What is the Best Trait?

[OzzyKP]

I agree with that.

[Arrian]

Dominae makes good points about ORG. It's true that in order for ORG to really help you, you gotta get big (either via conquest or having some room to peacefully expand), but it doesn't directly assist you in getting big. But then again, that's why civs have more than one trait, eh?

I'm probably undervaluing Philo. I still think I'm not managing my GP production as well as I should. I've improved quite a bit w/regard to city specialization, but not on making and managing GP pumps.

-Arrian

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Also, perhaps Financial should be toned down a bit in a patch or expansion pack. Civ4 is supposed to be all about balance, but when one trait is over 3 times more popular than the next best one, that is pretty damn unbalanced. Maybe change it to just give one extra commerce for all cottage/town/etc squares.

I agree, nerf financial!

Originally posted by Krill
I was waiting for someone to make that point.

On higher levels, you don't have much of a health bonusk, and so you start having Mr. Icks a lot earlier on. That bonus 2 health can let you run more population earlier on, and you know what they say, pop is power...

I think expansive is not that strong by itself, but that +2 health makes forest chopping pretty attractive, and cheap granaries/harbors. Coupled with organized, they make a nice complementary pair to grow a large, powerful civilization, just like the Romans.

I agree with Dominae about aggressive, except that to get that big army, it sure helps to have a big city like Rome, with a +2 health cap to fuel the expansion. I suppose the granary is not a priority for the aggressive Civ, while barracks are a priority for the expansive Civ. So, one probably wants to wait until both granaries and barracks are in place before starting war in the expansive case. That +1 combat promotion may be the clincher. I think I'm going to play aggressive next game, but I've played two games already as Ghengis, which went well, and I've learned quite a bit since then. Maybe I'll try Tokugawa like Blake suggests.

Regarding financial, is it as attractive on a land based map? I was under the impression that sea coast had a lot more gold. Maybe not.

[OzzyKP]

I suppose if you cottage spam Financial kicks in a lot.

I don't have a favorite yet. I think I'll give Aggressive another look. I'm starting to like Creative though. Not having to put in that obelisk or anything else to get culture started is a nice advantage in the early game once you start putting down cities.

Typically I've always been a big fan of building wonders, so in games so far I've definitely gravitated towards Industrial. However many are suggesting that wonders aren't nearly as important anymore... so I'm gonna try a non-wonder, non-industrial game.

[CarnalCanaan]

I voted Creative and I'm a little disappointed that not many others did.

I've found that those rapidly expanding borders are a great counter against snot-nosed, überaggressive MP'ers.

Wanna build right on my border and cut me off from the rest o' the continent? Frederick thinks otherwise, mein Freund.

(Speaking of which, where's the smilie wearing a Prussian infantry helmet? )

[MattPilot]

On the subject of nerfing Financial:

ATM, the bonus is applied (+1 gold/square) to each square that produces at least 2 gold already.


Two suggestions that just came to me:

1) Increase threshold from 2 Gold per tile to 3 Gold per tile required to get the bonus.

This would mean only certain special resource tiles & cottages would get the bonus.

Though this might be to much of a stiff

2) Reduce Gold per tile on coastal squares from 2 to 1. This would mean a financial player would no longer get bonus' from coastal squares, unless he has the collossus.

This isn't as bad as a stiff, but of course it also affects ofther players - but all equally.


Thoughts?


**Edit:

Personally, i'm liking option #1, as it requires the financial player to make a concious effort to build commercial improvements (cottages), instead of automatically receiving lots of money from non commercial improvements.

[Feyd]

For financial, you're getting your money from costal squares or from cottages/resources. There's nothing much there for you otherwise.

Really, it's all about playing to your strengths. If you are financial you want to have a lot of costal cities on rivers and you want to build cottages. If you are expansive, then you can chop like crazy and endure the health drop. If you are creative you want to send your early settlers a little bit further afield (2nd layer of cities out from your capitol) so you can seal off your borders. I think that based on the map, you can easily make an argument against choosing financial. Few rivers and not much water? Bad idea to choose the financial trait because you're going to be stuck losing food or production to cottages (at least until the late game).

[Blake]

Philo is one of those traits that I'd like to have a chance to rave about. It's a very good "free stuff" trait - as in it gives you benefit without having to work or build anything special. Having extra great people earlier in the game is simply an amazing bonus - whatever your strategy is! It is however an early game trait, Philo civs don't really get many more GP, they just get them (a lot) earlier. But the cumulative turn advantage of those early GP can be truly enourmous, it is THE most powerful trait for fast research, and a tech lead can be good for all sorts of things.

One of the very nicest things about Philo is it's absolutely guaranteed to pay off, regardless of strategy and starting situations you can't fail to generate GPP.

I've played Alexander (Philo/Agg) a lot, use the great people to support the research/economy while pumping out military and conquering stuff, 10% research? Who cares with a capital stuffed to the gills with Great Scientist Specialists! A very nice and well balanced leader.

I'm also looking forward to playing a good game as Mao (Philo/Org), the combination of Philo for a strong boot-strapped start and ogranized for long term strength is sure to be dominating.

Philo is probably my 3rd favorite trait after Organized and Aggressive. It's certainly a trait I tend to miss having, especially when my research stalls and the Great Scientist I need to resuscitate it is still dozens of turns off.

The only problem with Philo is you can't rely on it for the strength of your civ, if you focus too much on Philo you end up with a civ made of glass, with wonderful shining citadels of cities, but when an invasion comes, there are expensive noises. Thus I tend to think of Philo as a trait to subsidize my aggressive expansion/warmongering, at least for me, that is the role in which it works best.

[smbakeresq]

Interesting topic, as traits are all map dependent. I think a large, undiscussed benefit is the 1/2 price buildings the traits grant. For me, IMO, in really no order:

Financial takes time for its benefits, but once they get going can feed any style of play. The problem is getting there. I think the biggest benefits of financial is for tiles that get wind or watermills, since they can generate good gold , food and hammers. In SP, I think it is a good idea the clip these civilizations first, before their advantage builds. In MP though, I think this is the worst, since there is no endgame.

Organized is a good trait for the fact that it is always "on." So you really cant make mistakes with it, but the benefits build over time, if you have that time. In MP, you wont. In SP, it is much better in the endgame, since you can run anything and still have cash left over to build.

Creative is a solid benefit overall, especially since the early culture gets your cities out there sooner, claiming resources. It seems to me this is better on smaller maps, since each tile would be worth more. The defensive bonus is very good also, in any style. Good buildings also.

Expansive gives good buildings, and the health bonus is always good and "on." A solid trait that is more valuable as the difficulty increases. Good also for GP strategies, since you can run more of them. Good overall, since people are power.

Spiritual tranlates directly into turn advantage if you change civics alot, and that is good. But it is also a trait that must be worked, and how many of us have forgotten to change civics as he situation demanded? I have, but maybe I am the only one....The more you change, the bigger the turn advantage. As aside note, I have put all cities to build military units to be comleted at the same time, switch to Theocracy the turn before comletetion, and then switch back after the XP bonus. Even better in MP, since turn advantage is more important.

Philosophical is another trait that is also always on, and you can turn the GP into buildings, wonder, great works and stuff that has a more tangible benefit. Seems OK in MP also

Aggresive - Havent used it much, so my understanding is weak. Just has to be better in MP though.

Industrious is weak to me. Wonders are great, but other methods can be used to speed their production, Great engineers and purchasing them later in particular. I think the building bonus should extend to factories as well, I think this would balance the trait. In SP it is ok, but in MP it might be better since you have less time to build wonders before the battle royal begins.

Phil, Agg, and Ind are below the other five to me, but any combination of the first five seems to work for me.

[couerdelion]

Has to be CREATIVE. The +2 culture in the early days of a city are extremely valuable.

[Yosho]

Expansive gives good buildings, and the health bonus is always good and "on." A solid trait that is more valuable as the difficulty increases. Good also for GP strategies, since you can run more of them. Good overall, since people are power.

Expansive seems weak to me. The health bonus is nice when you get big cities, but by then, I usually have several health resources anyway, and technology to build health buildings as well if I need them. Perhaps it's just the way I play, but it seems like, at best, it would save me a couple of food a turn in my 2-3 biggest cities in the middle of the game, and that just seems like a much smaller bonus then most of the other traits. Now, if expansive was health AND happiness, it's be amazing, or even if was just happiness, but health rarely seems to be a really serious problem to me. (shrug)

[Aginor]

I suspect those of you that dislike Expansive haven't exploited the trait to its full potential.

It's the cheap Granaries.

Why? Pop rush, pop rush, pop rush. The point of the operation is to generate infrastructure in the outposts, land grab with Settlers from the capital, and then rush a massive army.

The health bonus means you can chop to your little heart's content without utterly screwing yourself. The cheap granaries mean you can blow away a point of population every 10 turns when you're getting infrastructure set up (preferably everywhere but the capital, but sometimes it turns into full-on-rush) and not really care. You can pop-rush the Granary itself for a point of pop, and get some production stored on the next priority. Good way to get a Library chopped FAST, by the way.

The upshot of this is that in the early game you have waaaay more shields available than a non-expansive civ. Since Granaries go up everywhere (fast), you also can grow cities, especially those Floodplains cottage commerce cities, like weeds. This gives a massive time advantage in research and production early on.

I find the way to go with Expansive is to grow to size 2 or 3, get Bronze and Pottery fast, get a Worker out and go to town. Stay at one city for a bit until you get your Granary up and get some decent permanent production online, as the capital is your Settler and unit factory once it can produce them swiftly. Beeline for Alphabet for tech trades (forget early religions/CS Slingshot/exotic gameplans, and you'll almost certainly want Alphabet before Iron), catch up in techs by trades. Get Iron this way if you can...typically you have to research it yourself immediately following Alphabet.

Place outposts near food specials and/or Floodplains if at all possible. Ruthlessly pop and chop your outposts to get Granaries up and get one Worker per city. Do what you have to do to get a Library (I typically put one up in my planned commerce outpost and get a late Academy with Scientists there) so that you can get up to Lit and snag the GL if at all possible for still more Academies over the course of the early to mid game.

Properly played, you're at 6-8 cities of some size, comparable to the other civs (except Deity). Pop and chop an army (Praetorians work beautifully for this, by the way) and lay waste to your nearest neighbor. Finish one neighbor off, and you should be twice the size of the other civs. That in and of itself should result in a massive production advantage and the win.

Religion isn't a huge concern with the Expansive game - convert to the appropriate neighbor's if you can for diplomatic reasons. If you're in a religion vacuum and have your military about ready to rock, Theology will solve that nicely. Just know that with Christianity you're going to have to smack everyone on your immediate borders and play nice with the more remote civs for the time being, as they are going to become your immediate neighbors shortly. Spreading the gospel aggressively is optional; I find it's more efficient to just run everyone over until Feudalism, as you have little shot of competing with Buddhism/Hinduism and the probable Great Prophet Wonder spread of those religions.

Usual cleanup methodology (as always for me) is the Liberalism -> free Nationalism beeline, then grabbing Gunpowder and Military Tradition for the Cavalry steamroller. Spam Cavalry. Go up the Banking side of the tree for Replaceable Parts and Rifling (and Banks/Wall Street so that territorial expansion doesn't totally kill your research), draft mad Riflemen as garrisons. Get Economics before other players, complete a trade mission, upgrade the old level 3 and up city attack upgraded melee units to Riflemen as citybusters. Throttle all opposing civs. Cannon are definitely helpful, but not necessary to launch your attack if you have the citybusting Riflemen to clean out the nastier defenders. If you're fortunate enough to catch someone that is still going to be at Longbowmen for a while - hit him first. You can completely smash a player that is still defending with Longbowmen with a Cavalry horde alone, and it happens a lot faster than if you have to wait on the foot units. At this point in the game, you want to completely eliminate enemy civs, steal their cities for production, and put up culture improvements first. If you totally eliminate each adversary, you'll be in a better cultural situation. Fast Theatres and Libraries will enable you to fill in the space between cities rapidly and win by Domination swiftly without having to kill everyone.

Expansive is a warmonger's trait. If you play it as a builder trait, you're going to be disappointed. The strength of it is the potent early game advantage. If you don't convert the early game advantage (turbocharged pop-n-cop) into a long-term advantage, an Expansive game isn't much fun.

If you try to use an early production advantage to build as you might in Civ 2, you're going to be disappointed. Why? Buildings and Wonders are considerably weaker. 200 Shields for Granaries everywhere? 400 Shields for Cathedrals everywhere? Automatic unit upgrades? Good luck finding that kind of power in Civ 4.

Same with buildings - Libraries are 25%, not 50%. Banks are 50%, not 100%. The power of buildings lies in specialists and great people now, which takes longer to come online.

In short, if you don't like Expansive - grab the Romans and give a warmonger game a go. You may be surprised at the trait's power and ability to get you the same research advantages you're used to...but with a much better territory control and production situation than you've had before.

[Aginor]

Blake, Philo's an interesting one for me. On the one hand, I really like playing with it. On the other hand, I just don't think it's that powerful.

This game seems to resemble Civ 3 to me in that it's all about the hammers, not the beakers. It seems to be incredibly difficult to get a research advantage and actually maintain it, and focusing on getting a research advantage is a good way to get yourself run over by a large warmonger. Perhaps I'm a poor player of the late game, or perhaps I focus on hammers at the expense of growing towns early on, thus falling behind once Free Speech and the other town powering governments come online. Still, I find that I can't actually get and maintain a tech advantage unless I'm *much* larger than the AIs. Even as a Financial civ, where my game unsurprisingly revolves around throwing up Cottages everywhere.

In any case, Philo does an adequate job of dealing with the "how the heck do I still get research when I've stolen 15 early cities from the AI" problem. However, Organized seems to do a better overall job in my games between the decreased maintenance, turn advantage of cheap courthouses and ease of getting the Forbidden Palace online early. Granted, cheap Universities are a lot neater than cheap Lighthouses...I'll freely concede that point! However, the ability to run costly civics with impunity is stronger than even cheap Unis, in my mind at least. Organized helps you deal with the hammer problem at the heart of Civ 4 mechanics through this fashion (Organized/Theocracy, Vassalage) in a way that Philo does not. Of course, you *could* run a Philo Prophets game to address the hammer issue, but I think most of us that have tried it would that such a game is softer than the science-focused GPP game.

Aggressive to me is by far the stronger of the two traits of Alexander, as it deals with the hammer problem in a unique way. The free promotion means stronger units, which means less attrition when attacking as well as units with great strength coming online faster, which is a significant time advantage.

Unfortunately, Alex's UU is garbage (though at least it hits early), its only real advantage being that it's a cheap way of ensuring that you can deal with War Elephants and Knights when they show up in the midgame. Personally, if I'm going to except a junk UU as a warmonger I'd much rather have Tokugawa and his Samurai, as it lets you run Aggressive and Organized.

However, Praetorians trump Aggressive in a big, big way until Feudalism - so running the Romans seems the best warmonger bet to me , as it's like getting three traits for the price of two until 500-800 AD or so. Nice to see the Romans as the overpowered civ for a change.

[Aginor]

Why does Financial need a nerf?

It's popular in the voting primarily because it's fun, and because it's the easiest trait to maximize (Cottage spam rivers and build some coastal cities - not hard eh?). If it's overpowered, it's overpowered relative to a couple of traits rather than to the field. We're agreed that Financial and Organized are strong (with Dominae dissenting on Organized). There seems to be some consensus that Philo is strong (with Arrian and I dissenting). We're agreed that Aggressive is strong. I think that Expansive is better than many of you think it is, if you play to its strengths properly.

Leaves Creative, Spiritual and Industrious. Creative's just not very good...2 culture per turn isn't much. It's 1000 culture in your capital over the course of a standard game, which isn't enough to make a difference in a cultural victory (2-3 turns saved on the win at best). It likely is insufficient to swing a border culture war, even with culture doubling improvements.

Spiritual's worth maybe 10 turns of culture, production and research over the course of a game, spread out in a fashion that is not tactically maximized. Cheap temples are nice if you're planning on going for a culture game or a GPP Prophet game...otherwise, there are better cheap buildings.

Industrious is the strongest of the leftovers. While the Wonder bonus isn't that great (particularly at high levels) it DOES come with half-cost Forges, which are arguably the best building to have come cheaply. (Halves the time frame in which you start seeing a return on hammers invested in a Forge, plus time advantage in overall hammers produced.)

Financial is quite good, and it greatly strengthens some of the more fun/exotic early strategies. It helps you in the tech race. It helps you run a larger empire. It doesn't help you get hammers or kill your neighbors. Because it can't do that last thing, and because other civics can do a quality job in tech/empire management, Financial is not overpowered IMO.

[Dominae]

Wow, nice set of posts there, Aginor!