After playing a few games I wanted to share some of what I have learned about the leaders I have tried so far. Please share leaders and civs you have tried and strategies you have developed for them...




My first one is France with King Louis as the leader playing on Noble difficulty. I choose Louis because he is the only leader with the trait combo I need for my strategy which is Creative and Industrious. The musketeer unique unit doesn't seem very impressive and he does not start with the techs I want first but oh well. I feel that having the leader traits you want is most important because that will be with you the entire game.

Now, first let me say that being Creative is just awesome in the early game land grab. All your cities (settled or captured ones) will create +2 culture from day one with no need to build anything. Add in the culture bonus from your palace and your starting city's boarders will expand like crazy. You will be amazed at how huge your empire will grow from just a few cities and new cities will be able to work their full radius of tiles just a few turns after you settle them and continue to expand like crazy. This allows you to easily grab up all the nearby resources and grab a huge chunk of land from your nearby enemy. Considering that you will not have open borders yet you can even block other civs from being able to send settlers to unclaimed areas if they can't get around your huge empire.

The first tech I get is Mystisism for 2 reasons. First, I want to build Stonehenge as soon as possible. The fact that my civ does not start out knowing this tech already is not a big deal since I won't be able to start building the wonder until my city grows a bit anyway. This wonder is great for my plan because it adds another free +1 culture to every city making my borders expand even faster! But the main reason I want this is to start building Great Prophet points right away so that when I found a religion I can build a shrine as soon as possible and start pulling in some extra coin real early. Being Industrious helps me build the wonder much faster even though I had to research the tech first and other civs start already knowing Mystisism. If I happen to have a source of stone nearby all the better. The second reason for getting Mystisism first is that it sets me on the way to founding a religion. The AI civs who start with this tech are going to beat me to buddism, nothing I can do about that and I don't care because I want Monotheism anyway.

I shoot for monotheism next because all of the techs required for it are things I need anyway. Also Monothesism gives me the first civic option that I want so I would be researching it anyway. Might as well be the first to get it and found the religion as well. In my last game I was actualy able to found hinduism and judism giving me 2 holy cities! With all the Great Prophet points I'm pulling in from Stonehenge I can easily get two shrines and spread two religions for double the coin gain!

After founding my religion my next goal is to grab up all the key resources. By now my empire has grown a great deal more then the other civs from being creative but in order to make sure I get all the key resources I need to research bronze working and metal working to reveal copper and iron on the map. Once I have those I make sure to send settlers to grab those resources before the other civs see them if they are not already within my huge empire. Usually I can can grab all or most of the horse, copper and iron resources away from my opponents without having to build and escort settlers just from my ever expanding borders! If I manage to do that, I am assured of a stronger army once I start building swordsmen. If I think war is needed I will go after the tech for catapults next because even without resources your enemy can build archers which are tough city defenders.

The downside of this strategy is that I have somewhat ignored my defenses because as soon as my starting city sent out the first settler I started working on Stonehenge. I had a few scares with barbarians approaching my capital with only one warrior defending it. Good thing is that animals will stay out of your territory so you don't have to worry about them for long.

I also had some trouble with my economy early on because even though I had a huge chunk of land under my control I only had a few cities so not much income. Once my trade routes and cottages developed, religon spread and courthouses were built, I was able to go back to 90% science and still have a good profit plus.

From here my capital keeps pumping Wonders like crazy from being Industrious and because my quickly expanding borders included both stone and marble! Any enemy cities near me are soon surrounded in my culture and can't work many tiles. Time to roll out the swordsmen and catapults and prey on those small, resource lacking neighbors of mine!

I'm a total Civ goober (love the game, but wouldn't describe myself as being terribly good at it).

My first attempt at a game was a disaster. I made a bunch of really awful decisions and plummetted into debt so fast that one by one my military units were disbanded. By the time my workers started getting deleted, I decided the game was a wash and tried another one.

Being absolutely paranoid about money, I chose Catherine (creative, financial). As I expected, the creative trait sort of boosts your money and research because you don't have to spend any points on culture directly. As you pointed out, those borders just expand and expand on their own and I can max out research to my heart's content (with just enough devoted to commerce to keep me from going in the red). I haven't tried any other leaders but the two mentioned so far, but the game with Catherine has been easy, easy, easy if you're prone to expansionism.

I tried a few civs but found Ghandi of the Indians to be best.

Industrious gives +50% wonder build, which is HUGE. Good luck beating comp civs to wonders without it. Wonders are key because they really help pump out great people. In one game I was able to build all the wonders in my capitol, and I was at one point getting like 80+ great people points per turn. :D

Also he gets spiritual, which eliminated anarchy altogether, which i also like.

Best of all, India's specail unit is the fast worker, a worker with 3 moves rather than 2. This is huge, and useful throughout the entire game rather than one brief historical window.:goodjob:

For the first few days I played as Isabella (Spiritual and Expansive). As such, I got addicted to the Expansive trait, and now find it hard to live without. Now it's one of my favorite leader traits to have.

But I've since moved away from Spiritual. I liked it at first because of the starting Mystisism tech. It pretty much guaranteed you an early religion. But I'm learning now that without Spiritual, I'm still usually able to grab Christianity before any of the AI does. No anarchy is nice though.

Lately I've been playing Tokogawa (Aggressive and Organized). I'm loving Aggressive. It's very fun, as well as extremely useful against those pesky barbarians on harder difficulty settings. But Organized doesn't seem very useful to me. Perhaps in the late-game it becomes more beneficial. But in those crucial early years, it does little. As such, I'm thinking of playing more with Gengis Khan. =D

I tried a few civs but found Ghandi of the Indians to be best.

Yeah. My roommate plays Ghandi, and it is indeed an extremely powerful civ if you're taking the peaceful approach.

But when we play multiplayer, I usually have to bail his ass out when the Barbarians come. =D

I'm starting to think Financial is highly underrated... and since I love industrious, Qin of the Chinese seems to be a powerful one. I should post my Beijing screenshot - 1200 AD, and my capital has 6 floodplains with towns on them, each generating 3 food, 1 hammer and *9* commerce. It makes the tech whore approach somewhat viable, even on Prince difficulty... So try Qin if you'd rather dominate with your production and economy/technology than just by pumping out lots of axemen.

I played as the industrious/organized americans (normal sized continents map, noble) and dominated for score the whole game, built tons of wonders, which lead to tons of great leaders, and my income was crazy (due to orgainized, I guess). Problem was, I didn't notice the little messages saying an AI was building space ship parts and I had no goal for winning other than having the highest score. So I lost to space race - and that won't be happening again!

I love industrious becuase building wonders faster is glorious - but it doesn't do much else for you.

Organized is more nebulous but it seemed to be helpful. If you develop a large empire your civic costs get to be up there and it helps a lot with that. If you were going for a small empire type of victory I doubt it would do much for you.

I next played as Saladin (spi/phi). I'd already tried spiritual in my very first chieftan game that's not worth mentioning since even for a civ gimp like me chieftan is way too easy. This was again on continents/normal/noble like my first game - and again I found myself on a continent with only 1 other AI. And again, I dominated for score but had no clear goal for winning. And again an AI was going for space race. I ended up winning by domination because I had to take out AIs going for space races.

I still have mixed feelings about spiritual. The lack of anarchy is nice. On normal maps it's easy to found a religion even if you don't start with mysticism.

I'm also torn on philosophical. It's great early on but eventually it takes so long to produce GP that I'm not sure it matters. I produce a lot of GP regardless and I'd guess that you don't get that many more GP overall with philosophical due to the scaling, you just get em faster early on.

My next game was so ugly I just quit since it was a sure loss. I went with Tokugawa (aggressive/organized) on a pangea/normal/noble setup thinking I'd win by conquest. However, everything backfired. I don't understand the 3 pangea map options but I got a very small map. I had a sweet start - my first city blocked a chunk of land with room for 2 other cities immediately - so others couldn't even explore it. I built 3 cities outside of that before building 2 cities on my hidden plot. Barbarians had built a city while I was exanding outwards and I had to remove it as it was in a bad spot (delayed me). I also built a few wonders. Oh yes, times were great for Japan. Right about the time I could build samurai Napoleon, my closest neighbor, invaded. I had defenses but no counter attackers. He pillaged my lands which caused all kinds of unhealthiness in my cities, and pillaged my resources cutting off the iron I needed to build samurai - totally killing any hope of defense. So far, every time I've seen napoleon in a game he's been hyper aggressive. I should've been better prepared. Lessons learned!

I like the way the aggressive trait is implemented in Civ IV much moreso than how it was in Civ 3 - but obviously you have to do a much better job than I did in USING it. :-/

I did Japan on the 5th one in (forget which it was) against 5 comptuers. I kicked the crap out of them.

The biggest thing that helped me was the 2nd setler I got from a Barbarian camp.

Got 2 cities and then I boxed one country in and wouldn't let them pass. I waited until they got all the terrain upgrades done then I killed them.

I allied with catherine and basically bent over to her, I did this so she would help me and to war with me.

(this was on a standard map).

I was at 19 cities, and one turn I got 5 great people, which I always keep in 1 city. However, in that city I found that I had 3 artists.

I took 3 setlers, and those 3 artists and created small cities around an comp player. I then created 3 cities, and got each artist to add 4000 culture to each city. INstantly I took over their section of the map. I then moved my army in and killed them.


I had over 18 wonders in 1 city, and the computer (all 5 playres) only had a chance to build 4 wonders.

Samurai rock. I'm not a fan of the new catipult... not sure how long bow men can actually split the wood with their arrows... but oh well.



However, I remember someone saying something about archers on a hill in a castle... they killed my tank! how does an archer kill a tank. stupid archer stupid tank all needs to be blown up.

My first game was with an Expansionist civ. I kept reading on these forums about unhealthiness limiting the growth of your cities and could not understand what people were talking about. I went all the way to a space race victory without seeing any unhealthiness and my cities never stopped growing. Then I played a non-expansionist civ and had little green unhappy faces all over the place as soon as I hit size 6. Although I did not really understand how to manage unhappiness since it was never an issue previously so maybe I could have prevented that better. Still, its one of those traits that you don't realize how good it is until you don't have it. I also had no problems with money. I always had a big treasurey, I guess from all the taxes of the high population cities? In every game I have played without expansionist, money has been tight.

I also really liked Aggressive. My units had so many promotions it was crazy. I had swordsmen with +55% city attack already and as I understand it units keep promotions when they upgrade.

Creative is still my favorite so far because I think the early land grab stage makes or breaks you and having Creative allows you to grab huge chunks of land which prevents other civs from getting key resources.

I think I may take creative and aggressive Kubla Kahnn for a spin next!

I'm still usually able to grab Christianity before any of the AI does.

This is exactly what I save The Oracle for. :)

I always played Morgan in SMAC, so Finantial is one of my favorites.

I've also fallen in love expantionist and find it hard to play without it.

As you can tell, Victoria-England is my favorite leader/civ right now.

Wow this is a good post. I have learned a lot ;)

But Organized doesn't seem very useful to me. Perhaps in the late-game it becomes more beneficial. But in those crucial early years, it does little. As such, I'm thinking of playing more with Gengis Khan. =D

It would seem to me that Organized could be most useful at the start of the game...??? I haven't tried it, but technically you should be able to build an extra one or two cities at the start without going into the red. An investment like that should pay dividends for the rest of the game. In short - Organized = more cities.

As the game goes on, Organized should get overtaken by Financial in regards to maximising profits.

So far, my impressions of general power (different terrain/game situations/trait combinations notwithstanding):

1. Financial
2. Industrious
3. Expansionist
4. Philosophical
5. Spiritual
6. Aggressive
7. Organized
8. Creative

I'm not by nature a warmonger, so aggressive and creative could conceivably be higher in fact. The nice thing about Civ IV is that each one could be THE killer app in a given situation, but I've rated them in order of power - i.e. ability to change the nature of the game conidering the opportunity to plan around their effects.

I tried Louis XIV, almost randomly, fpr my first game (noble), and did pretty good until the end, mainly because I had no clear plan in mind. The new tech tree is a killer if you don't have aclear strategy laid out ; I ended up switching between military, scientifical and health advances, and the Chinese beat me for the spaceship...
Still Creative is a terrific trait. Industrious is good, but it's good for wonders only, and wonders are good but not that terrific (and that's good for balance), and I put too many good in this sentence.
But Creative I think will be my fav trait. No need to build temples for the land-grabbing action !

Creative has got to be, in my opinion thus far, the most useful trait you can begin with. That early cultural boost is a real big plus. I dunno how you could rate it that low Bezhukov. Maybe the middle if you didn't particularly enjoy using it in your strategy, but still give it the respect it deserves!

My favourite combo thus far has been Kublai Khan's Aggressive/Creative traits. These are VERY good for expanding. You can get an awesome early military going, and your borders expand like crazy. have settlers at the ready, burn and raze captured towns, and watch your borders expaaaaand.

Wow this is a good post. I have learned a lot ;)
my thoughts as well.

I just tried Ganghis Kahn (aggessive/expansive) and I started on a peninsula. Well I got boxed in by a civ to the south of me before I even got gunpowder. Then i traded world maps with somebody and the game crashed. Anyway that was the first game so far that I did not have the highest score compared to the other AIs and was kinda behind on development. I guess I wont use that civ again.

a great read while i wait to get my copy of civ 4

Organized seems fairly weak to me so far. I've been playing a game as Caesar (Expansive and Organized). All organized does is cut your civic upkeep in half. Not your per city upkeep. Considering that most of the advaced civics actually have low or no upkeep I've been finding it rather useless.

One thing that seems really good about it though is the half price courthouses and harbors. Those are really great.

Best of all, India's specail unit is the fast worker, a worker with 3 moves rather than 2. This is huge, and useful throughout the entire game rather than one brief historical window.:goodjob:

Why a 3 movement worker great? I can only see that he can work immediately after entering a forest or hill. Is there any other benefit? Does he work faster by 100%?

I'm starting to think Financial is highly underrated... and since I love industrious, Qin of the Chinese seems to be a powerful one. I should post my Beijing screenshot - 1200 AD, and my capital has 6 floodplains with towns on them, each generating 3 food, 1 hammer and *9* commerce. It makes the tech whore approach somewhat viable, even on Prince difficulty... So try Qin if you'd rather dominate with your production and economy/technology than just by pumping out lots of axemen.

Just a little correction: Mr. YING Zheng is called "Qin Shi (means first) Huang (means emperor)", because he was the first one to unite China and became the first emperor. "Qin" is the name of the dynasty, not the name of the emperor. :)

Organized has only one real strong point: Settler factories.

If you want to do the classic landgrab and claim as much land as possible, then organized is the trait for you...it'll allow you to not lose quite so much money while you spread yourself thin. Once you've eaten up all that neutral land, those half price courthouses help bring costs down even further.

Sadly once you're over the early game hump and start expanding your infrastructure, organized quickly dies off in use. The only real way I can see it keeping it's use in the long term is if you were a warmonger civ and needed to keep the national treasure in check as you adopt pricy civics and add new cities to your lands via conquest.

On the other hand, if you can pull a massive land-grab off in the early game and hold it, you'll reap benefits during the entire game with extra resources and workable tiles.

I might have to give Organized/Creative a try to see just how much land I can grab and how it helps me in the later game.


Edit:
I just realized...there IS no Organized/Creative leader! Am I mistaken? I thought they had all the possible combos covered...

Louis of France is creative/organized.

There are two combos missing - ind/phil and ind/cre.

Why a 3 movement worker great? I can only see that he can work immediately after entering a forest or hill. Is there any other benefit? Does he work faster by 100%?


Every time they build a road, it takes two turns instead of three. Every time they go to mine or irrigate or build a cottage or whatever, they take one turn off of the process. This helps incredibly at the start of the game, and continues to be of use towards the later portions no matter if you are on a conquest or pacifist strategy. As was said, it is useful throughout the game, unlike every other special unit. For example, Panzers are incredible, but only at the end of the tech tree.


My first game was Asoka for the settler, followed by Frederick for his traits, then Gandhi, and now I am playing Cyrus. I like the settler as the best special unit. Industrious is excellent for Wonder building, and Spiritual definitely helps, because you can switch Civics without penalty, which you can greatly use to your advantage. I'm not really sure about Organized. It seems similar to yet much worse than Financial, but perhaps I'm missing something.

Frederick's Philosophy and Creativity are my personal favorite traits, though I have found Persia to be an incredible civ. Expansive cities grow much more quickly, combined with the Creative trait which, as mentioned, helps you expand tremendously, making Persia a very quickly growing culture, and besides which, Cyrus was quite a ruler.

Religions are incredibly useful for building up tons of culture points. The major temples such as the Pagodas, Synagogues, and Mandirs stack and each one gives a 50% boost to your culture rate.

I like Pacifism a lot, and Free Religion is incredible for civs that have established several, which you will have to if you want multiple Legendary cities. Theocracy and Organized Religion are very useful as well, as you don't have to worry about building many Monasteries, as all of their beneficial effects seem to expire with the advent of Scientific Method.

The whole religion thing is interesting. Another improvement I like is the lack of pollution, meaning you don't have to move Engineers every turn towards the end of long games, but I wish they hadn't simplified pollution so much. All of ecosystem management is just one building now, and that's such a waste.

I also really wish TTwo had gone or goes futuristic, as they're probably going to release expansions, and hopefully one of them will be now that they've closed themselves off from the "Adding five leader" expansion packs. I would sure be interested to see Take Two's version of SMAC, not that Civ4 is perfect. But it is good...

I had a really fun peaceful expansion game as Mansa Musa. Spiritual gave me a head start towards Hinduism. From there, I focused on getting more religions (ending up with 5 eventually). The result: huge rich cultural dynamo cities. Stacking all those 1/2-price temples on top of each other really piled up the happy faces, while my borders expanded out to flip 2 cities from my neighbors, with whom I granted 'Open Borders' to all but one. Then, my improvements focused on villages, which under the Financial trait, give an automatic 3 commerce very early in the game (when built next to rivers), and grew in time. Combined with 3 Shrines (I focused on Great Prophet production), and an aggressive missionary program, I was swimming in cash, such that I could easily afford to pour more money into culture (via the slider - a great gaming feature). I was well on my way to a Cultural Victory when my game crashed after I built the Taj Mahal circa 1600 :( Oh well - I think I'll try an Aggressive civ next - I have yet to fight anything but barbarians and animals!:mischief:

I like china Mao whoever. Phi/Org. Being able to cut down on civic costs is HUGE. Right now I'm pulling in 84 gc per turn at 90 research. 50% boost to great people production doesn't hurt either.

In every single game I have been able to get both Hinduism and Judism without a problem.

I have also beat the AI to Wonder production, especially with Pyramids. For some reason I got 3 great Engineers in the early parts of the game (one I saved all the way up to 1500 AD to start a Golden Age).

Their unique unit isn't too bad. 2 first strikes, 50% vs Melee, takes the place of Xbow.

I like china Mao whoever. Phi/Org. Being able to cut down on civic costs is HUGE. Right now I'm pulling in 84 gc per turn at 90 research. 50% boost to great people production doesn't hurt either.

In every single game I have been able to get both Hinduism and Judism without a problem.

I have also beat the AI to Wonder production, especially with Pyramids. For some reason I got 3 great Engineers in the early parts of the game (one I saved all the way up to 1500 AD to start a Golden Age).

Their unique unit isn't too bad. 2 first strikes, 50% vs Melee, takes the place of Xbow.

actually i find that chokunu's collateral damamge is so much more useful. just use a stack to 5 and you will reduce a stack of hordes to its kness. + they are real cheap too.

I like these:

Agressive- combine this with barracks and you can kick butt in the early game.

Philosophical- great leaders can have a BIG impact in this game, far more so than in Civ3 I believe. Just too bad armies went away...

Industrious- I think wonders can have a bigger impact in Civ4 too.

So I'd say Napoleon (Aggressive/Industrious) or Alexander (Aggressive/Philosphical). Too bad there's no industrious/philosophical leader

I'd say the weakest trait is religious- 1 turn of anarchy is nothing to worry about.

Every time they build a road, it takes two turns instead of three. Every time they go to mine or irrigate or build a cottage or whatever, they take one turn off of the process. This helps incredibly at the start of the game, and continues to be of use towards the later portions no matter if you are on a conquest or pacifist strategy. As was said, it is useful throughout the game, unlike every other special unit. For example, Panzers are incredible, but only at the end of the tech tree.


My first game was Asoka for the settler, followed by Frederick for his traits, then Gandhi, and now I am playing Cyrus. I like the settler as the best special unit. Industrious is excellent for Wonder building, and Spiritual definitely helps, because you can switch Civics without penalty, which you can greatly use to your advantage. I'm not really sure about Organized. It seems similar to yet much worse than Financial, but perhaps I'm missing something.


A normal worker has 2 movement, so he can also begin to road immediately after entering a flatland tile. A fast worker can be faster only when dealing with a tile which costs 2 movement: forest and hill. Although it's nice, I don't think it makes much difference.

What do you mean by "settler as special unit"?

Creative is great for the early game (if you don't have a religion - remember, religion also givesyou free border expansions), but rapidly becomes useless, given how many more culture sources there are in Civ4 compared to Civ3. Just finished a Prince cultural win as Catherine, and my leading city had over 500 culture per turn by game's end.

Oddly, it was named Illinois as it was a captured barb city far from my core. I built a bunch of cottages around it as there was no fresh water available, and the sick commerce of all those towns ended up cranking way more culture than my wonder/specialist cities (actually made a good bit of coin losing races to Gandhi on those), thanks to the culture slider option.

I played the Arabians first, like Sulla in his walkthrough. Pretty strong ofcourse, but since I just copied the strategy, I wanted to try something for myself.

I took Gandhi, because he had Mysticism from the start so I could get Hinduims easily.

The one trait is Spiritual, it's decent, but I did miss Philosophical a lot, GPP are a lot slower. Think I'd rather have that then Spiritual.

The other is Industrious I think, well I did build a lot of Wonders, which is good, but I miss the Philo. Next try will be Philo and Industrious.

edit: which doesn't exist ofcourse. damn ;)

I've learned that Expansion and Philosophy are the perfect accent to my playing style.

I've also learned that spiritual is not required in single playered games, as founding a religion is simple even if you have to research an extra tech to get there. I almost always found either Hinduism or Judaism regardless of my starting techs even on Monarch or Deity level.

I used to only play Sci/Ind in Civ3, so I found it a bit unsettling when I loaded up Civ4 for the first time and couldn't find a Phi/Ind leader. I later read one of Sulla's posts, and he said that combo wasn't included because the ability to create GPP wonders easily (Ind) + the 50% GPP bonus (Phi) was just too powerfull. So I had no choice but to venture into the great unknown, and try a bunch of other combos out... I'm glad I did.

I first choose Saladin (Phi/Spi), Phi of course is now agreed upon as being one of the more usefull traits, due to the importance of Great Peoples in Civ4. Simply put, Great People are great. Religious shrines, science academies, culture bombs, trade missions, free techs, super specialists.. what's not to love? Specialize a city for food, create a couple of specialists, and pump those babies out. Since they're one of the new concepts, it took me a few games to get the hang of them, and the more I got comfortable with the concept, the more usefull Phi seemed.

As for Saladin's other trait, Spi, well it's generaly regarded as one of the more useless traits. The reason for this is because most people see its only benefit as avoiding the one turn of anarchy you get by changing civics/religions - and losing that one turn really isn't that big of a deal. But as I've learned, that's not Spi's real worth as a trait. Every trait gets a cost deduction on one building, Phi gives you a cost reduction for universities, Agg gives you a cost reduction for baracks, and Spi gives you a cost reduction for temples, etc. But here's the thing, in a single city you can only build one university, or one barracks, but you can build up to seven temples (one for each religion). The more religions you have in a city, the more temples you can build, and the greater the culture, happiness, and Spiritual GPPs (through priests) boost. I see Spi as a trait which will be much more usefull at higher difficulty levels, where you find it very difficult keeping your citizens happy.

Next up was Louis XIV (Ind/Cre). What can I say, Ind is a great trait. Maybe the best trait, since it makes almost every other trait better. I mean, what strategy doesn't include wonders? To get the full effect of Phi's trait , you'll need to build wonders like the Parthenon and National Epic. To get the full effect of Fin's trait, you'll need wonders like Wall Street and the Oxford University. Simply put, Ind is great with everything, because everything is greater with wonders.

Now Louis' other trait, Cre, is something I didn't really appreciate untill it was gone. While it's true it's only really usefull in the early game when you're first settling your nation, it's so usefull during that stage that once you've gotten used to having it, it's very hard to play a civ without. Think about how how much pressure is put on you in the early game. Every turn is vital. You know you've got to build settlers as fast as possible, but you also need to start expanding your borders in order to claim resources, and at the same time you need to build workers to hook-up/improve those resources. No matter what you do your sacrificing something. But with the Cre trait, suddenly things become a lot simpler. Since your borders take care of themselves, you can focus entirely on workers/settlers, getting more of them out sooner than if you had to bother building obelisks in order to gain access to that horse/stone/copper/etc resource just outside your border.

Finaly, I tried playing a Fin civ (Qin: Fin/Ind), and this was the trait that suprised me the most. I remembered how badly Civ3's Com (commercial) trait sucked, and so I was kind of expecting more of the same. But as it turns out, the new Fin trait is nothing like the old Com trait (the new Organised trait gets that dubious honor), it's acctualy good - very good. Interestingly, the Fin trait is more about science than it is about money, as Fin boosts your commerce and commerce is what's turned into research. Of course if you lower your science rate from 100%, the extra commerce will be deposited into your your treasury as gold, but for the most part you're going to want to be running at 100% science unless you need some cash for your annual unit upgrade. Just as the Cre trait is usefull early in the game but grows less and less usefull through the mid to late game, the Fin trait isn't very usefull in the early game but grows more and more usefull through the mid to late game. The reason for this is three-fold. First and foremost are cottages, the backbone of a Fin civ, produce very little commerce early in the game, it's only when they progress from cottage to hamlet to village to town that they really become worthwhile. Second, the techs/civics which further improve cottages/villages/towns aren't available untill the the mid to late game. And finaly, the wonders which are best suited for a Fin civilization (wall street, oxford) aren't available untill the mid to late game.

I believe I may try Expansive and Industrious for my next game.

I'll try for a wonder-building Marathon.

The main reason I find Spiritual to be worthless is because I disregard Temples. They're too damn cheap! So what if you build 7 of them? Even when I played on Deity it wasn't hard building up a couple of Temples that only took 2-6 turns to build around the early renessaince.

I'd say the real production cost benefit is for Industrious. Why? The VERY useful Forge has it's production cost being halved. In itself this is a huge boon to production overall, especially when you're trying to quickly speed up production for the newly founded cities, or cities that you've just captured. If you don't have universal sufferage yet, you may have to wait 80-120 turns to get your forge!.... So... the forge is actually luring me back over to the Industrious trait. I may just try it out on Deity level if I ever get the balls to try it out again.

Personally though; if you were really worried about happiness. Go for Creative. Cheap Colloseum's will more than be enough to keep even the most fickle of neighbrohoods happy. I usually leave them to last since they cost on an average of 8 turns+, where as the temples are usually around 2-4 turns, and cathedrals around 6 turns. I'd prefer to just restrict growth temporarily than worry about happiness anyways.

Here's my view of things based on Monarch difficulty:

Expansive seems utterly useless to me. Happiness has always been the limiting factor in every game I've played. Having a bunch of extra angry people helps me how?

Creative was something I loved at first, but then I discovered that I always get Stonehenge first. Sure, it takes slightly longer to expand, but that's minimal. And the extra culture matters little in the long run. It might be more useful in multiplayer when getting Stonehenge first will really cost you.

Organized seems kinda crappy. Haven't played it (because of my theory), but civic costs tend to be minimal for me. I don't really like civics though. I switch a few in wartimes, I like Universal Suffrage and Free Speech when I've gotten a few towns and Pacifism in peacetime (which has no upkeep), but often I keep them at default settings, so it's really cheap.

Industrious is one of my favorites. Extra wonder production is nice and I really love the cheaper forge. I like getting the Oracle early and snatch Metal Casting with it to get the forges really early. It's the first thing I build in almost every city and as such it really helps when it's cheaper.

Financial is my absolute favorite. While other traits make little difference, this one is huge. An extra gold in each square that produces 2 is a lot of extra gold. Cheaper banks is no big deal though.

Philosophical... I don't know. It's hard to tell how much of a difference it makes, really. I have no judgement.

Spiritual doesn't seem that helpful either. Mostly because I rarely change civics since I find few of them useful. Maybe if I discover new uses for them with time, but that turn of anarchy is no biggie.

Aggressive is kinda nice. Doesn't make that big a difference though since I rarely would have chosen the Combat I upgrade had I been given a choice. The city defense/offense are generally more useful. Cheaper barracks is always good for the early warmonger.

My ranking:

1. Financial
2. Industrious
3. Aggressive
4. Philosophical
5. Spiritual
6. Creative
7. Expansive
8. Organized

I see a lot of people saying Creative is not useful later in the game. I suppose if you are going for a peaceful win that may be true but if you are planning to conquer other civs Creative is great.

Remember stonehenge only gives +1 culture and becomes obsolete eventually. Creative gives +2 culture and is with you forever. So in the mid or later game when you are taking over cities, as soon as the resistance ends the borders start expaning. When a captured city is is resistance all the land that city controled reverts to neutral allowing other developed civs to expand their borders and take that land. With creative your newly captured city will quickly expand its borders and reclaim that land and resources before other civs do. Also the new city will be productive that much sooner being able to work the full radius of tiles.

Creative / Aggressive is a nice combo.

By the time my workers started getting deleted

I have to say, OUCH :lol:

I'd say the weakest trait is religious- 1 turn of anarchy is nothing to worry about.
I wonder if it's bigger benefit will come when I start playing at higher difficulty level - namely the ability to more quickly grab a religion (or an extra religion). At noble, it's easy enough to stockpile 3 or 4 religions, even if you aren't religious. But I suspect at higher difficulty levels, this won't be possible. Having the headstart on the 3 early religions might be necessary to get even one of them.

I see a lot of people saying Creative is not useful later in the game. I suppose if you are going for a peaceful win that may be true but if you are planning to conquer other civs Creative is great.

Remember stonehenge only gives +1 culture and becomes obsolete eventually. Creative gives +2 culture and is with you forever. So in the mid or later game when you are taking over cities, as soon as the resistance ends the borders start expaning. When a captured city is is resistance all the land that city controled reverts to neutral allowing other developed civs to expand their borders and take that land. With creative your newly captured city will quickly expand its borders and reclaim that land and resources before other civs do. Also the new city will be productive that much sooner being able to work the full radius of tiles.

Creative / Aggressive is a nice combo.
I agree. It is a bit ironic that the culture-generating trait is a far-from-optimal choice for players looking for a cultural win. The cultural victory only involves your 3 best cities, and the creative trait bestows a small bonus on all of your cities. Thus, if you're playing for a cultural victory, you're much better off going for expansive (higher pop = more production & culture), industrious (wonders!), philosophical (great people!), spiritual (early religion), or financial (more commerce = higher culture slider without running a deficit or hindering research).

Louis of France is creative/organized.

There are two combos missing - ind/phil and ind/cre.

No Louis is Industrial/Creative

My favorite leader is Alexander - You can't beat those early GP and barracks - not to mention Phalanx!

I'm just about to finish an emperor game (huge map, 18 civs) with louis XIV of the french. I was playing rhye's earth map, and hence I started in europe which is a really cramped starting position. Luckily, the germans started with two scouts, a worker and a settler rather than a warrior. I took advantage of this, declaring on the germans and killing one of their scouts in turn 1. In turn three, I razed berlin and captured their worker which gave me a head start (equal to the AI considering they get to start with a worker). It also freed up some much needed space.

Anyway, this thread is about leader trait and I just have to say that creative is goddamn awesome if you want to play expansively and wage a lot of war. Especially in the mid-late game when many civs have a very developed culture, it can be really hard to keep the cities you conquer from flipping. Creative really alleviates this problem, since you don't always have access to culture bombs :p

Also, building the stonehenge early is a great risk (I missed it in another emperor game despite starting with mysticism) and even if you pull it off, the missed expansion is quite costly. With a creative civ, I was able to run paris as a straight settler factory for quite some time, getting me way ahead of the AI in the early game.

Industrious is nice too, but if we're talking about winning the game straight up, I'd much rather combine creative with some other trait like aggressive.

Also, spiritual appears to be pretty good on tougher difficulties, since you won't be getting an early religion without it. (In my game I focused on terrain-improvement techs, and didn't get a religion until confucianism). Also, the power of spiritual increases with the game speed, as 5 anarchy turns out of 200 is much worse than 5 turns out of 500...

Creative has got to be, in my opinion thus far, the most useful trait you can begin with. That early cultural boost is a real big plus. I dunno how you could rate it that low Bezhukov. Maybe the middle if you didn't particularly enjoy using it in your strategy, but still give it the respect it deserves!

I'd rather build Stonehenge (which I've been able to beat the AI to in every game I've played so far, even on Monarch difficulty), reap aproximately the same benefits and have a different trait, honestly. Plus, if you can found a couple religions early, two of your starting cities are going to get +5 culture a turn on top of everything else anyway - so there are definitely strategies that make the creative trait almost obsolete by 2000 B.C. (At least for single player games.)

Having said that, I think there are worse traits than creative, I just happen to think that there are much better ones (and some sweet trait combos, none of which include creative).

Finaly, I tried playing a Fin civ (Qin: Fin/Ind), and this was the trait that suprised me the most. I remembered how badly Civ3's Com (commercial) trait sucked, and so I was kind of expecting more of the same. But as it turns out, the new Fin trait is nothing like the old Com trait (the new Organised trait gets that dubious honor), it's acctualy good - very good. Interestingly, the Fin trait is more about science than it is about money, as Fin boosts your commerce and commerce is what's turned into research. Of course if you lower your science rate from 100%, the extra commerce will be deposited into your your treasury as gold, but for the most part you're going to want to be running at 100% science unless you need some cash for your annual unit upgrade. Just as the Cre trait is usefull early in the game but grows less and less usefull through the mid to late game, the Fin trait isn't very usefull in the early game but grows more and more usefull through the mid to late game. The reason for this is three-fold. First and foremost are cottages, the backbone of a Fin civ, produce very little commerce early in the game, it's only when they progress from cottage to hamlet to village to town that they really become worthwhile. Second, the techs/civics which further improve cottages/villages/towns aren't available untill the the mid to late game. And finaly, the wonders which are best suited for a Fin civilization (wall street, oxford) aren't available untill the mid to late game.

Try using those cottages on river tiles next time. +3 commerce with a cottage and financial. Which is quite huge in the early game, especially if you start near flood plains. +3 food, +3 commerce by the time you're researching your 2nd or 3rd tech? <drool> Even a +2 food, +3 commerce grassland is pretty nice, and provides a good use for those cities you sometimes have to found with lots of food and no production. In fact, I'd argue that Financial is ever bigger in the early game if you combine it with cottages. Consider that an extra commerce on a tile that should give you 2 commerce is a 33% increase... by the late game, all those cottages will be towns and pumping out probably 8 commerce anyway, with financial bumps up another one... or only a 12.5% increase.

The effect is much more noticiable in the early game, especially if you use the extra tech production to blitz a tech like, say metal casting (forge) or astronomy (observatory), etc.

I started with Romans on noble to get a feel. I've learned a few things but look forward to stepping up a notch or two as I am dominating the game. I don't know if any of my thoughts are valid but a few things of note....
*Praetorians These guys rock. Though I didn't beeline to iron and had to overcome a barb city to get iron I can see how they'd be devastating in the early game.
*Drama--the combination of getting a great artist which was planted between 4 German cities was awesome. He has flipped one German city and is pressuring 2 of the 3 others to their city limits.
* Food cities --They ain't so great. City planning really needs a combination of shields and food. In the future I'll spam cottages around big food type cities.
*Forests on rivers--Since I thought most of the river tiles would be used for food I chopped river forests first since those tiles will always be worked first. Chopping not only helped get a early settler our faster but it helped finish a couple wonders that were a big help.
*Early roads are not so critical--Unlike Civ3 roads are not quite as important unless they are taking you somewhere or hooking up a required resource.
*Research by calendar (TM?)as Sirian would say--It seems to me your tech path, in many cases, is dictated by your immediate surroundings. If you find wines then it makes sense to get monarchy fast.

My .02 but the game is so new I don't know if much of what I say should even be considered. Anyone havin' fun yet? :cool:

I play on Monarch, because the tool-tip said that was where the AI was just plain smarter. I got stomped about 20 times in a row, mostly as the Romans. Now I'm finally into the Industrial era (as Catherine of Russia) and only in 3rd place.

Things I learned:

1. Creative is uber. In the beginning you are always, always trying to grab land before they do. This early-game boost is just overwhelming, in my opnion. "Land is the foundation of the State!"

2. Financial is awesome. Organized is pointless; why save money on expanding to more cities when you could just make more money in the first place? You can start doing this with your first cottage (if it is on a river).

3. Founding a religion is really, really great. I always go stright for Polytheism, and if I miss it, that's ok - I go to Monotheism (the Judeaism audio track is cooler, anyway). Convert to your new-found religion immediately - its +5 culture in the founding city, which is huge in the beginning. I spend most of the game in Organized Religion civic.

4. Pottery is the uber-tech. You are going to make cottages. Lots of them, and early. After I get my religion the first thing I go for is pottery.

5. Archery is like, necessary. If you don't have lots of archers the AI will push you around. And barbarians will eat you.

6. Copper is better than Iron, since it comes earlier; but you will need one of the two as soon as possible. You have to have spearmen to stop their rampaging chariots and axemen to stop their swordsmen.

7. The pillaging! The point of going to war with your neighbor is not to capture his cities - that's incredibly hard - but to burn his infrastructure to the ground. Those towns take 70 turns to mature, and you can burn them in 2 turns with a horse unit.

8. Aztecs suck. If you start next to the Aztec, they will attack you early and often, no matter how pointless. They can't win, but they can gaurantee you don't win.

9. Start making Great People early, preferablly in one city. The scientist Academy is incredible, and founding your religion's special temple helps it spread faster.

10. I always get my religion, archery, pottery, and then I go for the Alphabet. I usually get it first, and then I can trade around and catch up with the AIs.

11. Always, always, always have your scout end his turn in a forest or a jungle. It's his only hope of living through the night. And of course, just like Sulla showed us, his first two promotions are Woodland I & II, for the movement benefit.


Traits

All the other traits suck, since they don't help you on turn 50. Maybe Industrious or Philosophical; but Expansive and Organized are just lame. +2 Health only helps halfway through the game, and Organized is almost as bad, plus it hardly helps. I think these two traits exist for the Chieftan 100 cities micromanage love fest game. Which is a style I sometimes enjoy. :D


War

I never build Knights; I have an early warfare period with axes and horse archers, and a late period with Cossacks. Knights would be cool but they just don't fit in. Even my Cossacks have like 10 turns where they rule, and then Riflemen show up. Units become obsolete faster as the modern age approaches.

I stopped building walls; with Creative, my cities get to 40% cultural defense pretty soon, and walls are only 50% (and they don't stack!). Catapults, however, are necessary if you want to take another city.

I'm glad to see so many people disagreeing on what's best. That is a sign of good balance. It would be nice to see someone come to the rescue of Organized, perhaps someone who can describe at length the value of high-cost civics.

I just realized...there IS no Organized/Creative leader! Am I mistaken? I thought they had all the possible combos covered...


It's easy enough to make one if you want to try the combo. Just edit the file Assets\XML\Civilizations\CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml. Replace one of the traits in tle leader of your choice with TRAIT_CREATIVE.

You can even add more traits. I haven't actually played a game with more then two traits, so it could conceivably cause problems (I doubt it) but the extra traits do show up in the leader attributes.

Edit:
Be sure to back up your files before editing them! Don't say I didn't warn you!

I love using Frederick of the Germans (Creative/Philisophical).

Free culture really adds up fast and takes a lot of pressure off to build culture early, when you have other pressing matters. It also does a lot to save you from other civs that try to outculture you.

Philisophical is excellent. +100% Great People birth owns hard, especially when coupled with the Partheon wonder, National Epic building and Pacifism civic (+300% great person production!) Great people are useful for any game.

I also enjoy hunting first for a quick hop to archery and mining for quick hop to bronze working. Germans are a late-game civ so you have to maximize a military tech advantage to survive that long.

3. Founding a religion is really, really great. I always go stright for Polytheism, and if I miss it, that's ok - I go to Monotheism (the Judeaism audio track is cooler, anyway). Convert to your new-found religion immediately - its +5 culture in the founding city, which is huge in the beginning. I spend most of the game in Organized Religion civic.

If you don't choose a state religion, the founding cities for all your religions get +5 culture. So if you manage to grab more than one religion, not picking a state religion is something to consider too.

After losing two games horribly; well before the B.C.'s were even over in Immortal Difficulty while trying to use the Mongols and the Incan's.

I decided to switch to Bismark's Industrious/Expansive traits; Thanks to them, I just completely dominated in Immortal Difficulty.

While the early UU's were missing; I found it EXTREMELY easy to expand. The reason for this is the fact that I only needed one worker as opposed to building 3-4 which limits around 20 turns of growth in your main city, or up to 50 turns of growth if you use unestablished new-cities. With the growth; add on that +2 health bonus; which is huge in the Immortal Level, since I didn't even bother to waste my worker's valuable time on connecting Health Resources. Instead I focused primarily on connecting cities for trade, and Production Resources to keep myself with a good military presence with a moderate sized population, {I was hovering in the 7 population region until I could hook up some happiness resources. 8 people usually meant unhappiness and a loss in production}

All the extra early growth helped me to keep up with production needs.

However; one of the main reasons I did so well was I planned my research route early. Rather than beeline for the Alphabet like I normally do to trade with more advanced nation's, I instead beelined for The Wheel; Bronze Working; Metalcasting; then Writing. With Industrious as my trait; I used Slavery to pump out a Forge in every city at the cost of only 1 population and 2 turns {1 turn to drop the pop rush cost to 1, and 1 turn to build it}. Then when i reach Writing; I pumped out Libraries into every city using Slavery for only 1 population and 2 turns; From there I'd establish every religion that wasn't already taken since I now have a significant advantage in research.

Before the renessaince era started; I founded Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christanity and Islam. This gave me enough happiness benefits to pretty much ignore happiness at this point! With Expansive; My cities were around 18-19 in the early renessaince era. Most of my cities had at least 1 World Wonder in them; including my personal favorite one; The Pyramids. Which let me use Representation for a HUGE early game bonus. Since I only had 6 cities; this was a no brainer for a government civic choice.

In the later Renessaince era; While all the AI's were pumping out massive Military Research like Gunpowder or Military Tradition, I would beeline for Optics, Education and Banking. Focusing mostly on Research and my Economy. Production was at an all time high even though I only had a meager 6 cities as opposed to the AI's each having around 10 each. Since I only had 6 cities, it was notoriously easy to defend them. 3 macemen, 2 pikemen and 2 longbowmen were usually enough to repel anybody dumb enough to invade. Since my worker infrastructure was almost non-existant, yet my growth was steady; pillaging meant nothing. The worst they did at one point was limit my growth of pikemen because they pillaged my iron resource when I wasn't looking. Whoopty.

By the end of the Renessaince Era; the Neighbouring Mongols decided to invade me with Riflemen and Cavalry. I made extremely short work of them since by this time I had become the leader in technology due to being able to research a new Tech every 2-3 turns, while producing... well... anything and everything that wasn't a wonder in around 2-7 turns. With the huge number of temples in my cities, Happiness wasn't even a memory; hell my borders were even't impeding on the mongol's cities which was nice since it limited their growth!

I won by a Time/Score victory by 1500 points; but I had control of about Half of the Map at that point. Industrial Age and Modern Ages were spent pounding down every other civilization with Panzer's, Artillery and Marines.

All in all; I was satisfied with my game... and Bismark is my new favorite. :cool:

I have learned why there is no Indus/Philo nation. :)

I'm glad to see so many people disagreeing on what's best. That is a sign of good balance.

Couldn't agree more. And when that one guy said that Expansive sucked, I wanted to stab him in the face!!!

No, not really. :love:



Expansive 4 lyfe.

I tried a few civs but found Ghandi of the Indians to be best.



I agree with this, I've played Ghandi twice now and thought this was a really good leader. I've also played Genghis Khan and Roosevelt.

I reallly liked Spiritual. I was swopping between Organised religion and Theocracy loads, depending wether I was building buildings or units. The 2 extra expirience points with Theocracy was great, 'cos when combined with barracks you get 2 upgrades to start with. Makes a really big difference.

I also really like the fast workers of India. Moving onto forests and still able to work that turn is great, as is being able to move around my empire easily, so my inefficent empire planning is not so bad.

I have learned why there is no Indus/Philo nation. :)
It would make cultural victories far too easy.

Industrious = More wonders = more great leader points
Philosophical = Double great leader points = more great leaders

An Ind/Phil leader would likely get around 3 times the great leaders as a civ that has neither trait.

It would make cultural victories far too easy.

Industrious = More wonders = more great leader points
Philosophical = Double great leader points = more great leaders

An Ind/Phil leader would likely get around 3 times the great leaders as a civ that has neither trait.

Probably closer to double, considering that the great person cost keeps going up for each successive person.

I agree with this, I've played Ghandi twice now and thought this was a really good leader. I've also played Genghis Khan and Roosevelt.

I played Ghandi in my first game and won a diplomatic victory. Those fast workers are great! But then I played Genghis Khan and Ghandi showed up as my nearest neighbor--I wiped him out with no problem. So I suspect that Ghandi may be alot tougher to play if you have an aggressive neighbor early in the game.

There seems to be a lot of advantages and disadvantages to each combo, and the game seems pretty well balanced so there aren't any truly awful combos. My goal is to play each and every leader, rather than to keep trying the same one over and over again.

I consider the creative trait to be absolutely essential. When your cities are able to produce 2 culture points from the begining, without having to build a culture producing building, you can get a great head start. If you play your game correctly, you can easily get the majority of resources and land on your starting continent with minimal fuss.

After the creative trait, I'm unsure of what would be the best trait. I've played with Agreesive as Kublai Khan and Spiritual as Hatshepsut. Both of those traits has been useful. Agressive was essential with me waging a very early war and defeating the Germans. In the long run though, I'm not sure if it will be all that useful. My problem with winning is that I keep getting beat with the Space Race. So I need to find a way to produce more research points. I've been eying the Industrious trait. A lot of those wonders should help increase my research and great person production. Philosophical might also be a godsend, but I'm not sure if it will be very useful during the begining of the game.

So I need to find a way to produce more research points. I've been eying the Industrious trait.
Try financial. Extra commerce is very nice because since it goes into science early and you can shift it to culture late if you decide to go for a culture victory.

And since you like creative, Catherine is the creative/financial leader and Cossacks are a very nice mid-game unit.

lol i edited george washington to have philiophical

I've found my new favorite: Mali.

The UU is nuts early - 4 strength archer with first strike. No worries about counterattacks, AI pillaging, or city vulnerability.

Financial gives you SO many options, including my favorite:

With spirtual, you can spam temples in all your cities. For every third temple, you get the right to build a cathedral. The new cathedrals are something entirely new in Civ4 - a culture multiplier. Now if you had to just rely on buildings/wonders for culture like in Civ3, this wouldn't be so crazy. But Civ4 also gives us the new culture slider.

So say you manage 5 cathedrals in one city (the most I've gotten so far, but not impossible - you don't have to found the religions to get them). That's +250% culture. Now using your commerce trait, say you manage to get 100 base commerce in this city (not at all difficult, with each town making 8). Even at only 50% on the culture slider, that's 175 culture/turn without even counting buildings!

:eek:

Oh yeah, then there's Free Speech and the Hermitage and super specialists...
All your tile are belong to Mali. :crazyeye:

Agressive was essential with me waging a very early war and defeating the Germans. In the long run though, I'm not sure if it will be all that useful. My problem with winning is that I keep getting beat with the Space Race.

But see, you weren't taking advantage of your trait bonus. If you're Aggressive, find the bastard that is winning the space race, then proceed to terraform a few of his cities. That'll put a kink in his plans.

Oh, and it is in my humble opinion that both the Khans are great civs to play. Very fun. =)

I played my first game on Noble. I always play my first game of a new civ with the Americans and I'm not a huge fan of FDR ;) , so I picked George Washington (Financial/Organized).

I thought Washington wouldn't be a great leader trait wise, but he turned out to be pretty good. Financial and Organized complement each other well, since both get you more money. I beelined for Alphabet so that I could trade techs right away. Then I used my powerful economy to keep the tech lead for the rest of the game. I ended up winning a space race victory.

I never founded a religion, which was a bit of a mistake, but I never really needed one because I had so much $$$ coming in. Also, I made friends with a powerful country by adopting their religion. Since they had money coming in from all my cities, they were a pretty good tech trading partner as well.

(deleted because of accidental double post)

I consider the creative trait to be absolutely essential. When your cities are able to produce 2 culture points from the begining, without having to build a culture producing building, you can get a great head start. If you play your game correctly, you can easily get the majority of resources and land on your starting continent with minimal fuss.

After the creative trait, I'm unsure of what would be the best trait. I've played with Agreesive as Kublai Khan and Spiritual as Hatshepsut. Both of those traits has been useful. Agressive was essential with me waging a very early war and defeating the Germans. In the long run though, I'm not sure if it will be all that useful. My problem with winning is that I keep getting beat with the Space Race. So I need to find a way to produce more research points. I've been eying the Industrious trait. A lot of those wonders should help increase my research and great person production. Philosophical might also be a godsend, but I'm not sure if it will be very useful during the begining of the game.

Building Stonehenge is a workable substitute for being Creative, and that generates early GPP for you as well.

I think Philosophical/Financial (Elizabeth) is abstractly the best pacifist combination. Being a Wonder lover, I initially thought Industrious was a no-brainer pick, but after looking at it more carefully I changed my mind; I posted elsewhere (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3254669&postcount=13) why the math was unfavorable to it.

However, if you're unwilling to cheat with restarts, you may have no choice but to take a leader that starts with Mysticism if you want to play pacifist.

Spiritual doesn't seem that helpful either. Mostly because I rarely change civics since I find few of them useful. Maybe if I discover new uses for them with time, but that turn of anarchy is no biggie.

You rarely change civics because you're not spiritual. :D
You're building a lot of units this turn? Then, for this turn, you're in theocraty / vasselage --> +4 xp. And the next turn, you're back to the previous civics...
With spiritual, I change civics almost every ten turns, something like 50 times a game... If you need to rush a production, then you turn just this turn for a civic which allows rushing...

As a spiritual civ, the question is not "Which is the best civics combination for my civ", but "Which is the best civics combination for this turn". It is slightly different. :D

I leaned that for some reason when I choose to be a random civ I always end up the Spanish.

I leaned that for some reason when I choose to be a random civ I always end up the Spanish.

Funny you say that. I've had a similar problem. I'm not ALWAYS the Spanish, but choosing Random does seem to come up Spanish a lot more often than it should. So far out of 5 random games, I came up Spanish 3 times, German once, and Persian once.

Anyway, if the game's random number generator is screwy, get yourself some dice and roll for it. ;)

my favorites are still the americans and persians, but i like to try other leaders too

It would make cultural victories far too easy.

Industrious = More wonders = more great leader points
Philosophical = Double great leader points = more great leaders

An Ind/Phil leader would likely get around 3 times the great leaders as a civ that has neither trait.Yes, from my experience these two are the best peacetime traits. Even potential wartime if you are getting Great Artists. Just don't fall behind as you can't build wonders if you don't have the tech.

My first game I was Hatshepsut (Crea/Spir) ... and I got lucky (Noble) and founded Buddhism, Hinduism, AND Confucianism --- I say lucky because she doesn't start with Mysticism, even though she's Spiritual...but, hey, the wheel...

My next game, not having the Creative REALLY hurt -- I couldn't figure out what I was missing! ;)

Personally, I see the wisdom in a religious monopoly, especially early... ;) ...but I would advise that IF you found multiple religions, DO NOT send missionaries for any of them except your STATE religion --- no reason to give the enemy more temples & church buildings :D

I will concede on Spiritual. I can definetly see the advantages of it now, my main problem having been the fast paced game making war nigh impossible. With some mods slowing down tech speed war is more of an option making civic manipulation more desirable. It's still not one of the strongest traits though.

Expansive also seems a lot better after advancing to Emperor difficulty. Happiness is still the major limiter, but the ways to go around it is much more attractive. I can see how it must be awesome at Immortal since you get less health and apparantly a huge leeway in happiness if it only starts becoming a problem at population 8 (it's a problem at population 4 in Emperor). With Representation I can see how that works, but not without it and it's not possible without the Pyramids. Still, I'm considering trying an expansive civ and try to get Monarchy early, which ought to help me with the happyness problem.

The Malinese capital (spiritual/financial) is now pulling 1215 culture/turn. :crazyeye:

I bought the game on its first day out in Greece (that was yesterday) and squeezed a to-know-us-better session in my tight schedule. I wanted to play Alexander (why the heck didn't they include a second leader for Greece? Like Perikles... dammit) but I changed his aggresive trait (as I am a peacemonger rather than a warmonger) to "Expansionist".

My first impression is that the expansionist/philosophical trait combo is quite powerful, but I haven't tried anything else yet. Currently I dominate my first game on noble (huge map, btw, and the lag is awful even on the 1000s BC where I was last night when I stopped playing) and I love the game - except the lagging problems, but this is not the place to discuss those...

I've almost played exclusively with Catherine after having tried Frederick, Bismarck, Asoka (though the fast workers are REALLY nice), and Elizabeth.

I've a friend who swears by Elizabeth, but it doesn't fit my strategies.

Catherine is Cre/Fin, and the Cre *really* helps in the early game landgrab... and I don't have to dedicate any extra $$ to culture development, they're already doing 2 culture per turn, which keeps those filthy enemies at bay.

Pretty much prevents my towns from ever being switched culturally, which is excellent.

Financial is a no-brainer, at least for me. Money = research. It may not help so much in the early game (it only increases the money output of tiles of two coins or above) but mid-late game, if you have enough workers going, you've already got two coins per turn in quite a few squares...

The difference is staggering.

In my opinion, ORGANIZED is by far the better trait at the begining.
You can do a setteler rush of to about 6 cities without spreading yourself to thin financialy.
I just finished playing Washington, and is defenetly now my favorite.
Every other game I found myself trailing the AI in closely or viseversa, but it was always very close race.
Creative is good to have because the culture early on that doubles the size of your borthers but when you match up three cities of ok size to one creative, the latter doesn't stand a chance.
As for Washington, not only does he have that sweet advantage at the begining he is also FINANCIAL so once you get to the later stages of the game you could still be running over a dozen cities with research at 100% and money still flowing in.

Washington rules:goodjob: :king: :goodjob:

In my opinion, ORGANIZED is by far the better trait at the begining.
You can do a setteler rush of to about 6 cities without spreading yourself to thin financialy.
I just finished playing Washington, and is defenetly now my favorite.
Every other game I found myself trailing the AI in closely or viseversa, but it was always very close race.
Creative is good to have because the culture early on that doubles the size of your borthers but when you match up three cities of ok size to one creative, the latter doesn't stand a chance.
As for Washington, not only does he have that sweet advantage at the begining he is also FINANCIAL so once you get to the later stages of the game you could still be running over a dozen cities with research at 100% and money still flowing in.

Washington rules:goodjob: :king: :goodjob:

No offense, but you only think this because you're dead wrong. Organized reduces civic upkeep cost by 50%. NOT city maintenance, civic upkeep. Now, civic upkeep is unfortunately almost always below 10 gold a turn (and is usually 0 in the early game), where as city maintenance/inflation can easily
get up over 100 gold per turn. So organized is easily the worst trait - it does nothing in the early game, and only saves a few gold later in the game when you're pulling in hundreds of commerce anyway.

No offense, but you only think this because you're dead wrong. Organized reduces civic upkeep cost by 50%. NOT city maintenance, civic upkeep. Now, civic upkeep is unfortunately almost always below 10 gold a turn (and is usually 0 in the early game), where as city maintenance/inflation can easily
get up over 100 gold per turn. So organized is easily the worst trait - it does nothing in the early game, and only saves a few gold later in the game when you're pulling in hundreds of commerce anyway.

From what I understood of the Organized trait it actually works exactly the opposite. There's nothing you can do to lower your choice of civic costs except change civics. Where as Organized combats your city maintenance costs. Perhaps I misunderstood how it works as I haven't really played with the Organized trait much?

But I do really like Washington also for excellent coastal starts. Although I haven't tried a game with him yet. He makes for an excellent starter on good fish starts, with 3C from coast tiles and his ability to pop out worker boats immediately. Along with half price Lighthouses, American coastal cities will get big fast.

From what I understood of the Organized trait it actually works exactly the opposite. There's nothing you can do to lower your choice of civic costs except change civics. Where as Organized combats your city maintenance costs. Perhaps I misunderstood how it works as I haven't really played with the Organized trait much?

I thought that too, but that's not the way it is. It even says in the Civlopedia "-50% Civic Upkeep Costs." Poke around your financial and civics screens a bit, and when you notice how low your civics costs really are, even in the later game, you'll be sorely disapointed.

Got civ4 last week and I only played Arabs(phi/spi) few times and here are my seeings. (im playing from Civ I)

First here is a review of my game:
I know that very important role here plays the Stone! Very valuable thing that makes game very interesting.

I played on Monarch, Lakes, Standard size, Normal speed , Temperate.
In my game happened i had stone near the starting place, so i could get it with my 2nd city. Having stone, means you should build stonehende/pyramind early.. I got stonehendge and since I was first to have Hinduism(if not, you could get Judaism) my plans were to spread religion. Mainly because i got great prophet very soon out(stonehendge) and I could build Hindu sacred building.
I somehow managed to spread religion with 2 misionaries to 2 neighbours.Later on I managed that 5 civilizations had my religiion and i was having a lot of $$ from it. That means good science funding. I had 100% science most of the game. I didnt had to build $$ buildings anywhere else then in the Holy city.
Having your religion spread makes good relations and you can spread religious wars among others giving them some $$ or techs for declaration , of course when necesary.

But, building early wonder cuts you at expanding so when all teritory was taken i had 6 cities(3 good ones), other civs had more (2 strongest nations had 8 i think, 2 city diference is a lot, like they had 33% more cities than me:) ).But i had good relationships so i was safe in some way..and at this point, i decided to go for diplomacy/cultural win.
I was geting mass great persons out, using them wisely. I decided to put science mainly in 1 city(capitol) with oxford/academy + other stuff, with other great scientist joining this city (not building academy else where)
Centralization manly because I was aiming for Representation, Buerocracy, mercantilism, pacifism. I boosted city producing a lot of science (aroudn 500 later on)
Letting other cities build military and other more necesary things. Btw Having stone also meant aiming for hanging gardens. Which produced me Great engineer for great libary, which produced %% for great scientist.Etc, having once this great persons going on, its unstopable. You just need first push, and Stone gave me that . (Now you know why industrous/phi would be abusive)

So main idea was to go for diplomacy win(Because my spread religion). I tried cultural too but i lacked some knowledge on this win. I figured out later that in late game, the MUST is to get internet, so you can have 100% on culture.
(Going straight to internet, leaving everything behind, except cultural techs)


Anyways having 6 cities was ideal. Ability to get Oxford university(6 uni), 6 temples of 2 religions meant , 2 cathedrals in the 2 of 3 cities (for the culture).etc..
Why my main capital was producing so much science? Buerocracy, mercantilism, oxford university, great libary, some science specialist + all buildings AND a lot of great scientist(3-4?) working in city. With representation each gave 9 + 225%(or sth from buildings) = 30science from each... and 6 + 225% = 20 from each specialist. Anyway that %% bonus was insane.

Only thing i lacked was wallstreet in holy city(not 7 cities + no national wonder left), which was producing a lot of gold even on 100% science (+ some merchants later)
So you have specialised cities for science and $$. Other cities build military and other stuff to keep em alive. No markets/banks/science buidlings were bloody necesary.



So having stone with arabs is kind of abusive. Phi leaders need birthrate so the main strategy is to go for it. Wonders or specialist. (+ pacifism)
Oh i forgot, national epic!!. Was there in Main capitol, which was insanely producing great persons. 100% phi 100% pacifism 100% national epic, + base
Only thing was I was having too much prophets. I used 1 for building and i think 1 is worth to wait to get another for Golden age. Other way is to making him work in a holy city (cause of $$)

i won game 1920 , diplomacy win. It was tricky one, i loaded 2 times :(
Becuase of lack of my knowledge. Starting 7 civs, 6 civs were left. Destroyed civ was my religion. There war 3 nations of my religion, and 1 ex-religion (went for free religiion).
I needed that vote and he abstained. What I had to do, is to make him go to war (i gave him 3 techs) with my rival nation. He then adopted my religion, cause he went Theocracy. And after that, he voted for me.
So that was a wining vote. I didnt go to war once, you just need to have enough military support so they dont bug you.

If you fail to get stonehendge, you get pyraminds for sure. With engieneer you get great libary(or good marble things), etc etc.. With 1 early wonder you have things runing (of course cutting on your expanding but its worth to play)


But thats all with having big IF, teh stone. Having no stone is harder and with phi leader i would always go for great person strat.(if not with wonders, then with specialist) making tiles on Irigatin later on , etc..So its kind a more of a challenge.

I never had marble, even near me. But having marble in early stage + Parthenon is even more imba :) (imbalanced)
Only thing is, you get then Teh great Artist and, i dont know excatly what to do. Maybe aim for cultural win.

Other than using it for a Cultural Victory, the Great Artist is also good for expanding borders in newly aquired cities. A Great Work adds in 4000 culture points to a city, so it works well bringing one into a city that you just conquered to expand your borders against the enemy civ.

Also, it can be added to a city as a super specialist, so you can put it into a city that has GPPs going towards another GP and add points to that. It will increase the odds of getting another Artist, but also speed up getting anything else. Additionally, you can wait until you get another kind of GP and trigger a Golden Age (needs 2 GPs of different kinds).

Other than using it for a Cultural Victory, the Great Artist is also good for expanding borders in newly aquired cities. A Great Work adds in 4000 culture points to a city, so it works well bringing one into a city that you just conquered to expand your borders against the enemy civ.

Also, it can be added to a city as a super specialist, so you can put it into a city that has GPPs going towards another GP and add points to that. It will increase the odds of getting another Artist, but also speed up getting anything else. Additionally, you can wait until you get another kind of GP and trigger a Golden Age (needs 2 GPs of different kinds).

Great Artists can also be used to quell post-conquest unrest in a city instantly.

It was silly question of me, about great artist. And you are totaly right.
Sometimes it can be very usefull making him do teh Great Work. You can make 1 new city surounded by neighbour borders totaly usefull, geting some extra resources.. but that brings tension among nations.

I was actualy thinking in a way, that.. 1 great arist more mean 1 great engeneer/scientist less.... whatever :)

I've a friend who swears by Elizabeth, but it doesn't fit my strategies.

Catherine is Cre/Fin, and the Cre *really* helps in the early game landgrab... and I don't have to dedicate any extra $$ to culture development, they're already doing 2 culture per turn, which keeps those filthy enemies at bay.
Both work really well, but I give a slight edge to Elizabeth for cultural wins at monarch.

Both have a nice unique unit of the same era. I generally hit the culture slider quite early so I won't get beaten by a space victory. So my tech stops around democracy and gunpowder. I need the cossacks or redcoats (and lots of them) in case the AI starts sending tanks at me right before I win. Generally I can manage to keep the AI civs happy with me in the late game (I send out lots of gifts as I approach a win - this does seem to keep them happy), but the extra insurance has come in handy when tanks arrive on my shore.

Elizabeth gets the slight nod from me due to the extra great artists I'll produce. They give me extra flexibility in city placement. One or two cities can lag and I won't be affected too much.

But with both, financial is the key. It keeps me ahead in the tech race (at least with the important civic techs) even at monarch. And a financial-based cultural win is completely independent of wonders. I don't really need any of the world wonders to win, which is nice. All I really need is 3 relatively good city spots (and they don't have to be that great) and to keep the AI civs off my back (at least my immediate neighbors).

Oh, one more reason I like Elizabeth - she starts with mining, so bronze working is one tech away from the start and I can rush settlers through selective deforestation right from the start. That can be nice for the initial land grab.

My favorite to play is with Roosevelt jusf for the civic traits. I've also played with Frederick of the Germans. It really just depends on what your strategy is - expansive, technology, world domination, etc etc