That Was Ages Ago – Trait XP Decay

A script mod that makes trait experience decay if a character hasn’t done a related activity for many years, making it harder to stack powerful lifestyle trait bonuses.

In the base game, lifestyle traits can be leveled up by repeatedly taking part in related activities, granting ever more powerful bonuses. This makes perfect sense, as it rewards a character for dedicating their time to an activity. What doesn’t make much sense is that this trait experience never decays, so someone who was master hunter in their 20s still gets the same benefits for the rest of their life even if they haven’t hunted for 40 years. Similarly, the great tournament champions who haven’t picked up a sword or bow in decades still have the modifiers they earned in their youth. This system incentivizes the player to max out a trait and then start working on the next one, stacking their modifiers, making their characters severely overpowered by the time they reach middle-age.

To counter this problem, this mod introduces a decay mechanism to most traits that use XP. Decay starts five years after the last time the trait gained experience, by default it takes 15 years of inactivity for a character to lose 2/3 of their XP, so if a trait starts from max XP it takes about 25 years to lose all but the base benefits. Gaining any XP stops the decay and resets the 5 year grace period. Note that since the game does not register XP gain above 100, characters will temporarily dip below 100 after 5 years even if they regularly gain relevant trait XP.

The net effect of this mod is that the player now can only choose a few traits to keep at maximum level and must let the others decay to their baseline.

Intellect traits affect the time scale of trait XP decay. Expect more intelligent characters to lose XP at a slower rate.

To keep the game challenging, conquerors and great khans are not affected by XP decay.

Compatible with essentially all mods, it can be put anywhere in the load order.

It is safe to add this mod to an existing game, but I recommend making a backup save. To remove the mod enact the decision to disable it (see screenshot). The mod can be re-enabled at any time with the same decision.

XP decay is also implemented for traits from the following mods:

• Tournament Champion Lifestyle Trait
• Patron Lifestyle Trait
• Companion Lifestyle Trait
• Multilingual Lifestyle Trait
• Seasoned Lord
• War Dynamics: Commander Focus
• Councillor’s experience trait

This mod is part of my More Late Game Drama & Challenge collection.

The mod is in English, but Chinese translation is available here .

I have tested this with my mod list and without mods, but there might still be bugs. If you encounter any, please post a comment.