I played single player a few in the beginning, but i now play almost exclusively multiplayer.
From my experience, industrious was the people #1's choice when civ4 came out. People were going for wonders as their main strategic path.
As it goes on, i now see financial civilisations more often then any other traits.
Which is your best leader traits?
Personally, my best is financial followed by philosophical and aggressive


Some civilisations are prefered for their UU:
Ghandi for fast worker;
Rome for praetorians;
England for Red Coats;
and Russia for Cossacks are the ones that comes to mind.
Then again, England and Russia are also financial civs (kept of Peter)


i personnally think that UU's are not equally balanced towards the leaders's traits.
lets take a look at financial civs UU vs aggressive ones:
Cossacks or Keshik? (russia/mongol)
skirmisher or phalanx? (mali/greek)
Red Coats or jaguar? (england/aztec)
Navy Seal or Samurai? (america/japan)
Cho-ko-nu or musketeer? (china/france)
Quechua or Quechua? (incas)

In all cases kept the Navy Seal, i would take the financial UU over the agressive one. You?

In multiplayer, games rarely reach the point where u can produce Navy Seals.
on the other hand, Samurai is a good UU with the 1st strikes bonus.
Then again, there's a black cloud: in order to get them as earliest as possible to dominate effectively, u gotta have all this: Civil Service ; Machinery and iron. It is some huge requirements to fulfill. good player use CS slingshot to get techs as early as possible and then beeline to machinery.
then again, no iron = no samurai.
Compared to a units like Red Coat that has no requirements at all besides reaching rifle, it is unbalanced in my honest opinon.

What do u say?

This must be the first post focused on MP games that value much the Financial trait. In SP games it is overpowered, but in MP games I have the greater possible doubts. Most of the power of the trait comes from the cottage strategy, that is incredibly strong in SP but dubious (to say the least) in MP - unless your opponents are kind enough.

As I have seen in other posts (and your post goes in the same line) MP games are decided quite fast and use the specialists strategy - in that case I would value Philosophical very much, in combination with Aggressive, Spiritual, Organized, but probably not Financial (unless they promised me to play only Island maps). Given the fact that Firaxis has excluded the combination Phi/Ind (I believe, having in mind 100% the MP games) you can get an idea about what the creators of the game believe on this issue.

Now about UU (leaving out the Praets, that stand out): I wouldn't value much skirmishers and jaguars (skirmishers are very pathetic against pillaging, and jaguars are a weak unit in most of the cases). I also wouldn't overrate Samurai (it seems that MP players use well the crossbowmen). That leaves either an early mounted unit (with all the dangers that this has, given the tremendous weakness against spears), cho-ko-nus and phalaxes (preferably the first, but also the second isn't bad for defense against pillaging or for pillaging escort), or the later units (Musketeers, Redcoat, Cossacks). My preference is Redcoat, but very close with all the others (I have noticed a Musketeer strategy that can be a real killer, and Cossacks are real power).

Summing up, I would like to get one of:

- Caesar (Org/Exp) Praets: even in MP, Praets are power.
- Mao (Org/Phi) Cho-ko-nu: Good UU, good traits combo.
- Elizabeth (Phi/Fin) Redcoat: a nice all around choice.
- Peter (Phi/Exp) Cossacks. Ok, I would like something else instead of Exp but... I leave Kathy for SP games.
- Alex (Agg/Phi) Phalanx: Very good traits, very good defensive UU.
- Toku (Agg/Org) Samurai: Good combination for MP.

As you can see, I left out the early mounted UU since I don't believe in them: I feel that against a good human player they are too big a risk. If they forced me to pick one of them, I would go with Keshiks.