When you open up the diplomacy tab on your screen, you would notice that under the picture of other faction leader, there are 2 traits that always appear in this format:
[first trait]/[second trait]
The traits appear in 3 different colours: Red, Yellow or Green. This is depending on how 'good' the trait is, with green being 'the best' trait and red being 'the worst' trait. For example, a trait like 'Steadfast' would be green in colour but a trait like 'Devious' would be red. Do these traits actually affect anything? In my case, one of the faction leaders have the following traits:
Does the fact that he is 'Reliable' affect anything? Does it mean that I can rely on him more to help me out?
Here is another interesting thing. As you can see, his faction is currently at war with 4 others. On the other hand, they have no Peace treaties with other factions. Is this because of the fact that his other trait is 'Warlike'? Causing him to be more aggressive when it comes to waging war?
Best Answer
Both trait actually do affect gameplay to some extent.
The first trait represents aggressivity, or how likely they are to declare war on other players.
The second one stands for their reliability, or how likely they are to respect agreements or pacts.
Basically, a warlike/reliable leader might or might not be a good ally; might be, because he'll most likely help you fight your enemies and probably won't betray you; might not be, because you'll be dragged into his own wars and might at times even be forced to take sides when he decides to go to war with one of your allies, which would force you into betraying one side or the other.
At least, that's the theory. According to this steam community thread, it seems like allies don't betray you without a good reason, even if they are untrustworthy. Might be a bug or an oversight in the AI.
Your own leader also has these, which change depending on your past choices; the more you break pacts or agreements, the less trustworthy you become; the more you declare war on others, the more warlike you become.