New Trait Ratings

My opinion is that all of the new traits are fairly well balanced, although Charismatic is a very powerful trait which, just like Financial, is useful in any situation. Here's my look on the trait trio.

Charismatic

Charismatic is a universally useful powerful trait. I'm hard-pressed to imagine a situation where extra happiness is not useful. A free +1 happiness bonus equals what you would get from founding a religion and having it in all your cities. The second +1 from Monuments (which replace Obelisks from the original game) is equivalent to having a Temple from a religion. Those Monuments are a pretty high priority building in many starts, to expand your borders, and having them double as happiness boosters is certainly a positive thing.

Most of the time, you are going to think of this bonus as a nice boost. However, sometimes it makes the difference between having a good start and a poor one. This is true in situations where you have no immediately accessible luxury resources in the vicinity of your starting positions. In that case, Charismatic makes the start survivable. The bonus from BroadcastTowers is, as you would expect, not very useful – it's a late-game building, by which time you should generally have more than enough happiness unless you are at war.

The other bonus of Charismatic is also very useful. -25% XP needed for promotions means that you can promote your units earlier. You still need 2 and 4 XP for the first and second promotions respectively (second promotion needing one less XP is hardly relevant) , but the third promotion comes at 8 XP instead of 10, and the fourth one comes at 14 instead of 17. Over time, I've grown to have a lot of respect for this bonus.

As I see it, the real bonus isn't that 8 XP promotion. Sure, it's nice. For mounted units with a Barracks and Stable, you get 5 XP upon production, and after two victories it's probably going to promote. The real bonus, to me, is the greater ease of getting highly promoted units. Units with four and five promotions become really good – you can specialize them to be uber city takers, or just the best all-round combat units for the battlefields. With the Charismatic trait, you are going to have more of such elites, which is only a good thing.

Of course, this also makes one trick that everyone loves easier. Specifically, having City Raider III Macemen to upgrade to Grenadiers later. With Charismatic, such Macemen should not be in short supply, and many players have learnt their might when upgraded to Grenadiers.

Finally, the cheaper promotions are also useful for builders on the defense. In this case, there's a lot of pleasure to be derived from the ability to have City Garrison III promoted units with only 8 XP. And I'm not even going to mention what the combination of Protective/Charismatic can do defensively.

Charismatic, undoubtedly, is going to become one of the favourites of the Civ4 community.

Imperialistic

Imperialistic is this is a rather interesting trait as well. It gives you a rather interesting ability to shoot yourself in the foot. +50% Settler production sounds pretty good, and it is. Note that it doesn't mean you build Settlers in half as many turns as non-Imperialistic civs. It's actually about one third faster. In the early game this means that you will be able to expand a little bit faster, getting your second and third city in place sooner. Sometimes, this will make you lucky enough to grab a spot before an enemy would. But, of course, there's a little drawback - you found cities earlier, you pay maintenance earlier. Get too excited about faster Settler production, and you will build more cities than you can afford at that point in time, which in Civ4 is a sure way to each an all-out economic crisis.

+100% Great General emergence means that you gain twice as many Great General points from all battles. It means that you'll be getting your first General (Normal speed assumed) after 15 victorious battles at most, though more likely 10 or even less. Of course, the usefulness of this is tied directly to the usefulness of Great Generals themselves. Given that Generals are a nice boost to your military situation, overall, this bonus results in a better military. A couple of extra Military Academies for more units produced, or a couple more Military Instructors for a better trained army is pretty good.

I also see this as a good builder bonus. Builders will typically fight few battles - hence, they also tend to have fewer Great Generals. An Imperialistic builder is much more likely to get a second General, even from fighting just defensive wars, and even a third General isn't entirely out of the question. Then again, most Imperialistic leaders (with the exception of Victoria) make damn good warmongers. Don't underestimate the ability of going on a Praetorian-induced rampage as Julius Caesar, bringing in numerous Great Generals as you do that.

Protective – I think this is a trait which has the potential to cause a lot of debate. As the name would indicate, it's a rather useful trait for defence. The AI, however, has always had issues at this specific part of the game, mounting a strong offensive vs. cities (although admittedly, there have been improvements in Warlords). Hence, the boosted city defence is going to be useful in some games, but not all. Builders are probably going to benefit more, as they are more likely to be attacked on their own turf. In multiplayer, it's going to be a nice boost for city defenders, as attacks in online games tend to be more brutal.

However, the part of the Protective bonus that gives Drill I is noteworthy. Drill I, for archery units, is a considerable bonus. It immediately opens up the possibility of further promotions along the same line, allowing you to have Drill II or even Drill III units upon production. Also, Drill I now gives access to the unit-type-specific promotions: Shock and Cover. That means you can promote a Protective Archer, with its free Drill I, immediately to Shock.

In single player games, you're going to notice that Protective civilizations are a bit of a pain to attack early on. The AI doesn't hesitate to build Barracks, so it will have City Garrison II promoted Archers soon, with Drill I at that. As you'd expect, these cities are slightly harder to attack.

Protective

My favourite part of the Protective trait, though, is the Crossbowman unit. With a free Drill I, it becomes very potent when promoted along the Drill line. First strikes generally give a greater advantage if otherwise the combat odds are in favour of your unit or even. Crossbowmen have odds well in favour of them vs. melee units, and generally good odds out in the field. Promoting them with further Drill promotions makes Protective Crossbowmen very good field units indeed.

On defence, Protective becomes even more powerful if coupled with Charismatic. It can mean City Garrison III + Drill I at 5 XP, and, say, Drill II at 8 XP. Those are some wickedly good defenders. Churchill has this trait combination, and if he's your selected target for an early expansion war, be sure to bring more troops!

Gunpowder units also receive these two free promotions. City Garrison doesn't hurt, of course, particularly if you are actually going to use some Musketmen or Riflemen to defend cities. I find that it happens often enough, even if only for a few turns in a newly conquered city. Drill I, though, only gives gunpowder units a chance at one first strike, without access to further Drill promotions. Not really a significant bonus then, but still gives your units a slight edge.

Cheaper Walls and Castles is no groundbreaking bonus. Walls are already pretty cheap, but they are more useful in Warlords, too. Walls are required to build Castles, and Castles now give +1 trade route. Depending on the city and the general situation, it can be a fairly good boost of commerce. In the original Civ4, I would rarely build Walls, only in cities I was sure would be attacked, and almost never built Castles, particularly given how soon the arrival of gunpowder units made them obsolete. In Warlords, however, I will build Walls more often, to gain access to a Castle later. After all, having one in each city provides a bonus to economy equivalent to running Free Market. If you are Protective, you should probably take the time to build those Walls and Castles now.

My bottom line for Protective is, it's a fairly situational trait, and one that you actually have to try to make the most use of. The rewards are worth it in the end, though.