

I had an interesting idea on stream. I feel that some of the negative traits are very easy to counteract or dont really do much e.g. Pacifist/slob while others are insanely negative e.g. aloof or barbaric. So people are probably never gonna pick the insanely bad ones. I was thinking, what if your negative traits were random whenever they are chooseable?

 

[raxo2222]

I had an interesting idea on stream. I feel that some of the negative traits are very easy to counteract or dont really do much e.g. Pacifist/slob while others are insanely negative e.g. aloof or barbaric. So people are probably never gonna pick the insanely bad ones. I was thinking, what if your negative traits were random whenever they are chooseable?

This would be annoying as there would be chance of blocking positive trait, that you wanted to get.

That is players would get randomly negative trait X, that blocks positive trait XX - trait, that they wanted to get at first place.
Now they can choose negative trait X, Y, Z or any other trait, when negative trait selection popups, so they can block other positive traits.

 

[JosEPh_II]

This would be annoying as there would be chance of blocking positive trait, that you wanted to get.

Disagree. Especially for Games where Developing Leaders is Not selected. And you already have Negative traits that block Positive traits. Lincoln as Leader already has that, Idealistic basically counteracts Scientific. Again W/O Dev Leads being used.

The New Traits of course are geared into making you use Dev leads. Just using Complex traits by itself is quite the challenge if you do not study every Leader Before you select one. There are many OP and not so OP leaders in this now. Somewhat similar in scope and aspect to Sgt Slick's initial efforts at making a new trait set. But that is to be expected when you introduce something New/Majorly changed into the Mod's gameplay.

There will be hair pulling and there will be Oh Yeahs as we work thru this new way to play.

Sidenote: Raxxo, the Random events are popping like crazy now. So Very glad you did not set them to 50! That would've been a game killer setting. Even at the current level IF my next game has as many show up as the game I started with Complex traits 2 days ago I Will be turning RE Off.

 

[raxo2222]

Disagree. Especially for Games where Developing Leaders is Not selected. And you already have Negative traits that block Positive traits. Lincoln as Leader already has that, Idealistic basically counteracts Scientific. Again W/O Dev Leads being used.

The New Traits of course are geared into making you use Dev leads. Just using Complex traits by itself is quite the challenge if you do not study every Leader Before you select one. There are many OP and not so OP leaders in this now. Somewhat similar in scope and aspect to Sgt Slick's initial efforts at making a new trait set. But that is to be expected when you introduce something New/Majorly changed into the Mod's gameplay.

There will be hair pulling and there will be Oh Yeahs as we work thru this new way to play.

Sidenote: Raxxo, the Random events are popping like crazy now. So Very glad you did not set them to 50! That would've been a game killer setting. Even at the current level IF my next game has as many show up as the game I started with Complex traits 2 days ago I Will be turning RE Off.

I guess you misunderstood something, as without Developing Leaders you can't gain any traits - his suggestion wouldn't change anything without this game option (and without negative traits too).
So his suggestion was: instead of choosing negative traits (Developing Traits and Negative Traits must be on) players would get random negative trait.

With Complex Traits you can't have positive/negative trait, if you have certain opposing negative/positive trait in most cases.

--------------------------------
Now events have 7% chance per turn to happen on Prehistoric - as it was usual.
On Ancient and Classical its 8% and 9% chance per turn.
On later eras its 10% per turn - average would be one per 10 turns, those chances aren't scaled by gamespeed.

I could set event chance to 7/7/8/8/9/9/10, as later eras have more different events.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I guess you misunderstood something, as without Developing Leaders you can't gain any traits -

I can read raxxo. I know he Highly recommends Dev Leaders, but he also stated they can be played w/o DLs as well. You just don't get to upgrade your chosen Traits. Fully aware of this. But some would like to use the original Traits leaders have too you know with this New Set to see how they play out.

As for the Events there was a decided uptick the closer I got to Sed Life and afterwards. Progression of increasing Random Events May Not be a Good idea at all.

 

[raxo2222]

As for the Events there was a decided uptick the closer I got to Sed Life and afterwards. Progression of increasing Random Events May Not be a Good idea at all.

I guess it was before when I scaled down back event chance - previous one, not my last commit.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I had an interesting idea on stream. I feel that some of the negative traits are very easy to counteract or dont really do much e.g. Pacifist/slob while others are insanely negative e.g. aloof or barbaric. So people are probably never gonna pick the insanely bad ones. I was thinking, what if your negative traits were random whenever they are chooseable?

I believe all traits are equal but it depends on what you as a player prefer and how you tend to go about things. If you want to mostly steal your techs, for example, even tech penalties aren't really that big a deal to you. Some variations in benefit values do depend on the particular current balances of certain game elements in the mod that change as the mod grows. But generally speaking, one shouldn't really be much worse than another, just enforcing a different approach to play.

I have considered giving a 'randomize' option selection in the trait selection list that would completely pick one of the availables at random in case you are interested in playing a game that throws at you different challenges you wouldn't expect or if you just can't figure out what you want to choose. It'd be a bit of a trick to pull off but I've already spent some thought pondering how it could work. I think I'd like that over an addendum game option that makes it always happen, for positive or negative or both selections, because that way you can choose at each juncture if you want to randomize or not. Don't expect this right away though because it's a little complicated to establish.

@JosEPh_II Thanks for giving it a go. Thing about 'OP' is, the more OP you get with this set, the more you have an Achilles heal that can be exploited as well. There's always a catch somewhere. True, there are more powerful combinations and more inert combinations. Raxo was referring to diametrically opposed traits on the positive and negative ends and the randomization would only apply in DL anyhow. Again, having the option to randomize when a selection would come up would satisfy all interests there I think. Also, I'm hoping it's not geared to making you play DL and is equally as valid if you don't. It is made with DL in mind, but was also designed first and foremost for not having it. The problem is that the leaders haven't had all the new traits re-distributed to them properly if the option is on, which is a whole big project in itself. Maybe someone might be more interested in doing that than I am... it was exhausting getting these done this far.

 

[tmv]

I believe all traits are equal

Disagree slightly. In Prehistory (especially before Tribalism) Preeminent is so incredibly strong it's like reducing your difficulty by at least one level. You absolutely have to take this as your first option, unless you want to increase the difficulty deliberately. Strengthening your capital at this point means strengthening your entire civilization, and you don't know so many other civs that trade routes would be important enough to decrease Preem.'s value. And if you play with "Start as Minors" (I know it's discouraged), you cannot trade with the other civs anyway.

Of course, by Renaissance Lifestyle the entire situation should be different enough that taking the second level is not necessarily a good idea.

 

[IdioticUlt1mara]

On the whole "cant choose a trait if you get a random negative trait" it would encourage people to use positive trait points in getting rid of negative ones - which as of right now I see no point in doing, personally - I agree with tmv that some traits are so much stronger than others and some negative traits have such a low downside to them that it really isnt bad whereas others are terrible in almost all regards e.g. aloof

The reason I suggest a random negative trait thing is to encourage the use of "working" around things a lot more and to actually use your positive trait on not just upgrading your traits

Anyways this is my take from it so far from what I have seen of the traits

 

[IdioticUlt1mara]

O I just read the challenges part as well and I am 100% up for that. However we would also have to set a precedent difficulty for people to do I feel?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Disagree slightly. In Prehistory (especially before Tribalism) Preeminent is so incredibly strong it's like reducing your difficulty by at least one level. You absolutely have to take this as your first option, unless you want to increase the difficulty deliberately. Strengthening your capital at this point means strengthening your entire civilization, and you don't know so many other civs that trade routes would be important enough to decrease Preem.'s value. And if you play with "Start as Minors" (I know it's discouraged), you cannot trade with the other civs anyway.

Of course, by Renaissance Lifestyle the entire situation should be different enough that taking the second level is not necessarily a good idea.

Obviously there are going to be different strengths and weaknesses in them all depending on the phase of the game you're in. However, is Preeminent the best selection for a long term strategy? It's a good early selection, yes, and at that STAGE is better. But for a larger empire, if you're wanting the best overall benefit to all yields and commerces, Pragmatic would be a far more powerful choice, and of course, if you overfocus on yield/commerce benefits, the military ones will probably stomp you at some point (if well used).

It has always been that player strategy preferences determine what you see as better than other selections in traits and that is perhaps a magnified factor here. The fact is, you're only going to get so many selections throughout the game so is one that will eventually serve you better as good or better than the one that serves you best 'now'? That's a tossup.

Personally, so far, my favorite first pick is Charismatic. I also think that Industrial may well be a strong competitor for best pic given how core to progress production really is. Might seem like you'd get more out of Preeminent but when you start looking at the specialist and plot production and base production adds and how that can help you develop out the rest of your values by getting yield and commerce producing buildings faster, Industrial might give a better first boost than even Preeminent would. Also has more staying power in larger empires - but doesn't give the military benefits I personally like Preeminent for.

some negative traits have such a low downside to them that it really isnt bad whereas others are terrible in almost all regards e.g. aloof

They all have crushing negatives. The selection on negative traits is often more about what you're wanting to play up and what you can tolerate playing down. Aloof is a great pick for someone who wants to focus on foreign trade and a large wide empire that has no reliance at all on supercities and pairs well with the 'ignore religions to focus on more core gains' strategy. You see it as horrible because those concepts run entirely against the strategic methods you've adopted to get your edge in play. Again, everyone's going to have their own opinions on what works and what really doesn't.


Imbalances between traits do take place because of imbalances in the game, with some things not being as important as others. At the moment, city growth is too fast, as you have also observed, therefore food benefits and the benefit of requiring less to grow are nearly worthless. We need to probably nearly double the base amount of food to grow IMO... I'm not sure where that's established yet but I'll be looking into it. We're also discussing gold being a non-factor right now.

O I just read the challenges part as well and I am 100% up for that. However we would also have to set a precedent difficulty for people to do I feel?

Probably should note the difficulty of it, sure.

 

[tmv]

It's a good early selection, yes, and at that STAGE is better.

If you are No. 1 at Sedentary Lifestyle, you have already won. The other eras are not going to be that difficult (of course, as someone who plays almost exclusively as a builder, this doesn't bother me that much). Not just because AI is not (yet?) at human level, but because the area you can settle first is huge - first at Tribalism means you send out the Tribes first, and this time (as opposed to the Band of ...) you know the locations of many resources.

I have no way to test this, but I think if you have two equally strong players but one of them is given Tribalism 20 or 30 turns earlier (for Normal speed) for whatever reason, that player should win in more than 80% of the games.

 

[JosEPh_II]

If you are No. 1 at Sedentary Lifestyle, you have already won.

Basically true. Especially for the Handicaps below Immortal. Emperor can be borderline.

Not just because AI is not (yet?) at human level, but because the area you can settle first is huge - first at Tribalism means you send out the Tribes first, and this time (as opposed to the Band of ...) you know the locations of many resources.

Yes And No as to sending out tribes 1st. This is dependent upon Options used for set up is what I find. Having Barb World and Neanderthal Cities Options On can greatly affect the early settlement phase for all players AI and Human alike.

And the AI "knows" the resource locations better than any player does. But the point is Will the AI utilize them Before the player does. How far will the player reach out ( distance from Capitol) to get a desired resource? Or will you settle close to be able to build more tribes faster? What strategy is the AI using here as well? Close to home or way faring?

 

[tmv]

Especially for the Handicaps below Immortal. Emperor can be borderline.

I have no experiences with those levels, I'm afraid.

How far will the player reach out ( distance from Capitol) to get a desired resource?

For me, it's almost unlimited - as long as a trade connection is possible. Important resources (like stone, copper, horses, elephants, prime timber) are pretty much the highest priority for city placement for me, followed by natural wonders and other resources. "Strategic" considerations like high defense value or cutting off other civs is more of an afterthought, although I suppose at the higher levels that would have to change.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Disagree slightly. In Prehistory (especially before Tribalism) Preeminent is so incredibly strong it's like reducing your difficulty by at least one level. You absolutely have to take this as your first option, unless you want to increase the difficulty deliberately. Strengthening your capital at this point means strengthening your entire civilization, and you don't know so many other civs that trade routes would be important enough to decrease Preem.'s value. And if you play with "Start as Minors" (I know it's discouraged), you cannot trade with the other civs anyway.

Of course, by Renaissance Lifestyle the entire situation should be different enough that taking the second level is not necessarily a good idea.

Do you believe that if Tier I were to have only a 5% bonus, then 10% at Tier II and 15% at Tier III, that would balance this out better?

 

[JosEPh_II]

1st impression of the Negative Trait Idealistic, the -4Educ per pop means that by Tribalism you will have to have 9+ Story Tellers to keep Education level stable-ish. If it's negative you fight to keep it from sinking lower. If you get lucky enough to keep it a 0 you have to add a new ST every time your pop increases by 1. By Sed Life I had 13 ST's in Capital city with City pop at 17. But my Educ level was a -43. And I built every + ED building I could.

1st Impression is that with the high level of Pop Decay for ED the added -4 per pop makes it impossible to maintain a positive level of ED. Lincoln has Scientific and Humanitarian. The Scientific is effectively neutralized by Idealistic. And Humanitarian does not help any towards ED levels.

Before Complex Traits we were already struggling with a growing problem of needing, imo, too many ST's and later Bards to maintain a positive ED level in any city. It could be done, but you need to get specific Wonders or reach a specific Tech that gave an ED building that gives more than 1 ED per pop.

Overall I'm finding that the decay rate for pop (how fast you lose ED pts from a single pop) is too fast, needs reduced by a % or 2 in the Property system.

For Idealistic, entry level Tier 1, the malus to ED needs reduced by half. Imo of course and from my 1st impression. (Throws a pinch of salt over my shoulder)

 

[Thunderbrd]

the -4Educ per pop

That's -1 Education per 4 population, not -4/population. At least, it's supposed to be. I also verified that earlier with AIAndy and the rest of the team on the forum here, but I do have some concerns that it's still calculating at exactly what you said.

I have seen that with or without it, education is a lot more challenging to keep up with but a big part of that is also part of the way too much growth problem, which I'm thinking is more to blame. I might need to scale down the additional req +1per population per era to per/2 eras to smooth that out better.

 

[Faustmouse]

I usually did not find edu to be a big Problem, but an aktuell Challenge at exactly the right Level. But the last Game i played is now about 3 months ago. Also keep in mind that for most of the Game i avoid growth to keep my cities at size 6 and later 13 and only in ind era and beyond I allow unlimited growth.