Quantitative Analysis of Civ Traits

[JMan]

I agree that it's not enough to say that one Industrious worker is equal to two non-Industrious workers. The same is true for Militaristic military units and the way they were related to non-Militaristic military units - the difference is more than 20% or however it was expressed.

Forget upkeep costs for a moment - they are important, but only under certain governments. The real difference is the time that building two workers would take instead of building one. At minimum, the difference will be at least one city-turn. (You know, city-turn, like man-hour). In that turn, the city could be building something else instead. I believe that economists refer to this as "opportunity cost". It's exactly the same for military units - non-Militaristic civs will have to build more of them to get the same effect.

I suppose you could say that the opportunity costs would cancel out, with Religious civs, for instance, saving opportunity cost on Temples, Cathedrals, etc. However, that seems unsatisfactory to me.

[David Weldon]

I've started a thread on inflation so that delayed benefits can be discounted to the beginning of the game. This will help complicate your math quite a bit!

It's not fleshed out yet, but it would be great if anyone that wants to could
contribute or read here.

[vmxa1]

I have a huge game going now and I made one warrior and 3-4 hoplites and was able to get to nearly all of the huts first. I say this as I found huts very far from my base (30+ turns to get back) and within 3 turns of their cities, so I am not convinced that the scout is required. I still say it is the weakest link.

[Grim Legacy]

D'oh been playing too long to think straight. Greek. Greek.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I think they can all work, except expanist. I do not see what it offers. Maybe someone can expalin it to me, other than a scout to start.

Expansionist civilizations also get better stuff from huts, and never anything bad from them. It's a lot more useful on larger maps, I usually play on Huge so Expansionist gives me a great advantage early on. I get at least a couple of techs from huts, usually a military unit or two, and quite often an extra settler. You also get a bit of money in your treasury early on, which gives you a lot more freedom in your budget. You will encounter the other civilizations early and thus be able to start trading for other techs, and you will know where to build your 'border cities' so that you can claim lots of terrain and block AI expansion (I don't see leaving spaces in your empire as a problem, as the cities the AI inevitably builds in them will always end up being yours in the long-run). On a Huge map with Expansionist I almost always have the largest empire as far as land area and I establish a tech lead very early on. A good start can make up for not having any benefit later in the game.

[vmxa1]

I think they can all work, except expanist. I do not see what it offers. Maybe someone can expalin it to me, other than a scout to start.

[mharmless]

Also I think building the heroic epic counters most of the militaristic leader advantages (now I admit this doesn't happen every game.)

Heroic Epic definitly stacks with millitaristic, not replaces it. Two games now I've had eight leaders, both were with epic+militant. The most I've gotten as a non militant was four (with epic too), in a game where I was playing like I do as a militant anyway.

I'd argue that Religion is more valuable than military for a couple of reasons. The ability to cheaply build a temple in a conquored cities (which allows you to expand your culture/border to 2 squares) is very helpful. You can also do this with scientific (but generally you need the temple and the libary is kinda of useless).

The single bigest factor I've seen in holding captured cities is population. I whip them down to nothing as fast as I can. Usualy I can get temple + barracks + cathedral without too much difficulty, then I let the town grow back up. The new citizens are all roman, no problems for me anymore. It takes 2 citizens instead of 1 if you aren't religious... GOOD. I want to kill 'em off quickly anyway.

I personaly would rank militant as one of the top abilities, but no ammount of yaking is going to convince anybody else. Try it. Play a militant. I played my first games as greek because they look so good on paper. I played my second batch of games as the french, again because they look good on paper. After that, a serries of randomly assigned civs. I ended up with the romans twice, and they just fit my playstyle so well compared to all those non-militants I tried first that I most often choose to play them now.

[vmxa1]

whoops forgot my .02 on leaders/military. I had three as Persia and did not even build the EPIC or I would have had more.

[vmxa1]

I agree with Dave on the twice as many workers. You can not toss that around as if it is nothing. You pay for support and if you are spending time and resources to make them it means you are not making something else.

[David Weldon]

Jason:

I think it's worth noting that the fact that the French UU sucks in comarison to other UU's is credible evidence that Commercial and Industrious are the strongest civ traits. As bad as they might have failed, Firaxis did at least try to balance the civs, and it seems to me that they felt the French had enough of an advantage.

[Jason]

I guess the moral of the story is long live the French.

Now, if only they were blue, had Cardinal Mazarin as leader, and a UU worth spit I'd be happy with this fact.

Pink, a half-anglicized Jeanne d'Arc and a 3-4-1 is hard to take

And no, I'm not about to edit my game, feels like cheating. Or something.

[Strollen]

Great analysis.

I agree the traits have 4 tiers
1st Commercial
2nd Scientific, Industrial
3rd Religous, Militaristic
4th Expansionistic

I think one other approach to valuing the traits is to look at which AI civilization are the best. In every game, I've played past the Ancient Era, France has been the #1 nation. I don't think it is because of their special unit !

I'd argue that Religion is more valuable than military for a couple of reasons. The ability to cheaply build a temple in a conquored cities (which allows you to expand your culture/border to 2 squares) is very helpful. You can also do this with scientific (but generally you need the temple and the libary is kinda of useless).

Also I think building the heroic epic counters most of the militaristic leader advantages (now I admit this doesn't happen every game.)

[David Weldon]

When considering Industrious, you're right about the costs of building two workers instead of one, but you're forgetting the costs of upkeeping those extra workers for the whole game. That could be on average about 30 extra workers for 400 turns (fewer earlier, more later). And that's if you make liberal use of slave labor instead of building your own workers. Add 12000 value to Industrious...

In addition, one must consider the negative impact of slower growth due to population lost by building extra workers instead of settlers. I believe this effect makes Industrious much more "expansionistic" than Expansionist does. One can grow so much more quickly with Industrious than without! This is not double counting, but instead taking into account the population cost in addition to the shield cost at a very critical time. To do it properly you'd have to calculate how many gold and shields you lost by not building those new cities 10 turns earlier for each extra worker you build in the beginning of the game. I'd say that's about 50 total turns lost which accumulate throughout the game. And this is not to mention the lost production of the original city that now also has 1 less citizen working it. Of course some of these losses don't last all 400 turns, because you hit natural population limit points (sometimes even just due to happiness). But those extra 30 workers, plus the 5 cities that were delayed early on due to worker production probably lose at least 2 shields+2 commerce for about 100 turns each. Let's say 50 to be conservative. Add another 7000 value to Industrious...

Feel free to make whatever assumptions you feel are valid instead of using my numbers, but this extra value should be accounted for. For me, Industrious has the largest impact in terms of "easyness of the game" of any of the civ strengths. When I don't have it I really miss it.

As for Commercial, my experience has been the real benefit is not in large cities, but rather in small cities. Because the shields are either rounded or not, I have found that commercial gives me 100% corruption reduction in small cities on my borders. This means that instead of 1 shield out of 2, I get 2 out of 2. This equates to half price anything (normally temples, but also barracks, military units, or other early improvements). So I think that your average 5% corruption reduction is grossly undervalued. The real benefit here relates to how you devalue things over time, and is very difficult to quantify.

[mharmless]

I have to agree to this. A millitiant player will get alot more milage out of that trait. Unless you are going on the offensive alot, your only gain from that trait is cheap harbors and airports. With industrious, a player who micromanages his workers will get more benifit than sombody like me who gives only improve-here and (rail)road-to-here orders.

Same goes for all the traits. They all seem to cater to specific play styles, and with us having 16 civs all possible combonations of traits are covered. The fact that everybody touts a different trait as best is a damn good sign of balance.

The only trait that I think needs any work at all is expansionist. It seems to have a noticibly small group of adherants as compared to the other traits. Maybe we should pester Firaxis for some more detailed information about the trait. Maybe expansionists should at least get granary on the cheap...

[Dale]

Nato:
I'm not advocating the use of expansionist. I've tried all the different civ traits and found that's how expansionist helped me. As for who I DO play, I prefer religion and industrial or commercial (depending on whether I want war or peace for a game).

My view is that there is no quantitative way to qualify all the traits as a cut 'n dry figure.

For example:
Take the war-monger style player. An aggressive trait would suit him better than a peaceful trait. That's according to his play style. Similarly, a peaceful player would not get the benefits from an aggressive trait. What use is militaristic if you never fight an offensive war? And what use is commercial or scientific if you'll just conquor/steal what you want?

Conclusion:
EVERY player will rate the traits differently. Therefore, there is no cut 'n dry method of saying "This trait is the best". The player's STYLE will determine which trait is best for them. All we can do is talk about how to use the advantages of each trait, not determine which trait will always win. I like the late-game conquor and the early-culture attack. That's why I play the aforementioned traits.