Putting everything in rows of six seems really weird. Defeats the purpose of a tier list if you're going to structure it for tidiness and not based on what deserves to be where.

Another positive from diligent os that when you get stressed out you often get to pick athletic as one of your stress traits. This just makes getting that tier 1 stress break a positive.

I hate so much the moment when your heir have to choose between impatient,craven and gluttonous and you know he will suck

sadistic is (for me) top tier, especially for starting character. going to war = prisoners, prisoners = stress relief (and +5 intrigue +5 prowess from one perk) aaaand... more dread. doesn't matter how fast it ticks down, when You can at any moment go to prison and get some fun. afraid and terrified vassals don't really join factions or schemes, and if You're not doing any hostile scheme, just try killing any brave vassals, so everybody is afraid. I don't have to say anything about how much stuff player can get from terrified vassals, right? :D

One thing I've noticed, which makes temperate quite a lot better than stubborn in my opinion is, that it gives an actual health boost to your overall health and makes you live longer, whereas stubborn only counters negatives, which just helps if you get Ill or have to take flagellant or so as a stressevent trait.

Calm used to be S Tier as you could meditate to get permanent stat increases to your learning attribute, which is amazing to progress through your innovations, as well as for playing tall. But after the latest update i have not gotten a single stat boost from meditation, as well as the trait description no longer mentions meditation to gain theologian insights.

i cant believe this dude didnt talk about the stress loss benefits of sadistic, where stress become a non issue, while he's creaming himself over a bit of stress loss in other underwhelming traits lol

I think both generous and greedy are S tier, just depends if you play tall or build huge empire

I have to so hard disagree on intrigue. Intrigue is easily better than diplomacy because unlike with diplomacy, you have actual interactions and can influence the world more. Hook fabrication makes for fantastic way to earn money or alliances. It can guarantee inspired people in your court, it makes messing with enemy empires so much more fun because you can fabricate a strong hook on an emperor, take his kids as wards and flip their culture or religion. Creating either a generally weaker empire in future or flipping an entire nation towards your culture/religion. Not to speak of making use of your spymaster. Then you have assassinations which can give you free reign over a country by being a diarch. Or you know, you systematically wipe out a dynasty until you get a good marriage. They also take out of the picture strong rulers who buff their nation via strong stats. Assassinations themselves also break truces. Lastly, abductions can be OP. You kidnap heirs, ransom for lot of money. Technically can also kidnap people to demand conversions. Alternatively just cheese wars by executing the kidnap event just as you declare war. Thus instantly winning or kidnapping their heir.

Thank you for sharing and posting.

Super nice explanations and in depth, thank you very much!

greedy was is fun if you play in some place like Serbia and try to go become super rich. Stewardship tree income per stress level plus greedy gives you +65% gold on lvl3 stress. I played it once and made almost 200 per month playing Serbia as a vassal of the Byzantines by the 40th in game year. edit: wanted to mention that it may not be exactly sustainable but its still usefull for maxing your provinces really fast

Love your distribution, very well done

well done looks great

Tiers aside, was helpful learning some of the more intricate aspects and uses for each. Thanks. 😎

Another thing. While Greedy is situational, it can easily be one of the best traits for actually making money. Assuming you combine it with some perks. You go high stress, start pumping out money in expense of your health. Which CAN be a positive. Especially if you're stuck with an old character who refuses to die. The 25% income boost from Greedy is no joke. Combine that with some stewardship, avaricious etc and you're printing money. Lot of newer players are allergic to being stressed and while it's bad, fair amount of perks and artifacts give some ridiculous boosts to 'per stress level' buffs. Just to compensate for the downside. All you gotta do is to very careful and smart about it. You usually never want to go above second level.

Virtuous trait rather than "pious". I broadly agree with your list and love you put Brave high up which I agree with; on another list I've seen they put it much further down which I honestly just don't get. Yeah, the problem with all these lists is that "it depends". If it's a 'virtue' or 'sin' the trait could easily go up or down a level. Also depends on if late game or not (Generous, as you said, is probably late game). Also, depends how it synergizes with other traits and other things no doubt too. Lastly, shouldn't underestimate how useful it is if you have two or three virtuous traits which can give you a huge boost if your realm has one faith, especially during succession.

Respect for putting brave in A tier because in all of my campaigns i didn't ever die in a battle when i had the brave trait i usually don't let my ruler lead armies if his prowess and martial is low so brave for me has no down sides really What i disagree about is martial because i think that martial is the second most important after stewardship because i kinda lead my armies alot but i think i value it because the difference in play style as i don't play tall as mush as i play wide

I agree with some, but I want to point out two things: virtues also give you +10 general opinion with same faith and +15 with zealot vassals, and the second is many traits you said give you vassal and liege opinion, like content, actually changes YOUR opinion of them, rather than their opinion on you, which does nothing for player. So it's great to have content vassals or content liege

Has any one else noticed that 40% of every character in the game now has the Sadistic trait?

Great video, I have 1,500 hours in and I guess I need to focus on the achievements because that's a flex lol, would love to play sometime!

I think tier lists are a bit like talking with a friend about the traits, which ones you like etc. for when none of your friends likes PDX games :D

I recently hit 3000 hours played, I also almost exclusively play Christian & Muslim, so we are definitely in the same head space. There are only 3 I disagree with. I think Generous is a bit too high (I usually start as a 1-2 county Count, so 10% is punishing early game, especially if you're near tribals and get raided causing -50% on top of that). Brave I personally think is S-Tier, I do usually start as a female though so as you mentioned attraction opinion is huge (even works on the Pope, so it instantly negates the female ruler opinion loss), I also think I value Martial more than you in general. Lastly is Deceitful, more for roleplay reasons than mechanical, I just hate it, it's F-Tier for me, I also refuse to recruit any NPC with Deceitful even if their stats are godly. Other than those 3, I agree essentially top to bottom.

this is the goofiest tier list of all time.

The health boost in temperate is better than stubborn because the boost is a net positive to your health, while the health boost in stubborn is only countering health penalties. Basically the health boost in stubborn only works when you’re sick. While the health boost in temperate works all the time. That being said, I agree both are S tier. Great job. I did disagree with you in that greedy imo is not an F tier trait. I’ll take greedy over compassionate, arbitrary, fickle, deceitful or sadistic any day. But your criticism was valid. Also, eccentric I love. I’ll place it right behind diligent. I was surprised you valued it so low. Like 20% to lifestyle is amazing, like that trait it’s totally broken.

cool list however I would argue you downplay greedy, in early game you have few vassal this wouldn't matter much, and with all the dlc you can use activities to boost vassal opinions + if your vassals are of your dynasty you get +5 opinion if your past life gave them titles you can get up to +25 opinions. at the start of next life have some feasts+ tour would be enough. Addition if you have religion with holding temple tenet (lay clergy) you get +15 opinion when for religious icon. With all of these +opinion really have never get into civil war after succession. Another thing is traits that I think you should mention is the synergize of traits and culture traditions. for example: culture with agrarian like Egypt get 20% gold from flood plains or farm lands from patient and diligent. culture with fervent temple builder get -15% gold for humble and -25% for zealous pair them with religion that allow you hold temples to maximize expansion. Thirdly, lustful trait give you an accolades that buff seduce chance if you like to role play. Brave give you valiant boost 30% army damage. And lastly, using intrigue you can play kidnapper demand for payment to build up your domain, impatient can help fasten plots.

Honestly i dont find craven bad if you dont plan on going the torturer or prowess route. You get so many destress events when you travel and act like a coward. Even leading your own troops isnt as bad since you will likely never get captured.

I have to disagree hard on impatient. I play exclusively intrigue lifestyle which is also the most underrated lifestyle and that expedite schemes decision (although only once per 5 years) combined with twice schemed can do wonders. I've done some rough calculations that you can save 10-15 years of scheming per character with that decision. And on top of that, you get +20% monthly prestige!

Compassionate is dreadful despite its bonuses. There is no way to play Intrigue or Stewardship with it as you can hardly do the fun things like blackmailing & fabricating hooks, without becoming stressed out. I can understand Intigue but it annoys me seeing it on characters (AI or Human) going on natural Stewardship lifestyle, without any help from player.

content is def B it has no negatives just positives

generous ha the downside that you cant use the demand pament mechanic very well

i just got eccentric, ive never had it before, seems really rare

Yeah, we have totally different play style, I dislike the generous and forgiving, since it makes it harder to act against people.

i just start the game and my character is both vengefull and sadistic, there's some aspect of the game that i haven't had the chance to explore yet, what's the point of being like by your vassals, i have -100 with all of them and only a few of them revolt? and what stress does, it always go down and never goes up?

I would put eccentric at A or S

Good-list ,, i think we should consider relegion ,cultur and build - I assume u are into stewardship, diplomacy and some martial

Hello, I appreciate the video and I subscribed, but I want to point out something: Some of your rankings are inconsistent within your logic, not just by other peoples' preferences. For example, I can't see how you rate honest over content. You said you'd rate learning and diplomacy stats of the same value, according to you, the stress loss opportunity for honest isn't very useful. At the same time, content has flat-out increased stress loss and significantly better opinion modifiers while only losing 1 intrigue, not 4. Not to mention honest basically locks away the whole intrigue mechanic in the game due to stress gain, but you said it's not part of your playstyle, so you don't care about it. I just picked this example, since you rated the traits after each other. I didn't want to state my different opinion on certain traits, but rather shine light on my impression that your opinion is not consistent within itself. Probably many people rate traits depending on how much they like the icon :)

compassionate is stupid, why do i gain a 100 stress for killing a sadistic child murderer, it's only not F tier because it gives 1 piety if ur christian, if i was norse it's F tier for me

Of course my tier list would be better than your tier list, duh!

Arbitrary literally the best trait in the game after diligent you are tripping, but I guess ambitious above c tier already should tell me that the author of this list is lacking in braincells. also paranoid+greedy work well together for a kamikaze tall stewardship build(make money at max stress for like 25 years and die)

A good idea with the video my man but I think it`s rather badly implemented, you should redo it more in tune with the ''you wanna` play supreme leader admiral general aladeen, you need this traits (wrathfull, brave, zealot)'', or ''diplomacy god - gregarious, generous paired with some diligent or trusting/forgiving'' or jeff bezos style with ambitious diligent and greedy/just... something of this nature, in my opinion...

I feel like this being your opinion should be assumed, but sadly in this age you have to state it.