Ranking the Traits- A Discussion on the Relative Strengths of the Civ Traits

[DaShi]

I don't fret if another civ builds a wonder before me. I always feel that I'll get it eventually.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Blake
This would be my ranking:

1) Organized. While Organized by itself isn't terribly exciting, it's a wonderful passive trait that just sits in the background and helps regardless of what you do - it allows the other trait to truely shine. Organized has powerful synergy with a number of traits and civics, for example the Vassalage+Slavery+Organized Religion warmongering where you can conquer at breakneck speed by whipping in courthouse and missionaries.
And there's really no question it has the best cheap buildings, I rank the top 4 essential infrastructure buildings as Lighthouse, Granary, Courthouse and Forge. Organized has two of them cheap.

2) Aggressive. It may not look like much, but once you get used to aggressive it is painful to be without. Aggressive has a double-whammy effect, your units win more often and thus promote more often. I consider non-aggressive civs to be often too luck dependent - when it's axemen vs axemen in the early game, it REALLY helps for your axemen to have shock. It's not just a crutch, it's a crutch you can beat people around the head with and make them submit.

The Japanese were practically built for a dominion victory with these two. I can often control half the word before gunpower shows up while still leading in tech. Whatever deficit your running is usually more than made up by taking cities. And in some cases, I'll start building a wonder I'm sure to lose just to get the cash from it for upgrading units.

[fed1943]

Not sure, but I think Spiritual is not as strong as you say.

It only "works" late,so almost useless in most of the game lenght.

But my experience with Spiritual is little, so may be I wrong.

Best regards,

[JackRudd]

Part of the trick with Spiritual is to head down paths that will get you a lot of civic choices reasonably early. Building the Pyramids is one of these - either directly (works best with Gandhi) or by the APG (works best with Saladin).

[MasterDave]

Slightly different rankings for multiplayer...

I bring a slightly different perspective, being focused mainly (lately) on crushing my RL friends like bugs every weekend on multiplayer. I would rank the eight traits somewhat differently.

Spiritual is nice, but I do not view it as essential as some others. In the early ages, when every turn is critical, I really do not switch my civics around that often. I may spend four or five turns in anarchy total before 0 AD. In other situations, such as playing for a culture victory (I never do this in multiplayer), then spiritual becomes critical for the cheap temples.

Financial: With the cheap banks gone, this is still one of the best traits for early teching (and the CS or COL slingshot), especially of you have rivers around to build those three gold cottages

Industrious: While not as all-powerful as it seemed at first coming from a Civ3 context, this one can be REALLY effective in Multiplayer games where the first one to be able to build the Oracle or the Pyramids can really screw over their human opponents hard if they can beat them in a race for the wonder and they wind up wasting their precious early production coming in second place. Cheap forges are also a real boon, I always wince with sticker shock when I am playing a non-indy race and I first learn metal casting and start seeing forges on the list.

Expansive: The health bonus is great for solo play on emperor level, but most multiplayer games are played at noble level. As my single player experience is mostly on Monarch or Emperor, playing on Noble with the free health is already like having expansive for free.

Organized: This is a great trait in single player, although it is at its best in the late stages of a domination win when you control half of the world or more. Multiplayer games are decided long before that, so I am not convinced that this trait is as valuable in these cases. Although the extra cash early as well as cheap courthouses and lighthouses are nothing to sneeze at, certainly.

Aggressive: Hugely useful for warmongering in multiplayer games. I always miss this one when playing something different. Free combat 1's and cheap barracks are like narcotics. They don't seem that great until you use them, then it is damn hard to give them up.

Creative: This one is very nice for multiplayer, mainly because it provides cultural defenses earlier, and precludes the need for pure culture buildings in order to grow your city radii.

Philosophical: This one is sort of a toss-up for me for multiplayer use, although it is one of my favorites in single player. In a multiplayer game, getting the wonders needed to really take advantage of this trait is more of a toss-up and is more unpredictable than it is vs. the AI's. Therefore, it is very possible to find yourself aced out of the early wonders. Combine this with early cities that do not have much of a food surplus, and you can find that philosophical becomes useless when you are stuck at 0 GPP for a long period of the early game. Also, cheap universities do not help until the mid-game, and in multiplayer early game bonuses are more important.

Therefore my multiplayer-focused rankings would be:

1. Financial
2. Aggressive
3. Industrious
4. Creative
5. Organized
6. Philosophical
7. Spiritual
8. Expansive

Single player (from the perspective of Monarch and Emperor level going for a domination or space race-- culture victory is different) rankings would be:
1. Organized
2. Financial
3. Philosophical
4. Aggressive
5. Creative
6. Industrious
7. Spiritual
8. Expansive

Single player culture victory priorities would be:
1. Spiritual
2. Philosophical
3. Industrious (need all the wonders you can get for the culture)
4. Creative
5. Financial
6. Organized
7. Aggressive
8. Expansive

As you can see, I really do not like expansive. Health resources are just too easy to get, and default granaries are already cheap.

[MasterDave]

In looking at the new traits, I have a feeling that the +2 happy from Charismatic is sure to get nerfed by release (or shortly after release). That is Waaaaay too powerful for an empire-wide bonus (hell they nerfed representation from three happy faces to two and that only applies to three cities). Combine with that faster unit promotions, which is a VERY powerful ability for warmongers that effects every unit type.

Without that trait being nerfed, it would jump to #1 on all three of the lists I posted above.

[LordShiva]

I play almost exclusively as a warmonger, and funnily enough, I don't find Aggressive that useful. The way I see it, I'm going to be building tons of units anyway, and getting them into alot of fights. So I'm going to pick up experience anyway. The few turns that I'd save with cheaper barracks also doesn't help all that much on Marathon.

Organized is what really does it for me. Once I've got my armies running amok, I can conquer a good number of cities by the time the mainstay of my army becomes obsolete without bankrupting myself. Then, I can go into Pax LordShivana while I consolidate, build a few improvements here and there, upgrade my units, and then go to war again. Spiritual helps here too, for the cheap temples to add a little happiness and culture so that the newly-conquered cities don't revolt, and for strategic civic-juggling.

If only Ashoka had a UU that wasn't such a loser

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Solver
The strength of Protective is similar to that of Aggressive - it's not so much about Drill II itself as it is about the ability to get Drill III or even Drill IV quickly. Just think of what Drill III-IV Crossbowmen can do. Build the Oracle, timing it to get Machinery, and attack with Protective Crossbowmen at once. I think it can be a very strong attacking tactic.

And if any of the Chinese leaders gets Protective (which seems likely, considering China built the Great Wall - the biggest historical expression of Protectiveness), imagine what those Drill IV Cho Ku Nu (sp?) can do.

[trev]

Philosophical, financial, organised and aggressive are all very good traits, each the best in certain circumstances. The other traits can all be ignored as their benefits can be compensated for easily through good tactics. In some circumstances philosophical can be very powerful in the early game, eg a city with mainly sea squares and 3 seafood resources can support 6 specialists with 3 citizens on the seafood resource, giving with pacifism 54 GP points every turn. Using these GP for free techs gives a massive short term boost to your science, giving the ability to snatch a tech like philosophy and the religion it gives first.

Never underestimate this power, these GP can be learning science for you quicker for a period of time than all your other cities with cottage spam combined. As the cost of GP's rise this advantage declines with time, but it is there in the early game where the benefits can be multiplied througout the game.

[=DrJambo=]

I was one of those early criticisers of the Organised trait and when I was randomly selected as Japan in one of my early games I thought "oh oh". Montezuma declared war on me early in the game and normally a prolonged early war is financially crippling and hard to sustain. However, with the trait and its cheap courthouses, the game turned out to be the easiest domination victory yet and still exists as my best score to date.

[Arrian]

Imperialistic strikes me as quite powerful.... +25% to settlers? Is Imp the new Agr (C3C)? I have no knowledge of this, mind you, just conjecture.

-Arrian

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I play almost exclusively as a warmonger, and funnily enough, I don't find Aggressive that useful. The way I see it, I'm going to be building tons of units anyway, and getting them into alot of fights. So I'm going to pick up experience anyway. The few turns that I'd save with cheaper barracks also doesn't help all that much on Marathon.

Organized is what really does it for me. Once I've got my armies running amok, I can conquer a good number of cities by the time the mainstay of my army becomes obsolete without bankrupting myself. Then, I can go into Pax LordShivana while I consolidate, build a few improvements here and there, upgrade my units, and then go to war again. Spiritual helps here too, for the cheap temples to add a little happiness and culture so that the newly-conquered cities don't revolt, and for strategic civic-juggling.

If only Ashoka had a UU that wasn't such a loser

I think that the fast worker is in many ways, the best UU. It saves you a turn almost every time you build an improvement. That produces a huge turn advantage. Also, it is the only UU that you can use the entire span of the game.

Organized helps more in the mid-game once your empire has become large and you are well on your way to conquest. Aggressive helps you more early on when you are struggling to get to that point.

[patcon]

Originally posted by monkspider
Protective trait.
Artillery and archer have Drill I and Drill II promotions.
Double production walls and castles

Do the free promotions apply only to archers, or also to any units which are in the upgrade path from archers? A unit which started as an archer gets to keep the promotions when upgrading to crossbowman - a necessity to avoid logic problems - so why can't a crossbowman get those promotions when it's trained from scratch? Or will a civ with the protective trait be allowed to build archers even after they're obsolete, and then upgrade them? If not, will the AI know not to research (or accept as gifts) techs which obsolete archer before amassing a huge archer army.

Side note: Can/would a gifted tech ever be declined? This has never come up for me, but I see now it could become a sneaky tactic - give an opponent a tech which obsoletes something which they are using, such as gifting Calendar to a civ with many obelisks.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by patcon
Side note: Can/would a gifted tech ever be declined? This has never come up for me, but I see now it could become a sneaky tactic - give an opponent a tech which obsoletes something which they are using, such as gifting Calendar to a civ with many obelisks.

Obelisks 'stick around' after discovering Calendar, it just makes it impossible to build more...

[Yosho]

Originally posted by fed1943
Not sure, but I think Spiritual is not as strong as you say.

It only "works" late,so almost useless in most of the game lenght.

But my experience with Spiritual is little, so may be I wrong.

Best regards,

I don't really think that's true.

The ability to flip easily between religions can help you a huge amount diplomatically at any point in the game. Remember, spiritual also removes the anarchy from changing religions.

Basically, IMHO, Spiritualism starts to pay off once you have slavery and serfdom, and can switch back and forth at will; and the ability to turn hered. rule on and off at will (to either give happiness or save money, based on how much happiness you have and/or need at any given period of time) can be a significant economic help in the early game as well.