What is the Best Trait?

[snafuc4]

Nice summary, but I have to disagree with this:

Originally posted by Aginor
Creative's just not very good...2 culture per turn isn't much.

Think of it this way: during the early (& possibly even the mid-game on archipeggio, continent or terran maps) would you like 2 obelisks in every city that /never/ times out? You found a city just by a really nice resource or two.. or 3, but they're just outside your cultural borders, and/or a neighbouring civ plonks a city down nearby within a turn or 2

Creative, especially on big maps, can give you a /major/ territorial advantage in the early- to mid-game, & we all know that territory wins games, yes?

[gentle]

about creative:

I admit that it makes city founding in the early stages very comfortable. One needs not to voluntarily "misplace" a new city in order to have access to that important (stone) resource which is needed as soon as possible and lose 3 calendar resources by that in the city's cross.
"Builder style" city founding tends to be very accurate for aesthetic reasons so this might actually be a point at least for the first founded city where the early fat cross might have an important influence to when a wonder will be started to be build/chopped.
Most of the time though, I think that cities can wait for their full cross (til library ? religion ? ).
Except for the first city I think Creative is unnecessary,
for the first city it makes placing more comfortable.
That's not worth a traitslot.

Using creativity more aggressively makes more sense imho.
Watching non-creative opponents and counterfound cities next to his to slow his growth a bit and make him an easier/undeveloped target could be a way to play with the trait.
Though warmongers might find a better addition to aggressive in organized as was stated here before, but at least it sounds like an alternative...maybe shifting focus from the mid/late stages (ORG) to the early ones ?!.

So, I dont really see any point in using creative factions.

Creative, especially on big maps, can give you a /major/ territorial advantage in the early- to mid-game, & we all know that territory wins games, yes?

I doubt that. It gives the fat cross faster, after that +2/turn is a non-issue

[Dis]

hmm, so how can we improve on this poll to find out more about the other traits?

Perhaps allow a multiple choice poll and ask people to choose their favourite 2 traits. But it would be impossible to enforce people only voting for 2 choices.

What does scare me is Firaxis will see this poll and nerf financial. . I'd rather they just beef up the weaker traits.

[gentle]

btw, I doubt that financial is that overpowered.
I mean,...it can give a city a maximum of +20 commerce compared to non-fin.maximum!-seldom the case imho.
so, is that really that hard ? I played fin civs and fin is still in my top 3 i would guess but far from overpowered or being a nerf-candidate

---
sry for double-posting

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Dis What does scare me is Firaxis will see this poll and nerf financial. .

I gather that you like the advantage that financial offers. As I recall, it was one of the weakest traits in Civ3. Now it seems to be one of the strongest, if not the strongest. But I think it's largely game and style dependent. I'm liking it in my present game. I like to research with my war mongering, and financial allows that.

[JackRudd]

Commercial was quite a good trait in Civ3 - lowered corruption was a REALLY nice benefit. The big problem with it was that I liked building the Colossus, and doing that with a Commercial civ could easily trigger your Golden Age too early. (Trait-dependent Golden Ages are not something I miss, for that sort of reason.)

[Hauptman]

as far as phi vs organized, I will take PHI over organized any day of the week.... the cash from GP pays off far better than the weak 50% off civics trait.

the proof is in the pudding, show me a organized civ that saves you 300+ gold per turn and lets you run 100% sci with 200 gold per turn profit.


see these, same as i posted before for a dif thread but man am i proud of them...

[Aginor]

Originally posted by fed1943
in 5 turns(city radius)the next one and perhaps two borders expansion(available resources for health,happy and military)and territorial coherence for defense and attack.

Do you really find this to be that much of a problem? If I have a religion, I address it in the early cities that have an issue with it by one of two methods:

1) Missionary that hits the town at founding
2) Pop/chop Library after Granary (can substitute Temple if Spiritual)

I strongly dislike Obelisks and only build them when 100% absolutely necessary...the extra ten hammers for a missionary for a new city with no religion (particularly given that I can build the missionary somewhere with decent production, instead of delaying Granaries etc) is well worth the speed and long-run extra happiness point.

This DOES cost me time advantage and productivity loss in the first 50-100 turns in typically 1-3 cities per game, but in return I get the key benefit of a stronger overall game in terms of hammers and commerce. My point is this: there are alternate solutions to the culture issue in your first cities. There aren't good alternate solutions to the problems of hammers and commerce - all improvement solutions are available to all civs and equally valuable, where quick cultural improvements ironically are MORE valuable to a non-Creative civ.

Thus, Creative is weak because there are numerous effective substitutes for the trait, and because it doesn't help defeat immediate neighbors. Aggressive is a much subtler trait, but vastly more useful.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Hauptman
as far as phi vs organized, I will take PHI over organized any day of the week.... the cash from GP pays off far better than the weak 50% off civics trait.

Your cash is from buildings. You're playing on a big map where you got two religion foundings and Wall Street in the same place. I see about 11 active super specialists in 1448 AD; I know you built the two supershrines, and an Academy. 14 total, then.

You have scads of early wonders which you clearly built in your capital, which also leads me to believe you're playing on Noble, Prince at best. The complete and utter lack of deforestable squares around your capital coupled with a successful Pyramids build seals this conclusion for me. (Could probably calculate which level based on the health bonus, but I'm not in the mood at the moment.)

An instance where everything went right, particularly on a lower difficulty level, doesn't convince me on Philo. As one other poster noted, it's not that you get many more GP so much as the turn advantage on *when* you get them.

I also think you are missing the key on exploiting Org, which is horizontal expansion coupled with Courthouse spam. Basically, Org eases Domination wins by enabling you to manage your empire costs much faster. Also, in a big civ Org is worth a good 50 gold/turn easily. Philo's a legit builder trait...I just haven't found that pure builder is particularly good at the higher levels. Traits that enable you to support horizontal expansion more effectively (Financial, Org) are more potent in winning the hammer game...which is where the game is won and lost. Aggressive's subtle hammer bonus is nice for the warmonger as well.

[fed1943]

Aginor:I read carefully your post.First conclusion:civ4 is a great game.You are right when you say creative doesn´t give anything(culture=space)that you cannot build;true,but if creative no need to build it.About the help to defeat(and don´t forget, not to be defeated by) a neighbor,believe you wrong(space figthts for the creative). Best regards,

[smbakeresq]

I think also your style is very important. It is clear Aginor plays for domination victory only, as his posts are geared towards traits and strategies that support this type.

I play more of an Imperialist strategy, like Vel, I just like to see more population and culture. Arrian is more of oppurtunist, so his strategy is more fluid.

To each his own.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by Aginor


Your cash is from buildings. You're playing on a big map where you got two religion foundings and Wall Street in the same place. I see about 11 active super specialists in 1448 AD; I know you built the two supershrines, and an Academy. 14 total, then.

Actually you cannot see all the super specialists. If you add up the math i count another 2 or 3 great merchants in the cash city. And in london i have at least 6 more scientists and an engineer, and 1 more engineer for moscow. plus I layed out 3 academies and 2 shrines. The dif level is prince i believe, but my peninsula was very forested when the game started. thats how i scored the three early wonders.

With all those EARLY super specialists i was able to pull out confucionism AND christianity BOTH with 2 cities even though they are on completely DIFFERENT tech paths. I completely blew the doors off the ai's tech wise (i should be playing emporer but it was my first marathon non agresive game and didnt know how it was gonna play out at that speed.)


I stopped playing the game after my tanks and bombers finished killing off napoleon's grenadiers. It was more of a game to make 2 great trade cities than anything else. I had planned my entire strategy on founding 2 religions in 1 city and just cranking specialists like there was no tomarow... I did however miss the parthenon, that would have made moscow turn 210+ gp points per turn.

[Hauptman]

anctually I'm having difficulty figuring out the number of super specialists because i cant remeber how many coin regular merchants give vs super merchants. But 47 from specialists x2 WITHOUT missing out on a whole fukton of scientists and a couple engineers.

[Hauptman]

perhaps this city will illustrate just how nice Philosophical can be when you use it.

Emporer OCC game on a maze map. this shot was taken imediatly AFTER i won the game by a large margin.

notice the 1015 beakers per turn at 70% sci, with 200 beakers coming from specialists. I had been running at 100% sci til i was on future techs, then went to culture to try n squash a city that was too close, didnt really matter much as SS was done.

great person tech research is nearly 2/3 of the total research.

edit: also notice the 94 gold per turn without a shrine at 0% tax made a nice little bank account

[JackRudd]

Yowzer. Yeah, Lizzie'll rock with a starting position like that.