It's well-past time to update the art and titles of Leader Traits. The vast majority of them are total confusing nonsense.

[Fnhatic]

Leader traits are total nonsense, and the only real argument otherwise is "well I'm used to it so don't change it". They're bad, guys. They're *really* bad. The 'name' of the trait often has almost nothing to do with the trait itself, and most were made to just be lore-friendly and not functional. And the icons are largely nonsense or outright contradictory.

It's mostly all the legacy traits that have been in the game forever that are the worst offenders. I'm going to go through a brief list of the base traits.

EAGERNESS [-Ldr Cost/-Ldr Upkeep/+Ldr XP/-Ldr Cap]: - B - I guess no real major issues here. I think the name is bad, but it's okay, I suppose. Dogs are about 'loyalty' not 'eagerness'. But, okay.

RESILIENCE [+Ldr LIfespan]: C - The icon communicates nothing useful. It makes me think of increased armor and defense, not being healthy. The icon straight up is about something striking you and shrugging it off. It might be better suited if it also reduced negative traits, but it doesn't. This is a "could be better" trait.

ADAPTIONIST [+Ldr XP]: F- - The lizard icon. Again, this has nothing to do with the effect/name. First of all, it's about increasing XP. That doesn't mean you are "adaptable". Adaptability implies you can handle change, increased levels/XP doesn't mean that since you're still locked in to a path that's determined by RNG. Second, are lizards known for learning and intelligence? They are not. Lizards are the dumbest animals on the planet, utterly untrainable. So why is it a lizard? Third, adaptable? Lizards are the LEAST ADAPTABLE LIFEFORM ON THE PLANET. They're cold-blooded, they actually do just die if it gets a hair too hot or too cold for a little too long. Ask anyone who has kept reptiles, they're a pain in the ass.

COMPETENCE [+Ldr Trait Picks]: B - I mean 'adaptable' as a name works better here, since this gives you more choices, but I guess this works? The icon is kind of nonsense though. Also this trait is stupid but that's a different story.

ENERGY MOGUL [+Gov Technician Job Income]: C - The name is okay, but the icon is bad. The icon is a stack of coins. Coins implies trade. Now this does get a 'technical' pass to a C because 'technically' energy credits are a stand-in for money. But seriously, why the hell is it not just either the energy credit icon, or the technician job icon (which I also hate but that's a different story).

PRIVATE MINES [+Gov Miner Job Income]: A - Not really the best name, I guess, but the icon is literally the mining resource icon, the title has mining in it, and it increases mining. Wow, how is this so hard you guys messed it up on EVERY OTHER ICON? But I mean... even then, this is about jobs, so it should be the miner icon.

HOMESTEADER [+Gov Farmer Job Income]: B - The name is mediocre (homesteading doesn't really mean farming, it has more relationship with pioneers or colonies), the icon could be better (ie: farmer icon, guys, not some fancy planting graphic, that's way too much).

SCRAPPER [+Gov Metallurgist Job Income]: D - The icon is a big grabber arm. You literally build FOUNDRIES to create alloys from MINERALS, you aren't recycling. And in fact, the only thing in the entire game that is about 'recycling' is an edict to reduce consumer goods consumption. Bad icon (because it's not an alloy or factory icon), bad name (scrapping implies recycling ships, which there is a whole thing about), bad implication.

ENTREPRENEUR [+Gov Artisan Job Income]: F - The icon is a big bag of money. Except unlike Energy Mogul this can't even be argued from the 'Energy = Money' angle. It's straight up wrong. Clearly this is a case where the icon was made because of the title with zero regard for what it does in-game. This isn't increasing trade, it's trash all around.

UNIFIER [+Gov Unity Income]: D - The name matches, but the icon is dumb. It's the icon for 'bureaucrat' jobs. Why isn't it just the Unity resource icon? A stack of paper? If you aren't familiar with the bureaucrat job icon, this is nonsense. In fact, unlike the other +job incomes that specify the actual job, this one is not even about bureaucrats specifically making it outright inverted from what it means. Terrible.

CELEBRITY [+Gov Amenities]: F - It's two hands praying, implying it has something to do with peace or serenity or spiritualism. But it gives you Amenities, which has nothing to do with praying. And it's called 'Celebrity' which has nothing to do with praying OR amenities. This one is total nonsense in every possible way.

AGRARIAN UPBRINGING [+Gov Food Income]: B - I guess I got to this part of the list without accounting for the difference between "+ food from farmers" and "+ farming income" traits. Either way, okay title, okay icon (shoveling dirt). If anything, the +job traits should be about the job icons, the overall +income should be the resource icon.

RIGHTEOUS [-Gov Crime]: B - Okayish, I guess. But I'm personally of the mind that you should be able to figure out what they do just by the icon. It's a judge in a powdered wig, so it works, if you're familiar with English/Canadian/American judicial history. A little esoteric in that regard.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER [-Gov Blocker Clearing Cost]: C - To say nothing about how useless this trait is, it's some pretty mountains. The name works, but the whole point of clearing blockers is you're *destroying* things like pretty mountains. Like that's literally the name of one of the blocker technologies.

ARCHITECTURAL INTEREST [-Gov Building Upkeep]: A - It's an icon of a framed house, name fits too.

TRADE FOCUSED [+Gov Trade Income]: A+ - Oh my god literally the first trait where the name, icon, and what it does are in flawless harmony. No silly gimmicks with the title or icon. Why was this so difficult?

AGGRESSIVENESS [+Fleet Damage/Fire Rate]: B - It works okay, but the icon doesn't communicate anything useful. You only can know it by memorizing it, it communicates very little on its own.

PRUDENCE [+Fleet Range/+Fleet Disengage]: F- - It's the icon of a guy running. What does running have to do with "prudence"? Prudence is about your good judgement. How is a guy running, implying speed, translating to longer-ranged weapons? Or being prudent? This is genuinely one of the absolute worst combinations of name/icon/trait effect.

UNYIELDING [+Fleet Hull Points/-Fleet Disengage]: A - The anvil implies strength or forged iron. And it makes you stronger. And the 'unyielding' name fits both effects nicely.

ENGINEER [+Fleet Hull Regen]: A- I almost want to knock this down because this is by far the worst trait in the entire game, because it outright lies in the tooltip - the actual effect does basically nothing. But the icon is a wrench and it's about fixing your fleet. Cool.

TRICKSTER [+Fleet Disengage/-Fleet FTL Damage/+Fleet Cloaking ]: C - Good icon and name, too bad it has very little to do with the effects of the trait. Or maybe it does. I don't know, it's unclear. Trickster giving you cloaking matches, but cloaking is not the primary bonus of this trait since it's gated behind the second tier. I genuinely don't know what the emergency FTL/disengage has to do with being 'tricky'. That's called retreating, not tricking someone.

BUTCHER [+Army Damage/+Army Collateral]: A - A big dangerous-looking axe, axes are wielded by barbarian footsoldiers. Got it. My problem with this is that this is an ARMY-ONLY trait, the icon should reflect that somehow (honestly, same for all the Fleet-only traits too).

CAREFULNESS [-Fleet Orbital Bomb Pop Damage/+Army Disengage/-Army Collateral Damage]: D - The name is "okay" but could be better. The icon though is so freaking bad it's an insult. We have things called 'shields' on our ships. An icon of a shield implies it has something to do with defense, or the shield technology. What in the hell does it have to do with 'being careful'? Nothing. Literally nothing. Call this one 'Target Discrimination' and make the icon look like some terrain, on the right side is a little city shape, on the left side is a laser striking something from above, leaving the city unharmed.

IRON FIST [+Gov Slave Income]: A - Name needs work, but the icon at least matches slavery.

ENLISTER [+Gov Army Build Speed/Cost]: F - Literally what the hell is this icon? It looks like someone stir-frying math equations. This would be a D but the icon is so utterly ridiculous I downgraded it to an F.

VOID HUNTER [+Fleet Speed/+Fleet Range/+Fleet Fauna Dmg]: B - Maybe an A-. I get what it's going for, but given everything this trait does, I think the bow-and-arrow undersells it a bit. The icon makes me think of just +range.

INTUITION [+Science Anomaly Research]: F - What the hell is this? Are birds known for intuition? They are not. Are birds known for exploring anomalies? Also no. Does having more intuition mean you can discover things faster? Well, I guess, yes. Either way, trash icon, trash name.

ROAMER [+Science Survey Speed]: C - Well, I guess I get the footprints thing, but this is a trait about exploration speed, while footprints implies a slow roaming attempt at a steady pace. Doesn't really sell the trait.

ARCHAEOLOGIST [+Science Excavation Speed]: A+ - Again, a "how did you screw up everything else but somehow get this one right?" trait. Perfect name, perfect icon, matches what it does, done.

PERFECTIONIST [+Science Anomaly Discovery Chance]: C - I have no idea what the hell the icon has to do with the name, and neither of them communicate what the trait actually is as effectively as any other ideas could, like a magnifying glass on a planet.

VOID TRACKER [+Science Gravity Snare]: B - Okay this one would be an A but who the hell called it 'void TRACKER' and not 'void TRAPPER'? It's about trapping. I mean that's pretty nit-picky, I know.

-----

That's just the basic traits.

Other notes:

1) Empire Councilor effects have a special icon. Why not put a special icon on for fleet/army effects, and especially for Governor traits?

2) There's way more problems with the rest too. It took me hundreds of hours to realize the "Skirmisher" trait isn't a stick figure throwing a discus.

3) Prioritize communicating information over getting 'cute' with your names. I don't care if it's not 'muh immersion'. Something like 'Eye For Talent', which gives leader XP, should literally be an icon that just says "+XP%". That's all it freaking needs to do is communicate information.

 

[Kataclyszm]

his has nothing to do with the effects/name. What the hell does resilience have to do with upkeep? Am I paying less for health insurance? It doesn't extend their life, make them less resistant to damage/negative traits, or anything. And honestly, even if it did those things, the icon would still be bad, because it communicates nothing useful. It makes me think of increased armor and defense, not being healthy.

It does give them more lifespan, IF they aren't already immortal.

It's the icon for 'bureaucrat' jobs. Why isn't it just the Unity resource icon?

Because for some reason the people at Paradox think chalk-nosed bureacrats' presence increase national unity.

But it gives you Amenities, which has nothing to do with praying. And it's called 'Celebrity' which has nothing to do with praying OR amenities.

No, it gives you Culture Worker jobs. You on a Gestalt by chance?

 

[Fnhatic]

It does give them more lifespan, IF they aren't already immortal.

You're right, it does - that was my mistake: my leaders are immortal already and that piece of the tooltip deletes itself when that condition is met. That should upgrade it a bit, but the icon is still silly.

No, it gives you Culture Worker jobs. You on a Gestalt by chance?

The primary effect is about amenities. And no, I'm not Gestalt. I used the Debug Traits Menu, which hides certain tooltips. It doesn't change much about Celebrity. The 'home planet' bonuses are so far from a guarantee to exist that I do not consider them as the point of the trait. You literally are rolling so many infinitesimally rare dice to get that synergized with your leader that it's silly to consider it. Specific traits are rare-enough, the odds of getting it on a leader with the correct home planet for the relevant job is not even worth considering because it doesn't happen.

Frankly I think there's far far too much RNG in Leaders right now because of that. We have a million traits, the RNG is silly and locks you out too easily, and has no flexibility for the player. It's not about putting good leaders in charge of things, it's about struggling to just shove them where their mixed-bag of bad traits does the least damage.

Like imagine if the government worked like that, where out of every single person in the country who has political aspirations, literally zero of them had even a single functional ability to manage something like the FAA, so you just put someone in charge who is really good at growing potatoes. "Sorry guys maybe in five years, out of our population of billions, we may find a guy who knows how to direct air traffic."

 

[jedavis]

Frankly I think there's far far too much RNG in Leaders right now because of that. We have a million traits, the RNG is silly and locks you out too easily, and has no flexibility for the player. It's not about putting good leaders in charge of things, it's about struggling to just shove them where their mixed-bag of bad traits does the least damage.

Agreed. Although the fact that negative traits only works on certain scales (leaving gaps to shuffle people off into) seems wrong, too.

In any case, I applaud your thoroughness in working through examples of what you mean in the initial post.

 

[Fnhatic]

The entire leader system is so unsatisfying, and the only real semblance of control can only ever be found by going all in on the Aptitude tradition tree. And it's just about increasing your RNG rolls.

Agreed. Although the fact that negative traits only works on certain scales (leaving gaps to shuffle people off into) seems wrong, too.

In any case, I applaud your thoroughness in working through examples of what you mean in the initial post.

I'd rather have more research to influence this, Edicts, civics, and especially just let us spend Unity or even Influence to guide them. In fact how about just that? Reroll on skill-upfor the cost of influence.

Not gonna lie I cheat hard on leaders and abuse the hell out of update_leader_pool. The fact that I can hammer through 10-20 rerolls just to find one Level 1-3 leader with rudimentary starting skills I want is terrible. A little RNG is fine but this isn't how real people function. Why would my decorated fleet admiral suddenly want to develop skills to lead a ground army? That's silly. The "veteran" class lockout helps a little bit it's imperfect... Especially on State Officials, whose veteran classes are so extreme that you end up taking the exact same +trade% on almost every single one.

Also the negative traits are also so extreme. Some are tolerable, some are outright crippling. The one that adds five alloys a month to their upkeep is freaking wild.

 

[grommile]

Agreed. Although the fact that negative traits only works on certain scales (leaving gaps to shuffle people off into) seems wrong, too.

This doesn't bother me that much. Finding roles in government to put brilliant but toxic people where their vices will do minimal harm is a long and (sqrt(dis))honorable tradition.

 

[Vorpaliminal]

In fairness to the traits that put jobs on the leader's homeworld, they originally gave you resources just for having them employed and were thus implied to be them contributing some of their own assets to the empire. This explains Scrapper to an extent based on the description they gave it. Celebrity doesn't make sense, but that's because it was originally called Venerated, and just gave you unity for them existing while employed (Spiritualist leaders were more likely to get this trait).

Another issue is that at some point the team decided that leader traits should be nouns* so that when translated to other languages they would be gender neutral. I was not a fan of this change, and it appears other people weren't either because they're being changed back to the way they were before. Part of this change over to nouns* made a lot of trait names not make sense, like Intuition, which was originally Carefree, while Perfectionist was originally called Meticulous (these traits also had opposite effects back in 1.0 when you could fail anomalies). The reason that Unifier is so tied to Bureaucrats is because the trait was originally just called Bureaucrat, back when you increased Administrative Capacity with Bureaucrats (they didn't give unity back then) and if you use debugtooltips while hovering over the trait its ID is leader_trait_bureaucrat, which you can also see with a bunch of other traits that were renamed to twist them into a new role or to comply with the gender neutral thing. Prudence used to be called Cautious, and it's not a man running, it's a man walking, to show that the leader likes to take things slow, while Carefulness used to be called Restrained and only applied to army collateral damage/disengagement chance.

*Originally said they were changed to adjectives, but got it backwards.

 

[grommile]

adjectives

Nouns.

They used to be adjectives.

 

[Vorpaliminal]

Nouns.

They used to be adjectives.

My mistake. So put off by it I didn't check to get that straight.

 

[Fnhatic]

Another issue is that at some point the team decided that leader traits should be nouns* so that when translated to other languages they would be gender neutral.

Please tell me they didn't do that for the reason I assume they did that...

 

[Vorpaliminal]

Please tell me they didn't do that for the reason I assume they did that...

I don't know what reason you think it was for, but the point was that translating to things like Spanish or French would result in grammatical inconsistencies. I ran a quick search with "language gendered adjectives" and found a satisfactory answer.

 

[Lazy Name]

Some of the logos are a bit hard to read at first glance, but it's not a huge problem that really deserves to have time spent on a fix in my opinion. As for the names, I personally actually prefer the stranger names over literal names like "trade focused", "bureaucrat", etc; I think they're better for giving personality and flavour to a leader instead of just being listed skills.

Please tell me they didn't do that for the reason I assume they did that...

The reason seems pretty obvious? Gendered terms when leaders can be female, male, or neither = extra work or inaccurate names.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I'd like to see some traits be applicable to more jobs. Why can't a genius governor be better at planet administration leading to more trade or less empire size. Why can't a perfectionist admiral have a better trained crew leading to faster firing rate or more accuracy.

I'd also like to see the purely negative traits (or at least most of them) go away and instead have other traits be a mix. For example, a perfectionist leader might do something better than others but at the expense of taking longer or costing a bit more. A genius could be very good at things but cause a bit of unhappiness as they act like they are better than everybody else.

 

[BrokenSky]

In most cases, the weirdness stems from traits being reworked in the aftermath of Paragons dropping.

CELEBRITY [+Gov Amenities]: F - It's two hands praying, implying it has something to do with peace or serenity or spiritualism. But it gives you Amenities, which has nothing to do with praying. And it's called 'Celebrity' which has nothing to do with praying OR amenities. This one is total nonsense in every possible way.

This used to just give +unity and was based on being personally devout, if I recall correctly. Then they reworked it, renamed it and reworked it again.

PRUDENCE [+Fleet Range/+Fleet Disengage]: F- - It's the icon of a guy running. What does running have to do with "prudence"? Prudence is about your good judgement. How is a guy running, implying speed, translating to longer-ranged weapons? Or being prudent? This is genuinely one of the absolute worst combinations of name/icon/trait effect.

This sort of makes sense, in a Coward (keep the enemy far away) -> Cautious (Coward sounds bad) -> Prudent (Cautious is already a different trait) sort of way.
It should still be change though, I agree.

Though personally, I'd probably combine a whole load of personality traits (so Cautious would have different effects for Military or Scientific leaders, for example).

 

[Fnhatic]

Combining them would be a good way to alleviate the RNG crimes against God that this game forces you to endure with leaders.

I wish negative traits were softer and made more manageable to have so it was just a quirk of the leader. The one with 5+ alloys upkeep is insane. Dude's mere existence is apparently stealing more resources than it costs to maintain an entire fucking warship. That'd be the modern equivalent of a politician stealing an entire F-35 squadron's worth of funding... Every fucking month.

 

[Eladrin]

Nouns.

They used to be adjectives.

What was, will be.

One of the changes in 4.0 is reverting back to the old name style for leader traits in English. The original change was intended to make life easier for localization, but didn't work out well.

 

[Zaacplot300]

What was, will be.

One of the changes in 4.0 is reverting back to the old name style for leader traits in English. The original change was intended to make life easier for localization, but didn't work out well.

Out of curiosity, does this mean that leader traits are still getting rebalanced to compensate for getting less of them in 4.0 than in 3.14.x? Wasn't sure if that was still a plan or not since the only leader change that was in the beta was the reduction in traits gained.

 

[MadCow94]

I would love to see traits get combined and made co-functional. I take Righteous far too often on Admirals that will never, ever govern a planet just for the RP value of thinking of this Joan-of-Arc type Admiral launching attacks.

 

[HFY]

Out of curiosity, does this mean that leader traits are still getting rebalanced to compensate for getting less of them in 4.0 than in 3.14.x? Wasn't sure if that was still a plan or not since the only leader change that was in the beta was the reduction in traits gained.

Yeah, agreed.

What I wanted to see was half the traits and each trait twice as good.

Just getting half the traits isn't enough, each trait must be worth at least 2 of the previous trait picks ("at least" because some were very low-value).

 

[Zaacplot300]

I initially suspected they wanted to hold off rebalancing the traits until the second half of the beta. When that didn’t happen I guessed that maybe it would pop up in the post-beta streams. Neither of those happened so my current guesses are the Custodians are working on it in a different branch or they quietly walked back on buffing the traits and now we have nerfed leaders.

I’m dreading the later but I’m still hoping that it’s the former that’s the case. If they’re going out of their way to rename a bunch of traits maybe it means it’s still happening, but I’d prefer an explicit confirmation that that’s the case.