I was going to actually make a unit as Umber and I was surprised to see I had traits available. My curiosity peaked so i rolled a kingdom and they had 3x as many traits to chose from. That's an awful big disparity between kingdom and empire.

While I'm discussing traits, I thought I would mention a few ideas I had on them.

Trait Progression

I would like to see units start with only 1 or 2 trait slots and more slots open up with research in the warfare tree. Maybe the "training" selections for troops (veteran, elite etc) could give the unit an extra trait slot.

Example

So if I had a spearman unit with 3 traits, The following would occur when I build the unit

All Units would get the first trait

Veteran Units would get the 1st and 2nd traits

Elite Units would get all 3 traits

Counter-Traits

I really like the negative traits. I would like to see no limit to the negative traits because I for one enjoy sending hordes of peasants to their death (Ashigaru from Shogun 2 FTW).

Trait Unlocking

Make it more clear in the research screen that traits will be unlocked.

Anyway just some thoughts.