How do the Warlords Traits compare?

[Senethro]

You've had a couple of months to think about it, now lets have some discussion.

Not too many surprises really. I think we could tell from the description that Charismatic would be good and Protective would be terrible.

Charismatic is a decent alternative to Aggressive due to the ease of getting those third and fourth promotions. The happiness means you need less infrastructure, letting you get to war faster and subdue your conquests faster.

Protective... Well, what need be said?

Imperialistic is the surprise for me. I can't quite get my head around whether its good or not. Personally, I find it a lot of fun. I tend to do a lot of war and like finding inventive things to do with 10 Great Generals minimum over the course of a game.
Imperialistic only really rewards you if you have been going to war. The reward improves your ability to make war. The rewards keep on coming regularly for a long time.

So perhaps this is a secondary topic for discussion; how do you use your Great Generals to make best use of Imperialistic trait? I tend to have a couple of Warlord Medic units, a couple of Academies and a production city with many Military Advisers.

[Quillan]

Generally I add my first general as a warlord to a single unit. This either directly gets me the level 5 unit, or very close to it, required to build West Point. After that, I generally settle them as military advisors. In my last full game, I had a city with Ironworks and West Point, coupled with several military advisors, that was cranking out 17 XP tanks every 2 turns...

[Thedrin]

I love protective. I could tell immeadiately from the previews that it was going to be a powerful trait. Unfortunately the previews got its description wrong (or the trait was changed) and a weaker version was given out in the final release but it's still one of my favourites.

I've only played through one full game with charismatic and it seems to be a much more powerful trait for warfare than any other. I had much less casualties that I usually would since each unit would generate promotions faster. Large armies stayed large much easier.

Imperialistic is a bit of a mystery. I rarely remember to take advantage of the cheap settlers - I instincitvely work on food output at the very beginning - but it's left a favourable impression on me on the few occasions I have remembered to make use of it (and the one glorious time when my first city could do a first-build settler in 20 turns on marathon).

[Saurus]

I really was happy when I heard about the protective skill. Finaly a skill that will help a non-agressive player to defend his homelands. Or so I believed.

Unfortunately the Protective-trait sucks big time
If the A.I cannot capture your cities, then they will pillage instead and since those protective archers is unable to stop the A.I from pillaging, the skill is worth nothing.
In fact, A.I tend to make more suicide runs against cities whitout theese extra promotions provided with Protective-trait. Thus pillaging less.

Agressive is always a better choice even for a defensive player as lurking behind city walls with super-promoted archers is not a working strategy during wartime in Civ IV.

[ColdPhoenix]

It's not my favourite but I quite like protective. The two free promotions are great! You can get all of your promotions up to the 9th or something cheaper than charismatic. Of course the downside is that you can't pick the first two and it's only for archery and gunpowder units. But if you rush for machinery or feudalism you can have some decent units running around. And you do get archers very early. Once you're in the gunpowder era you're sorted too.

All your captured cities should stay yours. It's unfortunate that archery units can't get city raider promotions but I tend to build a three or four melee units for that purpose.

[Diadem]

I don't like protective either. The problem is that sitting in your cities is just not a feasible defence method in civ4. There are some special cases where it might be useful. But by and large it just isn't good enough compared to other traits.

AIs with protective OTOH are tough nuts to crack. Against the AI I almost never pillage, and go straight for the cities - I want those cities with improvements and all. So for AIs protective is an annoying trait to have.

In multiplayer however I can't see protective being useful. I havent played much multiplayer, but I rather expect people to pillage a lot there, and not aim for cities so much.

[Arrian]

Heh, not a fan of PRO at all, love IMP.

Faster settlers (though it only increases production - hammers - not the food part, so when building a settler as an IMP civ, max hammers), faster GGs. When paired with something like ORG (Caesar!), it can work very well.

-Arrian

edit: heh, forgot about CHA. It's good, IMO, especially if coupled with an ancient or early medieval UU, but I generally prefer IMP. An example of a CHA leader I like: Cyrus. Immortals are unholy terrors and CHA means they promote that much faster. Example of one I didn't like: Napolean (CHA/ORG, I think). Meh.

[Diadem]

The problem with IMP is that it's two bonusses seem to be apply to different playstyles.

Faster settlers are good for builders. More great generals are good for warmongers. You won't see many games in which both of these traits are very useful. If you war a lot you typically won't build a lot of units.

It's a good trait, but not as good as CHA imho. The happiness bonus is really big bonus in the beginning. And the less exp needed really helps as well.

Imagine having the pentagon and west point, running theocracy. And a barracks of course. Your units will come out of the city with 11 exp. Add a settled Great General for 13 exp, enough for level 5 for CHA leaders. To build units with level 5 an IMP leader needs 3 settled GGs. So while he gets more, he also needs more for the same effect.

The lower exp requirements from CHA are just more useful then the extra settled GGs from IMP. Of course you don't have to settle GGs, you can build academy's or make warlords. But still. I'd also rather have all my units at level 5 then most at level 4 and 1 or 2 at level 7.

[Blake]

Imp is definitely my pick of the Warlords traits.

I find that Aggressive still generally beats Cha and Pro. Cha does at least have the economic benefit of extra happiness but that is kind of situational. Pro... well Pro is guaranteed to give you a defensive benefit, it doesn't rely on strategic resources in any way (Except for crossbows), being able to pick up shock, formation or cover with the first promo is useful.
However I still find that aggressive is the best trait because it buffs up the best units - melee units. And cheap barracks are hard to beat.


I like Imp because it's a well-balanced trait, offering significant turn advantage in city founding (both stealing sites and getting them founded earlier), the boost to GG generation is nice too. I find that imp tends to go well with any/every trait, while with pro, I only like it combined with strong focused traits like Aggressive, Financial or Industrious.

[Arrian]

The problem with IMP is that it's two bonusses seem to be apply to different playstyles.

Faster settlers are good for builders. More great generals are good for warmongers.

I'm a buildmonger.

The reason I brought up Caesar is that he has a trait combo that can go either way. Have lotsa room to expand? Great, pump out settlers. Your ORG trait will help a great deal.

Crowded? Find some iron (not even strictly necessary, but very helpful) and go bonk some heads. Plus, even in a crowded situation you will get some turn advantage from IMP (you get those core cities built faster, better chance of nabbing contested sites).

-Arrian

[Krill]

Actually, PRO is a very nice trait in a fair few types of MP games, ie on the front in a team game (CD2 archers are damned cheap, of course, and CD3 LB are a ***** to kill behind culture bombs).

Though I definately see why it isn't great for SP, it is one of those traits that people find handy in MP.

[Krill]

Though don't get me wrong, it is far from the favourite in MP.

[Arrian]

Yeah, in, say, a 3v3 team game, having one teamate with a PRO civ can be nice... would be nicer if you knew who would be on the front line, but even w/o that the PRO civ can pump those archers and gift them to the front line guy... just with a delay.

But since I'm mainly a SP guy, I've actually never played PRO. It has no appeal.

-Arrian

[trev]

At lower levels all traits can be utilised, at higher levels I do not find any of the warlords traits of much value on most maps, imp does not guarantee much in the way of cities on emperor and above, agg is better than pro or char in my opinion, but on monarch and below where you can choose your style more they may be some use.

[Calvin Vu]

civfanatics has the GOTM using Korea with the PRO/FIN traits. It's pretty fun to play.
The AI is smarter now and sometimes it hides a lot of troops in the Fog Of War and only strikes back at your injured troops right after you take a city rather than defending the city against troops with Citi Raider III promotion. In that case, the PRO trait is pretty useful for warmongers.

For builders, it's not that useful if all the squares are pillaged .