Leader Traits

[Geronimo]

The doccumentation for leader traits is a bit spotty.

Which ones are best suited for an OCC game?

Does philosophical only increase the birth rate of GP or does it also alter the costs of some buildings?

I've seen some praise for financial, what exactly does that do?

I could have sworn I saw agricultural as a trait for some leaders but that isn't even listed in my civ4 manual.

Are there some traits that sound wonderful on paper but are either demonstrably inferior than another trait that can do everything it does well by other means or that simply suck altogether the way caste system seems to suck pretty badly in the civics?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide on intelligently selecting the strongest traits either for OCC or for more general civ4 games.

[Shr3dZ]

I dont play OCC games, but I would suggest you run cIV, select 'play now!', run it thru until you get to the leaders, then click and hover over each one to get a full read-out of what each civ starts with tech-wise and what their traits exactly do... for info on their UBs and UUs youll hafta use the civilopedia~

[ColdPhoenix]

I seem to remember that agricultural was a trait in civ 3.

Don't play a lot of OCC myself but I'd think that Industrious would be useful as you'd want to be able to build a lot of wonders quickly in the city.

You also want to avoid organised as it's a trait that benefits a larger empire.

Philosophical makes universities cheaper. Not a great help in OCC as you'll only be building one of them. The extra GPP production ould be useful though.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
I dont play OCC games, but I would suggest you run cIV, select 'play now!', run it thru until you get to the leaders, then click and hover over each one to get a full read-out of what each civ starts with tech-wise and what their traits exactly do... for info on their UBs and UUs youll hafta use the civilopedia~

hrmm maybe the problem was that I was always playing from the custom game option.

[Blake]

Philosophical is probably my favorite trait for OCC but if you don't have it you can just get Pacifism very fast to make up for the lack of philo somewhat.

Expansionist may be next best, having that extra health is very useful since OCC is very health limited (you can build the health buildings and sell your happy resources for health and that's about it).

Industrious is good also because wonders are nice, but you can get strong production without it.

Financial means extra money and that helps, but the majority of your income will be specialist based and fin doesn't help the trade income either.

Spiritual is decent for civic switches, but you may not actually make many switches. But you can always run the optimal civic for your "entire" empire (of one city) like switching to org.rel while building wonders. It does help out.


For OCC Peter is superb since he is Philo/Expansionist. Elizabeth is good with Philo/Financial. Gandhi(warlords)/Saladin(Vanilla) with Philo/Spi is extremely excellent. Ind/Spi Gandhi(Vanilla)/Ramesses(Warlords) is good too since you can get pyramids and do more civic swapping. Ind/Phi would be the ultimate trait.

The traits of Organized, Aggressive, Creative, Charismatic, Protective, Imperialistic are all "tits on a bull" - useless. If you are going for a conquest victory (which is possible) then Aggressive or Charismatic can help then.

If you are interested in the OCC game type check out the Realms Beyond series, each has a theme / target victory type.
Weekend OCC #1 (Spaceship)
Weekend OCC #2 (Any victory)
Weekend OCC #3 (Cultural Victory with Permanent Alliances enabled)
Weekend OCC #4 (Team game with another AI)