I wonder if theres any way to change the rules regarding the civ traits.
Most of the rules are changeable so why not the traits as well?

I think some of the traits are much better than others (according to my settings and playstyle), and would like to boost some of them to even it out.

I wonder if theres any way to change the rules regarding the civ traits.

Nope.

Most of the rules are changeable so why not the traits as well?

When did this happen? Actually, its quite the opposite. Most rules are unchangeable.

I'm just talking about changing the default rules in the conquest.bic file for personal use. Since you can change how much food a citizen eats I thought it would be reasonable to change for example how the Agricultural trait works.

You can't change the rules, you can change what they modify. Namely, which improvements have flagged traits, including wonders. You can also change barb/scout strength to make expansionist more or less useful, shield cost of offensive military units to make militaristic more or less useful, etc. etc.

You can even change the names of traits...what you can't do, like goldflash said, is change how traits work. They're stuck that way. And, again echoing, most rules only work a certain way. Most of what civedit does is let you change names and values, not how the game works.

As my esteemed, dare I say, colleagues mentioned before: the majority of the rules are imbedded in the game. Traits, tradeable units, transports, AI and so forth... appearances and statistics are what you can actually modify. Which is a shame and should be corrected as soon as possible.

Why should it be bad to change rules for yourself? The developers haven't done a perfect job after all, and if you want to customize the game for your own playstyle that would be great. I always play military-cultural conquest games on small maps, which only a few civs are suitable after my opinion (Japan preferable). I could like to make other traits than Religious, Scientific and Militaristic good as well - for my games. When you can tweak basic rules as how many moves roads give and how much food is consumed, giving some discount on certain improvements for certain civs shouldn't be any worse.
Modular games like Civ are the best, excactly because you can change things and customize. Why should you be obliged to follow somones rules?

Agree with you Frostboy - there is nothing bad with being able to mod as much as possible.And Civ3 is still quite limited, although it has one of the best editing tools which I have seen for game.

GRM7584 has already listed the direct and most common changes which can be made towards the trait.But there are also some powerful and more indirect ways to influence trait balance.You can make trait specific improvements and units for example(you cannot assign them to traits directly, but you can make them only available to all civs which have a certain trait) or you can strengthen the militaristic trait by making elite units stronger or the religious trait by adding alot of new and fancy goverment, which create a cnstant need of change.If you want to see how those things work in a mod and play out in game, try out RaR (Rise and Rule):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=100144&page=1

Thanks. I try out different settings for the moment, changing UU's and civs, which is fun!

Since you can change how much food a citizen eats I thought it would be reasonable to change for example how the Agricultural trait works.

You'll have to wait for Civ 4 in order to do that.