Leader Trait Icons

Good observations and I agree they are not needed however you were mistaken about them having no effect The Grammer fanatic decreases cits approval and the alien library increases science. And the grooming and raised by squatters also have effect though I cannot remember exactly what at this time.  

I mispoke. I am aware that there exists some kind of event hook in the scripts.

However, I rarely, if ever, see anything that results from these "background" traits -or- have any meaningful impact on the game.

I cannot even remember the last time I saw an event triggered from one of these background traits.  There is so much more going on that has a much higher priority on my attention.

I completely understand why this is annoying for people, although it does at least have the side-effect (intended or otherwise) of me feeling like I need to actually interview the leaders a little, manually look through the traits in order to remind myself of what they're really offering. A lot of those things being "pointless fluff" and sharing colours with the more obviously gamey, mechanical traits, means I have to go looking through their stories more (and repeatedly "talk to" them) in order to figure out what the person actually does.

Am I crazy for liking that? Very possible! :D 

These are the ones (below), specifically, that I am fussing about.

The things is that, there are so many like the following that they drown out the really useful traits and make them hard to find and locate.

It would be helpful if their leader-trait-icons were depicted in a way that made them *less* distinct than the others - or - put a gold border around the *really* good leader traits (like +10% income bonus, etc...)

This was not always an issue.  At one time *all* of the Leader traits were really good. (or really bad)  But now, only maybe 1/3 of the traits highly sought, with the remaining 2/3 's just fluff that only gets in the way of finding the important ones.

The following is for "Time Traveler".

If I had time, I would -

1. take the "UnitTrait_Cybernetic.png" image and save a copy as: "UnitTrait_TimeTraveler.png".

2. then open an image editor and convert it to grayscale and save it. (so it will not be displayed as prominently)

3. then change the XML to <Icon>UnitTrait_TimeTraveler.png</Icon>

4. and then repeat for the remaining "background" Leader traits that are 100% tied to an event and have questionable game value.

After a bit of review of the "LeaderTraitsDefs.xml" file, I believe the core issue is that when they added all of these "Background" traits, they did not add distinct icons for them, but just re-used the previously existing icons (from the original set of traits).

This makes me very sad.  

For example, "GovernorTrait_Doctor.png" was originally distinct and used but 1 or 2 times.  But now it has been reused a total of 4 times, to include the "LeaderTrait_FailedMedSchool" trait (which has questionable game value).  (I know, I could care less about the Failed Med School trait - it does not even enter into *any* game decision I make regarding the leader)

The same trait icons are being used for both "Important" traits, as well as the trival "fluff" traits.

Whatever symbolic value those icons originally had has now been undermined through their over-use.

As a result, you have to spend game time and re-read the same leader tooltips, again and again - throughout the entire game.

This makes me very sad.  

I have decided that rather than fuss about it, to try my hand at modding it.

Although I have published some Mods for other games, was not my intent to do the same for GC4 and will be my first attempt.

The fluff traits need to always be accompanied with a likely-to-get-so-and-so event soon.   I'm okay with having to learn and figure out what those are after several playthroughs.  It's a great game idea; it just needs to be followed through on with actual implementation. 

Or, they could be other things.  Like the leader who thinks he's a reincarnated hero:  that could mean he gets bonuses as ship commander, such as ship sensor range and +attack vs. space monsters, but the downside is you temporarily lose control of the ship and he charges Don Quixote style at any space monster that starts the turn in its sensor range.  And the game doesn't have to tell you that:  you have to figure it out.  I'm okay with that--if it was actually implemented. 

Have worked on it all this morning, about to test it.

Basic implementation is making a gray scale copy of most of the leader trait icons which will be used for the "Fluff" traits.

They will still exist, just have less distinct icons than the core set of traits.

The idea is that Leaders that have hard bonuses will be easier to find:

• +20% Food when assigned as a Governor.
• +15% Resistance when assigned as a Governor.
• +20% Growth when assigned as a Governor.
• -10% Pollution when assigned as a Governor.
• ...

This is the results of a preliminary test.  2 of the "Fluff" traits on the following Leader is using the gray scaled icons now.

- "is supremely arrogant"

- "scared in a duel"

Where as the other 2 core traits are:

- Embezzler - when assigned as a diplomat may siphon funds...

- Underminer - when assigned as a diplomat, reduces resistance of host resistance by 10%

Becomes more useful when viewing multiple leaders.  Also looking at updating various tool tips to display real in-game trait descriptions vs current whimsical descriptions. (i.e. Dreamweaver )

FYI - there are a good 15 or 20 traits I have identified so far that are missing their complete tooltip descriptions.  For these, you never saw what they fully did, in-game, like the following. (I still have to fix a typo and not satisfied with the formatting just yet...)

After playtesting a bit I am to the point of releasing the Mod.

In addition to using gray-scaled icons for trivial / fluff traits, I have also fixed 15-20 trait tooltips that were missing the details on what the trait was doing.  Many I previously believed were fluff traits turned out to be actually impacting the planet they were assigned to.

Following are some examples.  The text circled in RED is new (from the Mod).

The Mod "Better Leader Traits" has been posted.

The changes made by the Mod are detailed in the file "Better Leader Traits.md", which includes:

This has been a fascinating and insightful read, thank you bringing this to our attention, ill communicate some of the feedback to the team

The gist of the motivation for the Mod is that there are currently over 50 "fluff" traits that just get in the way of finding and using the core good traits.

Then there are around 25 traits that did not provide full and accurate in-game tool tip descriptions, giving the misimpression they were "fluff" traits.

For example, "Trait_LostFortune", did not disclose in-game that it incurred a -40% to colony gross income penalty.

The bold-underlined text is what I added in my Mod to correct it.