Napoleon vs. Louis XIV: Who Brings Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité to France?

[Bosh]

Haven't been playing Civ 4 long (just got the game) but I keep on getting drawn to the French leaders somehow (it seems like every other game I'm a Jewish Frenchman, go Dreyfus!). In my current game I'm doing quite well at Louis because industrial let me build stonehenge damn fast and no I'm getting enough culture to paint a good chunk of the map blue and reserve enough land for myself to be able to build a decent complement of cities (I'm playing on a pretty crowded map and now I'm set up to have more space than the AI due to my early game cultural muscle).

[Addled Platypus]

Napoleon, there is no other

Welcome to having no life Bosch

Have to ask -

what took you so long ?

[couerdelion]

I rather find the aggressive trait to be fairly weak. By the middle game it’s almost obsolete since the unit strength is determined more by tech level which the basic combat I promotion won’t come near to challenging.

Creative is also a trait which loses its appeal by the mid-game but its key value is in the placement of your first few cities. Creative allows you to select optimal sites while the culture bonus expands quickly to capture the local resources. Having your 2nd, 3rd and 4th cities in better spots will have significant long term benefits for the civilisation.

For me, its Louis (the best of a bad bunch)

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I rather find the aggressive trait to be fairly weak. By the middle game it’s almost obsolete since the unit strength is determined more by tech level which the basic combat I promotion won’t come near to challenging.

The aggresive trait is powerful almost all game long. The main appeal of this trait is getting lots of early promotions (particularly city raider and then upgrading them throughout the game). That combat one really helps preserve your troops for the first half of the game allowing them to accumulate 3 or 4 promotions. The free combat 1 promotions also allow another promotion right out of the gate for every city with a barracks which provides a ton more flexibility in combat. Whenever I have this trait, I find myself having tons of city raider 3 riflemen and infantry in the late stages of the game, which are almost unstoppable when combined with cannons. The trait does probably lose most of its benefits when tanks and such come around, but promoted marines can still do some major damage at this point.

I would probably rank this trait just below philo, organzied, and financial. Creative is somewhat useful, but IMO it is a bottom tier trait and not nearly as strong as aggresive.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky


The aggresive trait is powerful almost all game long. The main appeal of this trait is getting lots of early promotions (particularly city raider and then upgrading them throughout the game). That combat one really helps preserve your troops for the first half of the game allowing them to accumulate 3 or 4 promotions. The free combat 1 promotions also allow another promotion right out of the gate for every city with a barracks which provides a ton more flexibility in combat. Whenever I have this trait, I find myself having tons of city raider 3 riflemen and infantry in the late stages of the game, which are almost unstoppable when combined with cannons. The trait does probably lose most of its benefits when tanks and such come around, but promoted marines can still do some major damage at this point.

I would probably rank this trait just below philo, organzied, and financial. Creative is somewhat useful, but IMO it is a bottom tier trait and not nearly as strong as aggresive.

Apart from cheap barracks and the added longevity of units with the extra +10% bonus, city raider III units are no easier for Aggressive civs to acquire than they are for non-Aggressive civs. Both civs need their units to acquire 10 XP.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Of course. All I'm saying is that with the aggresive trait my promoted units tend to stick around alot longer than without allowing them to accumulate these promotions. It is then very easy to mix in a few units with defensive and medic promotions to further ensure survivability. To me it seems like a big difference and I have very good success with aggresive leaders (Napolean excepted).

Without the aggresive trait, my units tend to die off in large numbers since I wage a lot of war in the early part of the game. Perhaps, I am just more careful with my units when I have the aggresive trait, but my fastest domination wins have all been with aggresive leaders.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky
Of course. All I'm saying is that with the aggresive trait my promoted units tend to stick around alot longer than without allowing them to accumulate these promotions. It is then very easy to mix in a few units with defensive and medic promotions to further ensure survivability. To me it seems like a big difference and I have very good success with aggresive leaders (Napolean excepted).

Without the aggresive trait, my units tend to die off in large numbers since I wage a lot of war in the early part of the game. Perhaps, I am just more careful with my units when I have the aggresive trait, but my fastest domination wins have all been with aggresive leaders.

That would certainly make sense for a unit with no combat experience fighting against archer defenders. For an aggressive civ, your new swords will be attacking cities at 8.70 if you take the cover promotion while other civs would only have a 7.80 swordsman with City Raider I.

The only problem with this is that you get left with obsolete promotion later in the game but I guess that’s not such a problem if you already have CR3 units.