My wife appears to be enjoying Civ incorrectly

[Cort Haus]

Civ threads.

We should have more Civ threads here, now that there's light moderation and we can probably get away with having on-topic discussions on the OT.

[Elok]

Quite possibly, CH. Just to keep this thread floating, how would you rank the traits in BTS, from best to worst? I'm inclined towards

Financial
Philosophical
Industrious
Organized
Expansive
Charismatic
Creative
Spiritual
Imperialistic
Aggressive
Protective

But none of those are really set in stone or anything. Except I do think financial is awesome, and protective is some weaksauce. A lot of the ones in the middle are almost tied.

[MikeH]

Civ threads.

We should have more Civ threads here, now that there's light moderation and we can probably get away with having on-topic discussions on the OT.

[Cort Haus]

Financial & Philosophical are probably my favourites. I keep playing Elizabeth recently. I quite like Spiritual too, for constant civic-flipping.

As I like playing small, buildery empires, Organised is not so useful to me.

Interestingly, I wonder if your wife likes creative? I find it fun to play as it's so much easier to get a city off the ground, even though the long term benefits are minimal. Though arguably, a better city position and not needing to be next to a certain resource *is* a long-term benefit.

[MikeH]

My wife really likes creative.

She's even had the patience to do a creative victory which seems crazy to me. You hardly get to fight any wars. It's really boring.

[DaShi]

I like Organized for making huge empires, but financial can basically do the same thing. Imperialistic is good at the beginning to grab all the nice places early, and the great generals are really useful for both defense and offense.

[Felch]

Financial is awesome, and I like Industrial for putting wonders within easy reach. If you can get an early stone quarry, Stonehenge is a good replacement for Creative. That and cheap forges.

[Arrian]

To a lesser degree, Elok, I went through the same thing w/my wife. She slowly picked up the things I was telling her, but yeah, there was a lot of "but, but, you don't want to do that. Trust me... aaarrrgh." *wife giggles*

She also ordered me out of the room a number of times.

-Arrian

p.s. I don't have aspergers, so that's not it, guys. It's about being a crazed Civ addict for over a decade.

[Arrian]

Quite possibly, CH. Just to keep this thread floating, how would you rank the traits in BTS, from best to worst? I'm inclined towards

Financial
Philosophical
Industrious
Organized
Expansive
Charismatic
Creative
Spiritual
Imperialistic
Aggressive
Protective

But none of those are really set in stone or anything. Except I do think financial is awesome, and protective is some weaksauce. A lot of the ones in the middle are almost tied.

That's pretty close to how I'd rank 'em. I tend to think more in terms of my personal favorites, though, because I've learned that even if a trait is powerful I may not use it right. I have a pretty well-defined playstyle. Some traits mesh wonderfully (FIN, ORG, IND) and others poorly (PHI, for instance). Also, some traits are better on high levels of play but less powerful on lower levels. I play on Prince (but seek "ultimate power" and failure means I consider it a loss), so something like Creative isn't as useful to me as it is for (I hear tell) guys playing on Emperor.

SPI was one I used to like, but it was weakened (relatively) with the whole no anarchy in a GA thing. I'm a total GA whore, so I just do all my civic changes in GA.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

I like Organized for making huge empires, but financial can basically do the same thing. Imperialistic is good at the beginning to grab all the nice places early, and the great generals are really useful for both defense and offense.

I want to say one word to you, just one word: DARIUS.

FIN/ORG with Immortals. *faint*

-Arrian

[DaShi]

I often play as Suleiman and just spit out great everything.

[Elok]

Financial & Philosophical are probably my favourites. I keep playing Elizabeth recently. I quite like Spiritual too, for constant civic-flipping.

As I like playing small, buildery empires, Organised is not so useful to me.

Interestingly, I wonder if your wife likes creative? I find it fun to play as it's so much easier to get a city off the ground, even though the long term benefits are minimal. Though arguably, a better city position and not needing to be next to a certain resource *is* a long-term benefit.

We haven't gotten to the point where she really thinks about civics yet. She's basically like a small child playing with a remote control and seeing what happens to the TV. She's Darius right now, playing at Settler difficulty/no barbs/no culture-flipping, on one large continent with Hammurabi and Wang Kon; Hatshepsut and Ragnar are on the other large continent (I think the map type is "balanced"). So yeah, she's playing a virtually un-losable game here, in a rather leisurely, nonsensical way. She's got four ships scouring the ocean to eliminate every last square of dark map.

MikeH, I tried for a cultural victory once, and only once. Holy crap, was that ever tedious! I forget who I played as--either Maya or Inca, I remember the cities had weird names and I had that style of units. I wound up with three cities with at least four cathedrals each, half their damned population as artists and the other half building culture, culture slider set close to 100%, wonders out the arse, free speech, hermitage, and basically I sat there clicking next turn, next turn, next turn, occasionally checking to see how I was doing in each city, next turn, next turn, and I was almost there...ELOK HAS WON A DOMINATION VICTORY! Oops, I'd neglected to uncheck that and I'd conquered a good part of the world before deciding to go for culture; I won the damned game the wrong way by accident just from population growth. I will not be trying that again.

[Elok]

I like Organized for making huge empires, but financial can basically do the same thing. Imperialistic is good at the beginning to grab all the nice places early, and the great generals are really useful for both defense and offense.

I've always been at something of a loss when it comes to great generals. As Warlords, they're fun and all, especially with the extra movement and boosted experience, but not in an enormously game-changing way, plus I have to take care not to treat them as expendable like my other troops. The boosted troop production in one city option never held much appeal either, since when I'm at war I have a whole bunch of cities cranking reinforcements. I guess the great instructor deal could be big fun if you were charismatic with vassalage, theocracy, barracks/stable/etc. in a city with West Point; I haven't tried it and I'm not going to do the math, but what would that city's units start at, level five or so?

Anyway, how do you use the GGs?

[Hauldren Collider]

I am not that great a player, but I usually go with Spiritual and then some war trait. In terms of strat I usually just whip the crap out of my cities until like 1400 AD and then try to murder everyone with riflemen or something.

[DaShi]

I've always been at something of a loss when it comes to great generals. As Warlords, they're fun and all, especially with the extra movement and boosted experience, but not in an enormously game-changing way, plus I have to take care not to treat them as expendable like my other troops. The boosted troop production in one city option never held much appeal either, since when I'm at war I have a whole bunch of cities cranking reinforcements. I guess the great instructor deal could be big fun if you were charismatic with vassalage, theocracy, barracks/stable/etc. in a city with West Point; I haven't tried it and I'm not going to do the math, but what would that city's units start at, level five or so?

Anyway, how do you use the GGs?

I use the first one to make a medic unit. Then I toss most of them into a unit producing city that churn out experienced units quickly, usually defensive ones. Occasionally, I'll boost a stack with one, if I feel they need it.

Concerning cultural victories, I usually try for that as a backup by only building wonders in three cities. Often it's just a way to quickly end the game, if I'm far enough ahead.