What's the point of the NPC personality trait system?

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Do they influence A.I behavior currently on the campaign map or are they supposed to do so in future updates? For example on executions, surrendering, fleeing, paying gold etc?

I can only recall one instance of merciful NPC's releasing you after battle, but otherwise for some traits I do not see a pronounced difference apart from some different dialogue.
 
You gain a little relationship bonus or penalty based on traits. I'd like to see it affecting lord's tactics but seems like it does nothing more as of now. If I am not mistaken, this was promised to improve.
 
The only significant effect that I can think of is the Mercy set after a siege that you lead. Spare the settlement from pillaging, and Cruel people will dislike you for it. Go harcore on the pillage and Mercifuls will dislike you. Plus, of course, an influence cost.

Other than that, I never notice any differences.
 
Do they influence A.I behavior currently on the campaign map or are they supposed to do so in future updates? For example on executions, surrendering, fleeing, paying gold etc?
Yeah, a bit. Daring lords are more likely to launch a snap assault without siege weapons after building their camp, for example.
I can only recall one instance of merciful NPC's releasing you after battle, but otherwise for some traits I do not see a pronounced difference apart from some different dialogue.
It used to be more apparent but the AI was tuned to be smarter across the board and the effect got marginalized.
 
NPC personality traits affects lots of things. But it all ends up being pretty much invisible to the player, you can't really tell it apart from random chance except by examining the code.

Here are some random examples for Mercy:
  • Likeliness to surrender
  • Likeliness to attack/avoid enemy parties/battles in progress
  • Likeliness to besiege/assault a besieged settlement
  • Support for war/peace
  • Persuasion requirements for defection/romance
  • Pillage/devastate decision after sieging
  • Which issues (quests) they spawn
 
NPC personality traits affects lots of things. But it all ends up being pretty much invisible to the player, you can't really tell it apart from random chance except by examining the code.

Here are some random examples for Mercy:
  • Likeliness to surrender
  • Likeliness to attack/avoid enemy parties/battles in progress
  • Likeliness to besiege/assault a besieged settlement
  • Support for war/peace
  • Persuasion requirements for defection/romance
  • Pillage/devastate decision after sieging
  • Which issues (quests) they spawn
Would be awesome if player's Mercy increased likeliness to surrender of NPCs. Certainly I'd rather surrender to a party/army led by someone with a reputation for mercy!
 
The way I see it, the traits are a visual indication of the underlining mechanics that affects how the characters behave. So having the "closefisted" trait means nothing in itself, but it is just a visual representation of the character's history of low generosity - and having low generosity does affect inter-character/AI relations

E.g. If you are merciful when taking a city, some of the cruel characters in your army will dislike you more - and there are real impacts on characters disliking each other (Try convincing someone who dislikes you to join you relative to someone who likes you for example) - and parties from factions who dislike you are more likely to raid you - for these reasons I try to create armies of merciful or at least non-cruel parties, and I tend to release captured enemies until I have high relations with their clans before I start locking them up.


Yeah, a bit. Daring lords are more likely to launch a snap assault without siege weapons after building their camp, for example.

Or idiotically soloing your army of 500 in front of their horrified subordinates... Still annoys me every time they take down a Fian before getting cut to pieces... or if they succeed in charging through my line making all my Fians turn to fire on them rather than the 200 infantry charging at them.
 
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Hopefully it's an unfinished system since there's no discernable use to it ATM.
I hope so too. I think the character trait system has a lot of potential.
If it had more effects and more notable effects which would influence the actual playstyle of the player that would be great.

I'm not sure on this because I didn't play Bannerlord properly for a while; but does the player gain traits according to his actions too?
If so that could be a great mechanic to gain relation with specific types of lords.
 
Also NPC party compositions will soon be based on personality traits as well (to an extent). Not sure exactly how this will work; More two-handers for aggressive characters or perhaps Horse archers for devious?
 
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