What do we think about Charismatic, Imperialistic, and Protective traits?

[MasterDave]

Here are specs from the three new traits, as reported by the various previews we have seen: Charismatic (+2 Happiness in each city, 25% reduction in unit promotion cost, double production from broadcast towers), Protective (artillery and archers receive drill I and II automatically, walls and castles construct twice as quickly), and Imperialistic (100% increase in Great General emergence, 25% production boost when creating settlers).

My initial opinion, not being one of the blessed few to have played Warlords yet is that Charismatic on its own seems very, very powerful. The happiness gives you the same bonus as advanced civics such as Hereditary rule and nationalism right off the bat! I could see this being very powerful in higher levels of single player, where there is a low happiness threshhold. Also, cheaper promotions could be very powerful, especially if combined with Aggressive. I would not be surprised to see charismatic nerfed in a future patch or before Warlord's release.

Imperialistic seems like an interesting trait, probably being more useful on larger maps where there is more room to grow. I think that an Imperialistic/Organized combination could be hugely powerful, with a large empire that is cheap to maintain and a powerful military with the extra great generals. I think Imperialistic is probably on par with most of the other traits in the game.

Protective just seems lame. Unless they also make a change in castles and walls (walls are useless most of the time, and castles come a couple centuries too late in the tech tree to be useful), I just cannot see passing on another useful trait just to give some units first strike capability.

Probably the most interesting combinations I can foresee are Imperialistic/ Organized, Charismatic/ Aggressive, possibly Expansive/Charismatic to have the ability to build large cities early on in high difficulty levels.

[monkspider]

The intial hype surrounding these traits pretty much echoes your sentiments. Charismatic is seen as very strong, perhaps overpowered, imperialistic is pretty good, and protective seems weak. I would want to play around with these traits before jumping to any definitive conclusions, but I probably wouldn't oppose charismatic's promotion bonus going to protective instead.

[Prussia]

Originally posted by monkspider
The intial hype surrounding these traits pretty much echoes your sentiments. Charismatic is seen as very strong, perhaps overpowered, imperialistic is pretty good, and protective seems weak. I would want to play around with these traits before jumping to any definitive conclusions, but I probably wouldn't oppose charismatic's promotion bonus going to protective instead.

[Qwertqwert]

Protective combined with Agressive seems like a very powerful combo, though in real life they would contradict themselves.

I think Imperialistic is very good, espicially early in the game, like 2000 BC when you try to make a few settlers, it'd really help. Though I probabally like it more then most because I play big maps. Charismatic seems very useful in the VERY early game if you have flood plains or a few food resources, but after Monarchy, or otherwise, quite useless. Doesn't really seem over powered to me.

I personally like Imperialistic more then Charismatic.

I would consider changing from Qin Shi Huang as my main guy to play as if someone gets Imperialistic/Financial, or if someone gets Agressive/Protective but thats not too likely.

[DrSpike]

Re: What do we think about Charismatic, Imperialistic, and Protective traits?

Originally posted by MasterDave
Here are specs from the three new traits, as reported by the various previews we have seen: Charismatic (+2 Happiness in each city, 25% reduction in unit promotion cost, double production from broadcast towers), Protective (artillery and archers receive drill I and II automatically, walls and castles construct twice as quickly), and Imperialistic (100% increase in Great General emergence, 25% production boost when creating settlers).

My initial opinion, not being one of the blessed few to have played Warlords yet is that Charismatic on its own seems very, very powerful. The happiness gives you the same bonus as advanced civics such as Hereditary rule and nationalism right off the bat! I could see this being very powerful in higher levels of single player, where there is a low happiness threshhold. Also, cheaper promotions could be very powerful, especially if combined with Aggressive. I would not be surprised to see charismatic nerfed in a future patch or before Warlord's release.

Imperialistic seems like an interesting trait, probably being more useful on larger maps where there is more room to grow. I think that an Imperialistic/Organized combination could be hugely powerful, with a large empire that is cheap to maintain and a powerful military with the extra great generals. I think Imperialistic is probably on par with most of the other traits in the game.

Protective just seems lame. Unless they also make a change in castles and walls (walls are useless most of the time, and castles come a couple centuries too late in the tech tree to be useful), I just cannot see passing on another useful trait just to give some units first strike capability.

Probably the most interesting combinations I can foresee are Imperialistic/ Organized, Charismatic/ Aggressive, possibly Expansive/Charismatic to have the ability to build large cities early on in high difficulty levels.

I think your analysis is rather good actually, and agree on the synergies.

I would suspect some tweaks will occur. However, charismatic looks nice but not more powerful that some of the better traits now, and imperialistic might be fine - it depends on how the generals are implemented. Protective looks dreadful, and will probably get buffed.

[Adagio]

Maybe they've already made some changes in those traits, it's been a long time since we were told about the trait specs
Hopefully protective gets stronger and charismatic gets weaker

Sure, there's a chance that they actually are balanced, you can't tell for sure before you have played a few games, but from looking at the specs it doesn't look that balanced

[Snotty]

In the regular game I have managed to cling on to the most marginal starts while being seiged by the most determined and aggresive of opponents. If I am on the receiving end of a choke I manage to survive by spamming archers and fortifying them in my cities. Because archers are cheap and require no resources it becomes very costly for anyone to take these cities unless they have an era or two tech lead or they are happy to sacrifice catapults. Of course as soon as I get shut out I make a beeline for feudalism so I can spam longbows in much the same way and so further discourage my attackers

My point is that protective trait drill bonuses add to this strong defensive strategy. I can see myself choosing to attack non-protective civs over protective ones as no matter how well I pillage I will still have to root out the archer stacks, and thats going to be relatively more difficult to do against a protective civ

I guess the idea of protective is to act as a deterrent to attack even before war is declared, and to see your civ survive through to the renaissance where hopefully you can use your momentum to see you through to machine guns

[DrSpike]

Well if you need to be that defensive you are probably screwed anyway.

Where this trait might be strong is actually offense rather than protection. An early archer rush could be quite powerful with the extra bonuses.

If the bonus applies to all archery units a slingshot to feud will make some monster longbows for early resource free conquering. In fact viewed this way it doesn't look weak at all. Maybe they just need to change the name.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well if you need to be that defensive you are probably screwed anyway.

Multiplayer?

[Blake]

In more defense of the concept of protective. It will be an extremely useful trait for aggression, when you capture a city, that city will inevitably be left with 0% cultural defenses and jammed up snug against a hostile cultural border. Such cities are very difficult to defend, even against lower tech opponents, units in them face the worst odds in the game (because of city raider). Here is where Protective would help a lot, it's not just about defending your territory but also securing conquests.

[Azuarc]

For charismatic, let me see if I have this right...Unit promotions that would occur at 5, 10, and 17 exp would instead occur at 4, 8, and 13? Maybe not the rest, but the 5=>4 change could be INCREDIBLY powerful, because it allows to promotions out the gate for any city with a barracks.

Even without that, it seems superior to Expansive. I would rather have +2 happiness than +3 health, unless I'm in a huge jungle/flood plain area.


I haven't followed a lot of the news, so I'm not sure how significant Great Generals are that +100% is great. I assume they strictly emerge, rather than get generated with GPP, so Philosophical can't crank them out as well? In any event, the settler production boost on Imperialistic seems rather helpful, but not game-breaking at all.


Protective is the one that requires some thought, however having played a Chinese game where I completely destroyed for a while with just Cho-ko-nu by doing a machinery gambit, I can say that having units with collateral damage and first strikes really rock as all-purpose attackers -- have we forgotten that it improves the oft-forgotten Artillery unit as well? 1.5 free first strikes on your Artillery could make them competitive with Tanks and Infantry.

Besides that, it just seems like a hanger-on bonus, making it utterly nasty to attack someone with archers. (It is archery units and not just primitive Archers, right?)

What I think would be a nice complement to the ability, however, would be the ability to do something defensive with siege weapons. Imagine if you attacked a Protective guy's city with your stack, and each time before you did, a catapult hit YOUR stack with collateral damage, before the normal battle with the appropriate unit occured. (Limit one attack per turn, like cannons in Colonization.) However, I'll be content, situationally, with the Drill 2 if it's more wide-spread than just Archers and Artillery. The thought of Skirmishers or Cho-ko-nu simply starting with Drill 2 is ugly, to say the least.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Dominae


Multiplayer?

I was talking SP, but doubly so for MP.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I was talking SP, but doubly so for MP.

I bet you will think twice about attacking Protective civs in your first Warlords MP game. Is that worth a trait? Well, it all depends on whether you ultimately decide to attack or not (and how successful you are!).

[Thedrin]

However, I'll be content, situationally, with the Drill 2 if it's more wide-spread than just Archers and Artillery.

I've never thought that Protective is as under powered as a lot of people make it out to be. However, I have also been fairly certain that the Drill I and Drill II bonuses apply, not to archers and artillery, but to all archery units and all artillery units so that longbowmen, catapults, crossbowmen and machinegunners recieve the bonus as well.

Would someone (betatester, maybe) be able to confirm this?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Dominae


I bet you will think twice about attacking Protective civs in your first Warlords MP game. Is that worth a trait? Well, it all depends on whether you ultimately decide to attack or not (and how successful you are!).

Well not sure about larger games, but in duels its more about harassing than attacking cities, so benefits when you sit back just aren't there.

I think the trait can be useful, but more so offensively, except with barbs really, because they are stupid.