I think my favorite is by far the industrious trait. It gives you a big advantage to build at half cost the wonders.... I usually build more than half of the wonders of the world!

Best combination would be industrious and philosophical but there are no such civilization! Second best industrious and financial... China! China! China!

Sorry, but virtually everyone agrees that the strongest trait is financial :P
My personal favorite is Financial and Expansionist for the hard (Emporer and above) difficulty levels. Financial and Aggresive/Industrious/Philosophical for the regular (Noble-King) difficulty levels.

I prefer greek atm. Agressive is the best multi trait probably, and the philosophical comes in handy. Plus the UU is awsome and counterign any chariot/horseman archer rush!

Philosophical and Expansive = Peter the Great

After some serious playing I've discovered that Industrious is abysmally bad. The only good point about it is the increased chance for getting the Pyramids, which is great for Philosophical civs. Only, there are no Industrious/Philosophical civs as you pointed out. Nowadays my new bottom trait, right below Organized.

Philosophical and Financial are my two favorites, albeit not together. Expansive is really nice, atleast for Immortal and Deity. The lower the difficulty, the worse it gets. My favorite civs are based on UU and starting techs more than traits, however.

Industrious doesn't give you wonders at half cost. It increases their production by 50%, which amounts to a 33% discount. So not as powerful.

This is a trait that's definitely better at lower difficulty levels. The higher up you go, the tougher it gets to make wonders before the AI, and so the fewer chances you get to use the trait.

Philosophical and Financial are my two favorites, albeit not together. Expansive is really nice, atleast for Immortal and Deity. The lower the difficulty, the worse it gets. My favorite civs are based on UU and starting techs more than traits, however.
Why not together, out of curiosity? But I agree with your basic analysis. Financial and philosophical retain their value at all difficulty levels. Expansive's value goes up, so has to be considered.

My favorite trait is Spiritual because it allows me to change civics without anarchy. Also, since most civs with this trait start with Mysticism, I have a better chance of beating the AI to Buddhism & Hinduism. That's why I played Gandhi in some of my earlier games; it also helped a little that his UU was the Fast Worker. But I also like the Philosophical trait, so I tend to play as Saladin nowadays. But if ever I change my playing style to warmongering, I might play as Montezuma (Spiritual & Aggressive) like I did in Civ3 for Conquest & Domination games.

Why not together, out of curiosity?

Because financial requires cottages and philosophical requires farms. You're forced to choose one at the expense of the other, not maximizing one to its full potential.

This the opposite of industrious and philosophical, which are perfectly symbiotic. Industrious gives you wonders, and philosophical makes those wonders worth 4 GPP instead of 2. Also, philosophical gives you great engineers for even more wonders, and the other great people can give you techs to reach wonders before anybody else. Finally, some wonders give you free specialists or boost the production of some specialists, making philosophical even stronger. I think it's a good thing this combination wasn't included in the game, and i think it was left out on purpose.

Because financial requires cottages and philosophical requires farms.

Actually, that's not quite it. Even as Philosophical you're better off producing all your great people in one or two cities. The reason is that as Philosophical I usually aim for the Pyramids, since I'll be having a lot of specialists anyway. And since I have Representation and Caste System (Oracle) early, I might as well use it in all my cities. This gives me an early tech lead, but loses out in the long run. Regardless, Financial gives you much less of an advantage.

So you're indirectly correct. Philosophical requires Pyramids and Pyramids requires farms. I'm not totally opposed to Victoria, it works well in combination too (even if I skip Pyramids unless I start with Stone). I just prefer civs with an early UU.

Makes sense. It's science through specialists (Pyramids/representation) instead of science through commerce. Thanks for the explanation.

Yeah, that's what i meant. I'm currently playing Elizabeth who's both financial and philosophical. I went for pyramids and specialists, but was lucky to have 2 clams, 1 pig and 2 flood plains in my capital, which means i didn't need any farm and could still go cottages.

However, i can see that normally you wouldn't be so lucky and these two traits wouldn't match so well.

i Prefer finacial above all others because the bonus from commerce squares translates into a plus for both cash AND science. Philosophical is another biggie for since i usually don't build a GP intensive city but rather use what few wonders i can grab to provide the GP points, coupled with the built in 100% and the national wonder I get a decent number of GPs anyway. One aspect of both Phil and fin that is rarely mentioned is that the buildings they provide cheaply are I believe the most expensive of buildings discounted by leader trait in terms of hammers. I am not sure of the exact cost, but 1/2 price banks and universities save you WAY more hammers than cheap temples, graneries and barracks. Plus those buildings have pretty hefty bonuses of 50%. That coupled with the fact that they are both required in quantity to build national wonders means you get Oxford university and wall street twice as fast. I hate having 9-10 cities built and needing 8 universities when 3-4 of my towns are cottage heavy and require 20+ turns to build universities. If i don't have pyramids then I can't rush them with gold, and slavery will gobble more poor minions at an alarming rate thus stalling cottage development. and the icing on the cake is that to get both I play Lizzy. Redcoats are the best unit I have found for taking cities before tanks are available. since most defenders by that time are either rifles or muskets the built in 25% against gunpowder units makes them a wrecking machine even without promotions. even better than the feared cossack. the 25% vs mounted bonus equates to 20 vs 18 without promotions. I usually give them city defense one at the very least which makes them ready to defend anything they take. thus removing the need to follow with slower defenders. They even match up well with the riflemen killer grenadier @ 20 vs 18 without promotions.

Actually, I rarely build banks at all, so that's by far the worst cheap building of the lot. Universities tend to be built in most cities, but since all cities are fully developed by then it doesn't take long. The best rebates are Expansive (Granaries), Industrial (Forges) and not least, Organized (Courthouses and Lighthouses). Cheaper Theatres are good for the mid-late game warmonger, cheaper Temples great for an all-religion strategy and cheaper Barracks great for rushes.

Industrious is GREAT at low levels, where the help with the wonders will help you get almost all of them.

It is crappy at Emperor and above, where the AI's advantage overwhelms the Industrious bonus, and you lose most wonder races even WITH the bonus.

i Prefer finacial above all others because the bonus from commerce squares translates into a plus for both cash AND science. Philosophical is another biggie for since i usually don't build a GP intensive city but rather use what few wonders i can grab to provide the GP points, coupled with the built in 100% and the national wonder I get a decent number of GPs anyway. One aspect of both Phil and fin that is rarely mentioned is that the buildings they provide cheaply are I believe the most expensive of buildings discounted by leader trait in terms of hammers. I am not sure of the exact cost, but 1/2 price banks and universities save you WAY more hammers than cheap temples, graneries and barracks. Plus those buildings have pretty hefty bonuses of 50%. That coupled with the fact that they are both required in quantity to build national wonders means you get Oxford university and wall street twice as fast. I hate having 9-10 cities built and needing 8 universities when 3-4 of my towns are cottage heavy and require 20+ turns to build universities. If i don't have pyramids then I can't rush them with gold, and slavery will gobble more poor minions at an alarming rate thus stalling cottage development.

Spiritial gets bigger bonus, when you got multiple religions. I personally often spread 4-6 religions to my towns, even if they aren't my own, so that temply bonus is multiplied. It's the only bonus building that you can build more than one. 5*80=400 and bank/university is only 200. Spiritual civ is the only way to get early religion in large multiplayer games. Then you can grap 3-4 early religions quite often which can be huge bonus, when others can't get own religion and they have to use and spread yours :)

Philosophical is nice, but I hardly ever build any universities, so the building bonus is useless for me.

Aggressive is great for war. I have no problems using this too.

Industrial. Cheap forges would be very good though I hardly ever get that tech early, because I concentrate on upper part of tech tree. Industrial gives large advantage on wonders. I always build a lot of wonders, so ind would be pretty good for me.

Organized. It's quite good actually if you know how to use it. I always expand quickly and have very large areas and only thing that slows me down is that my economy. Especially if I don't have holy city, I just don't have money to build all the cities I would like. If organized, it's very easy to get courthouses to every town. New town takes only chopping of 2 forests to get courthouse, so you get in build immedialy. Otherwice it would take 4 forests, which is more than many towns have near them. Especially on continents or island maps, org is good, because you basically need courthouse and lighthouse on every town.

Financial. My favorite :) It's just great. Especially it makes fishing villages much more valuable be giving 3 gold instead of 2. When most of the areas are sea, this is 50% increase to towns gold production. In inland cities bonus is good too, but it's much smaller later in game. Difference between 6 and 5 (inland late game) gold is much smaller than 3 and 2 (sea all the time).

Creative. I don't like it. +2 cultural bonus is very good in beginning of game and makes it easier, so it's good for noobs. I just never build theatres or colosseums, so building bonus is useless. Imho this is worst unless you are noob or aim for cultural victory.

Expansive. It's ok. Cheap grenary is very nice. When I am expensive, I very often build em, because they just take few turns. +2 health bonus is great, because health is the thing that limits town growth most often. Especially on harder level and without fresh water, expansive makes things much easier.

So I like almost all of them.

Good: Financial
Bad: Creative
Average: All others

If I have financial, I have no problems playing with any of the 6 other average traits. They all have their uses if you know how to use them.

I'm getting a lot of benefit out of financial for the beta gauntlet (fastest space race competition, prince, epic speed, no barbarians and peaceful AI's), but in general I prefer other traits.

Aggressive, creative, and spiritual all have military value, organized allows for faster expansion, and expansive is important on higher difficulties. Financial's a one-trick pony - it's an impressive trick, and very useful if your strategy calls for massive commerce, but not flexible.

My favorite combo for general play on immortal is spirtual+expansive, Isabella. Haven't tried large diety maps, but on small diety maps I don't care about traits, all I ask for is a good early UU.

Personally, I have started to play with the Inca: Financial and Aggressive. A great bonus is that you start off with Mysticism, so you can go after a Religion right away too.

Personally, I have started to play with the Inca: Financial and Aggressive. A great bonus is that you start off with Mysticism, so you can go after a Religion right away too.
I had always thought the Inca were lame (mostly because of the UU), but damn... Financial & Aggressive is an awesome awesome combo, not to mention starting out w/ religion. I only play on noble cuz I'm not that l33t at this game, but at least 1/3 the time I'm able to use the UU to knock out one civ early on, and that of course is priceless--especially the real estate civ capitals are on; double points if he also founded a religion. :D

This is a trait that's definitely better at lower difficulty levels. The higher up you go, the tougher it gets to make wonders before the AI, and so the fewer chances you get to use the trait.

I'm not really convinced by this argument. You can use the trait even if you don't get the wonder: by investing N hammers into a wonder, you get back 2.5*N gold when someone else builds it (assuming you have the 100% increase for a resource as well). This in turn is usually worth around 3*N beakers, when you increase your research rate and run at negative income. In some ways, this is better at higher difficulty levels, because it happens more quickly that someone else builds the wonder and you get "paid". I don't claim enough experience to know exactly how much this is worth but I do think it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

(1) Financial + Industrious

(2) Financial + Aggressive

(3) Financial + Philosophical

I'm not really convinced by this argument. You can use the trait even if you don't get the wonder: by investing N hammers into a wonder, you get back 2.5*N gold when someone else builds it (assuming you have the 100% increase for a resource as well). This in turn is usually worth around 3*N beakers, when you increase your research rate and run at negative income. In some ways, this is better at higher difficulty levels, because it happens more quickly that someone else builds the wonder and you get "paid". I don't claim enough experience to know exactly how much this is worth but I do think it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

I claim I do have enough experience :) As an "Industrious junkie" on
Monarch, I've found it to be completely useless on Emperor. Yes, you get
gold for all the wonders you miss, and yes, this is *quite* useful on high
levels, but it's that "keep you from quitting before 0 AD" nice, not an
"is actually useful for surviving the early slugfest" nice, like early religion,
or Expansive, or Financial, etc.

When people ask about the best attributes, you really need to include
difficulty level information. The relative strengths vary widely depending
on what level you are playing on.

ok quick ? about personalities... when you turn them to random on a custom game how do you know which traits your leader has? I am trying to do a game with Washington with random personalities and it always says in the beginning that he is Financial / Organized but those are his default traits. I want them random but still would like to know what they are... thanks.

I claim I do have enough experience :) As an "Industrious junkie" on
Monarch, I've found it to be completely useless on Emperor.

Well, I don't think that failing to do something is much proof that it's no good. I do find building wonders for their cash value to be pretty useful at Emperor. However, it's true that the difference between 2.0x and 2.5x (or, with a Forge, 2.25x vs 2.75x) is pretty modest and may be regarded as a pretty negligible benefit for the Industrious trait. The +50% bonus sounds pretty good but the fact that it's additive, rather than multiplicative, with other bonuses makes it a lot less good, especially since I'm usually trying to build wonders for which I do have the +100% resource bonus.

Here's the only case that I can make for Industrious on Emperor:

Expansive nicely offsets the negatives of Forge, making Bismarck
attractive. Since Expansive is more powerful on Emperor, and Industrious is
synergystic, this might work. I've gotten it to work wonderfully on Monarch,
but on Emperor it seems to require very precise execution. The fact that
Metal Casting is so darn expensive sort of ruins it as a viable strategy. Chop
rushing Oracle to get it might be viable if you have marble, but Oracle gets
built REALLY soon on Emperor. Bismarck does have Mining, which makes
early chop rushing easier, but I'm afraid this strategy is only viable if you
avoid founding a religion, and Bismarck's UU doesn't come until WAY late.

If you've got a better case for Industrious, I'd love to hear it. But the
better gold for failed wonders is inferior to Financial (but, then, everything
is :)), and I can make a better case for Aggressive and Philosophical
(due to Caste Working + Pyramids strategy), and even Expansive (larger
cities = more gold and production anyway, ~+25% boost on Emperor).
Yes, you can argue that Industrious is better than Organized, Spiritual,
and Creative, but it's purely a middling trait, at best, in an Emperor game.

Yes, you can argue that Industrious is better than Organized, Spiritual,
and Creative, but it's purely a middling trait, at best, in an Emperor game.

Before, you said it was "completely useless", and that's what I disagree with. I think it's significantly better than nothing. However, I certainly do think that some other traits are (much) better.

I don't mind that some traits are better than others. It gives another way to adjust the difficulty of the game, than just using handicaps for the computer opponents.

Guys... guys guys guys.

You're seriously lowballing Creative. Its my favorite trait, hands down. Not only does it free you from having to construct culture buildings, but it frees you from entire branches of the early tech tree.

At high levels, I've found the chances for me (as Catherine) to found a sub-Confucianism religion and still keep up the Wonder production to be virtually nil. With creative, it means I can ignore the entire early religious tech branch until I need them for the wonders, AND I don't need to waste time and forests chopping obelisks.

I can't count the number of times Creative has proven vital to pushing back an encroaching Civ's borders, depriving them of land and resources.

Creative is *the* early game trait, and everything else builds off the progress you make there.

And for those of you who are about to scream "N00B!" at me, I just got done crushing the computer on standard huge-map pangea Immortal game.

Still working on a good Deity Builder strategy. I just can't chop fast enough..

Usually, I like the spiritual trait. If you use it well (especially if you get the pyramids), you have a very flexiable civ that is able to adapt to any situation.
Instantly changing civics acording to current needs (war, money, GP, production...) gives me an advantage no matter how the terrain looks like and which civs are close to me.

Of course, when I'm in an "ass kicking mood", I just pick something with aggresive and fight my way to the end of the game or die trying...

I'm still playing Emperor, but I agree with you about creative. The freedom from religion it gives you is terrific. You can build troops instead of temples, monks and obelisks, and your borders expand twice as fast as they do with religion or obelisks alone. Creative is also great for heading off barbarian attacks in the early game.

Guys... guys guys guys.

You're seriously lowballing Creative. Its my favorite trait, hands down. Not only does it free you from having to construct culture buildings, but it frees you from entire branches of the early tech tree.

At high levels, I've found the chances for me (as Catherine) to found a sub-Confucianism religion and still keep up the Wonder production to be virtually nil. With creative, it means I can ignore the entire early religious tech branch until I need them for the wonders, AND I don't need to waste time and forests chopping obelisks.

I can't count the number of times Creative has proven vital to pushing back an encroaching Civ's borders, depriving them of land and resources.

Creative is *the* early game trait, and everything else builds off the progress you make there.

And for those of you who are about to scream "N00B!" at me, I just got done crushing the computer on standard huge-map pangea Immortal game.

Still working on a good Deity Builder strategy. I just can't chop fast enough..

Let me defend my "completely useless" remark. You only get two starting
traits, and two starting techs. In addition, there are other considerations
like UUs. People will disagree about what strategies they like, and how
well they can use certain advantages/disadvantages. But, given that, how
valuable is it to have the third/fourth/fifth best trait? Let's face it, the game
will be decided based on something else. Being Financial can turn a lost game
into a won game. Being Industrial ... it's something you take as a bonus if
the other advantages work out well (Ghandi!). That's why I called it useless.
I've yet to see an Emperor-level strategy that made me think I wanted to
chose an civ based on the fact that it had Industrious. And I *can* think
of strategies that made me want a civ that was Spiritual (easy early religion,
plus other intangibles), Expansive (health rocks), Aggressive (you *will* fight
an early war on Emperor, even if you don't want to), Philo (GPP strategy),
and Financial (cottage spam). I can actually see the Creative argument
(can skip stonehenge, makes having Mysticism irrelevant), though I haven't
personally verified it. But Industrial? Not in the same class, at least not at
Emperor.

I'm a fan of creative actually. It's so powerful and convenient early, and allows rapid expansion, and also gives a nice midgame bonus when you want to get your six universities.

Catherine and Incas are two of my favorites.

Let me defend my "completely useless" remark. You only get two starting
traits, and two starting techs. In addition, there are other considerations
like UUs. People will disagree about what strategies they like, and how
well they can use certain advantages/disadvantages. But, given that, how
valuable is it to have the third/fourth/fifth best trait?

How valuable is it? It's a lot better than nothing. "Useless" is not a synonym for "undesirable".

For a trait to be "useless", that means that you would do exactly as well if you started with one less trait, as starting with that trait. And I don't think the Industrious trait is even close to being in that category.

I have only played games with random leader selection. When I do get an Industrious leader, I certainly don't think, "Oh, that's a completely useless trait; I won't use it at all, and I might as well not have it." Instead, I incorporate it into my play, just like all of the other traits.

I've yet to see an Emperor-level strategy that made me think I wanted to
chose an civ based on the fact that it had Industrious.

So what? I'm not looking to "choose" a leader to make my particular strategy work better. I'm doing the reverse---just doing as well as I can with whatever leader I get. That seems to me to be far more in the spirit of the game.