EBH Primary Traits Presentation 2

Introduction to EBH Traits and

AncillariesSpidr

EBH – Team Member

Table of Contents

• EB ABILITY TRAITS

• Stupid/Uncharismatic/Langourous • Stupid/Uncharismatic/Vigorous• Stupid/Charismatic/Langourous • Stupid/Charismatic/Vigorous • Intelligent/Uncharismatic/Langourous • Intelligent/Uncharismatic/Vigorous • Intelligent/Charismatic/Langourous • Intelligent/Charismatic/Vigorous

Table of Contents

• EB PERSONALITY TRAITS

– Selfish/Pessimistic/Disloyal – Selfish/Pessimistic/Loyal – Selfish/Optimistic/Disloyal – Selfish/Optimistic/Loyal – Unselfish/Pessimistic/Disloyal – Unselfish/Pessimistic/Loyal – Unselfish/Optimistic/Disloyal

– Unselfish/Optimistic/Loyal

Table of Contents

• FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR EUROPA BARBARORUM TRAITS AND ANCILLARIES

– Primary Traits– Command Stars– Influence– Faction/Culture-Specific Traits– Family Tree: Births/Adoptees/Menof the Hour/Bribed Enemy Generals– “Missions” for Generals– Olympics for Hellenistic Generals– Agents (Assassins, Diplomats and Spies)– Ancillaries/ Retinues– Greeks vs. Captains

EB Ability Traits

Screen Shots

Stupid/Uncharismatic/Languorous

Stupid/Uncharismatic/Vigorous

Intelligent/Charismatic/Vigorous

Intelligent/Uncharismatic/Languorous

Intelligent/Uncharismatic/Vigorous

EB Personality Traits

Screen Shots

Selfish/Optimistic/Loyal

Unselfish/Pessimistic/Loyal

Unselfish/Optimistic/Loyal

Frequently asked Questions for EUROPA

BARBARORUM Traits and Ancillaries

(AND THEIR ANSWERS)

Primary Traits

• Q. What's this about Intelligence, Charisma, and/or Energy? And Temperament, Loyalty, and Selflessness?

• A. These are the general's "Primary Traits". Together or singly, they determine how he develops.

The traits and ancillaries system for Europa Barbarorum attempts to add to the historical immersion for the player, to make him feel like he is really there and playing the rulers of his faction. To accomplish this, a new system was developed, where each general has a set of 3 Ability stats and 3 Personality stats, similar to what you might find in a role-playing game. These stats are: (Ability Traits) - Intelligence, Charisma, and Vitality; (Personality Traits) - Selflessness, Temperament, and Loyalty. These 6 primary traits are the backbone of the EB system, and they affect the acquisition of many of the other traits and even ancillaries.

Command Stars

• Q. I've been having a little trouble amassing command stars for my generals. Have the good commander traits been done away with in lieu of the newer traits, or is there a genuine problem with attaining them?

• A. The GoodCommander trait has been replaced with GoodLeader and GoodTactician, to represent the differing skillsets needed to make a great general. Charisma limits advancement in GoodLeader, while Intelligence limits GoodTactician. The way to rapidly rise in either trait is to fight battles where the odds are against your general. Winning is good, but even losing can provide valuable experience and insight. Also, the general may not gain the star immediately after the battle, but months or even years later, depending on his Energy trait. High Energy generals are more ambitious, tenacious, and are just better at improving themselves than a lazy genius. Generals inferior in Intelligence, Charisma, and Energy will find it almost impossible to get beyond a certain point.

Influence

• Q. I was thinking about this as I played the game. Shouldn't all family members start with a minimum of say 2 or 3 influence just because they are part of your family? Back then being the part of a royal family, be it the son of a king or some distant cousin, earned you influence. Even now, you have the billion dollar families who can sway opinions and whatnot by just being who they are, or get access to things more easily.

I just think that all family members should start with 2 or 3 influence because of being from that family, and from there it can go up or down depending on traits. It just got old having family members who had no influence, for no reason, and struggled to control a province.

• A. Since Influence is a measure of not only how much a man can bend the populace to his will, but also his pull with the nobility and even the other members of the ruling family, it seems some men should be better at this than others, and therefore Influence will vary.

Faction Leader/Heirs

• Q. What's this "Victory Conditions" trait that my Faction Leader has? It looks like a laundry list of settlements.

• A. It's more like a to-do list :) This general (or one of his successors) must accomplish these things to be named "winner" of the game. By "Raid", it means you have to have conquered (or bribed) the place, but you didn't have to hold it for more than a turn. "Own" means just that: you must have the place in your possession to win the game. Destroy or Outlast is like in the original RTW: that faction must no longer exist for you to win. You can kill them, or somebody else can, either way.

Faction Leader/Heirs… Continued

• Q. Why does my Faction Leader/Heir have Basileus/Shophet/Princep/etc., for a trait instead of Faction Leader/Faction Heir? Will all my faction leaders/heirs have this trait?

• A. Yes, they will (except for a handful of factions). It is there to provide a more immersive and historical-feeling gameplay experience. Nobody was called "Faction Leader" in reality, but people were called "Basileus". Plus, different Faction Leaders get different bonuses.

Faction/Culture-Specific Traits

Q. I've noticed there are quite a few faction and culture-specific traits. I usually have characters with these traits, but a lot of times they go sour (for example: Proxenos to Proxenos Under Suspicion). Is there any way to keep these traits from becoming negative?

• A. That Proxenos one has a good chance of going bad because it can happen when your faction is on a war footing. What I'd like to do, eventually, is have the Proxenos trait apply to a particular faction, and only turn sour when/if you go to war with them.

A lot of them, like Emporiarches, require certain primary traits to turn out good, and if the general is stupid or corrupt, they'll turn sour.

Family Tree: Births/Adoptees/Men of the Hour/Bribed Enemy Generals

• Q. Is there anyway to increase the random traits that a suitor has? I swear 9 out of 10 suitors have no traits, 1 command star, or have been in wars. That's all I ever get. I need to wait 20 years per daughter before I can get a guy with 1 scroll of management.

• A. We are including many more triggers for suitors and adoptees, so they will be more than just drunken veterans. There will be as much variety among them as among the born family members.


… Continued• Q. Whenever I bribe some family members of another faction, they show up

as children of one of my own family members in the family tree.

This usually stops them from having children of their own which isn't historically accurate I think. Isn't there a way to prevent this?

• A. The family tree is the way RTW represents all your generals. Everyone but the guy at the top must have a father. And a general can only have 4 children. I don't like to say this, but this is a hard-coded representation and isn't something that can be modded.

Also, births and offers of adoption and marriage are determined based on how many provinces you have compared to how many generals. If the ratio is too low, you'll have more births and offers. Bribing generals tends to shut down births as a result. The game seems to be set to 'prefer' about 2-3 provinces to every general. More generals than that, and you won't get many new family members.


… Continued

Q. Is it possible to have a lot more generals then provinces?

A. Well, you can have a bunch of generals to provinces in several different ways:

1. If you have it that way at the start (1 province and 4 generals, for example)

2. If you lose a lot of provinces, without losing any generals

3. If you bribe a lot of generals to join you

The game is not going to be giving you many children, adoptions or suitors if you have what it deems to be enough generals (around 1 general for every 2 or 3 provinces).

"Missions" for Generals

• Q. I hear that EB has missions for its generals to accomplish. What's up with that?

• A. There are several different types of missions. Have a Seleukid or Makedonian general capture Alexandreia and you'll get one of the missions. The Roman generals have their Triumphs, by defeating a lot of Gauls, Makedonians, Britons, Carthaginians, or Germans. A Seleukid general who fights Parthians, Baktrians, or Hayasdan may decide he wants some cataphracts for his army. Or have a general belonging to a Hellenistic faction sit in town during Spring in 272, 268, 264, 260 BC, or any year that fits that pattern. There's some little thing they had in Greece every 4 summers that he might be able to take part in, especially if he has high Energy.

Olympics for Hellenistic Generals

• Q. What does a player need to do to have his general compete in the Olympics?

• A. Have a family member of a Hellenic faction who isn't busy fighting or doing something else, who is also fairly young and athletic, when spring of 272, or 268, or 264 BC, etc., rolls around. Then he might become an Olympic competitor (this is more likely for Makedonians and the Koinon Hellenon, least likely for Baktrians). So, not much has to be done, except to keep the guy inactive during spring of Olympic years, so he is able to "travel" to Korinthos.

Agents (Assassins, Diplomats, and Spies)

• Q. Can assassins be stacked so they have increased chance of success?

• A. No, they can't be stacked so that their talents can be combined on a mission. Also remember, that the assassin agent, like the spy and diplomat, isn't just one guy. It's actually an abstraction that represents spy networks and teams of agents. I explored the possibility and discovered that I could *not* provide a boost to one agent just because someone else was nearby.

Agents (Assassins, Diplomats, and Spies) …. Continued

• Q. What's this about a spy network?

• A. A spy who spends several consecutive turns (at least 2 years) in a settlement may develop enough contacts and information-gathering capability that he becomes better at passing information back to his superiors, and better at surviving undetected. If he leaves the settlement for a turn, though, his network will collapse without his leadership.

Ancillaries/Retinues

• Q. When I click on my new generals for the first time they seem to get an ancillary each - such as Tutor and Spear Carrier. What's going on?

• A. We're trying to have more realistic and historical traits and ancillaries. We can restrict who gets what trait based on their ability and talent, but ancillaries can be transferred at will (by the player, anyway, the AI doesn't transfer).

Ancillary transfer is historical, but it upsets the careful balance we're trying to achieve if a general just gets 10 stars or wreaths by having a bunch of ancillaries. There is only so much that an assistant can do; the rest must come from the general/governor himself. So we must come up with some way to have our cake and eat it, too.

Ancillaries/Retinues… Continued

Hence this imperfect solution:

The plan is to use that "Tutor" ancillary to block off ancillary transfers so that the most powerful boosting ancillaries (that give influence, command, and management boosts) are not all dumped on the high-capability generals by the crafty player.

The major hard-coded limitation that has been discovered in the VnVs area comes in here; since only 3 ancillaries can be listed as excluded ancillaries for any one ancillary, we have to have a generic ancillary "Tutor" that we'll use to block off the good boosting ancillaries. Getting the Tutor will boost traits, though, because he'll teach the general as if the general were in a settlement with an academy. So the general is not losing out too bad.


Also, I've put something in to have ancillary acquisition tied into Charisma. More Charismatic generals can acquire more ancillaries. They can hand those out to the less-qualified generals, but eventually people will stop wanting to work for the guy if he just sends them away with a dunce.


• Q. Will barbarians be able to get more ancillaries in Europa Barbarorum than they did in the original game?

• A. Originally, some ancillaries were outright unavailable to the barbarian culture. But why couldn't a 'barbarian' recognize the usefulness of an architect, if he wanted to order the construction of a building?

We've also worked around some bugs from the vanilla files, so that now generals can get ancillaries after coming of age or getting married. So that's almost as good as adding a few new ancillaries.

However, ancillaries will be a little bit rarer in EB than they were in the original game. Some historical ancillaries might only be available in one settlement, like Athenai, Alexandreia, or Roma, making these cities prime real estate for generals who want to increase their entourage. Some generals, through low Charisma, will not be able to attract as many followers.

Generals vs. Captains

• Q. What is the difference between a general and a captain?

• A. A general is a member of your family tree (through birth, marriage, or adoption) and he can get traits. Captains can lead armies, and can be promoted to general after a battle or at the start of your turn, but they cannot get traits unless they are adopted into your family.

Generals vs. Captains … Continued

• Q. So, if captains can't get traits, does this mean they'll be better than generals sometimes? Like during the winter? Especially if you're making command stars hard to get?

• A. Generals will be better than captains, in general. ;) They can move farther, and make better commanders and governors, through their Command stars, Influence wreaths, Management scrolls, and other abilities. Some will be incompetent in certain areas, or maybe even utterly incompetent in all areas, but most of the time you'd rather have a general (even if only as a heavy cav unit).

We don't want to punish you for having generals; we just want to make them more interesting, and use them to increase the immersive experience. The abilities of your general may fluctuate, however, depending on the situation.

Generals vs. Captains … Continued

• Q. Can you make it so that you can promote captains to generals?

• A. No. BI may include a feature like this, so this is not the last word. As of this writing, it appears the number of generals you can have is a function of how many provinces you control. The more provinces, the more generals. The game will fill any perceived gaps with adoptions, marriages, or births. The 'ideal' ratio is something around 2-3 provinces per general, and may vary depending on the faction.

The End

Documents

EBH Primary Traits Presentation 2