trigger · has_country_leader_with_trait

Hands-On Usage

Commonly found in political events, advisor systems, or national focus trees, used to determine whether the current country's leader possesses a specific trait, thereby triggering different story branches or restricting certain options. For example, in a mod focused on leadership transitions, you can detect whether a leader has a negative trait to trigger a civil unrest event.

# In event options, only available when the leader has the "incompetent" trait
option = {
    name = my_event.option_a
    trigger = {
        has_country_leader_with_trait = incompetent
    }
    add_stability = -0.05
}

Synergy

• [has_country_leader](/wiki/trigger/has_country_leader): First check whether a specific leader is in office, then use has_country_leader_with_trait to confirm their trait. Combining both allows precise targeting of a specific person's specific state.
• [add_country_leader_trait](/wiki/effect/add_country_leader_trait): After detecting that a leader currently lacks a certain trait, use this effect to add it, forming a complete "check → assign" logic chain.
• [has_country_leader_ideology](/wiki/trigger/has_country_leader_ideology): When combined with ideology detection, you can construct compound conditions of "specific faction leader + specific trait," useful for highly customized event trigger thresholds.
• [add_political_power](/wiki/effect/add_political_power): After passing the available block with leader traits as conditions, pair it with political power rewards or penalties to reinforce the feedback on how "excellent/incompetent leaders" affect national policy.

Common Pitfalls

1. Trait names must match exactly with the leader_traits definition, including case sensitivity and underscores. Even a single character difference will silently fail (the condition always returns false), and the game will not report an error, making it extremely difficult to debug.
2. This trigger only checks the currently ruling leader. If a character simultaneously serves as a general or advisor, the traits they hold in those positions will not be detected by this trigger. To check military commander traits, use the relevant trigger designed for unit leaders instead.