Hi all,

I enjoy playing Civ leaders who aren't usually considered the best and making the most out of what they have. I don't usualy play with Civs that are Financial or Organized because I feel they're not as much of a challenge, and don't require the strategy of some of the other traits. So I like to get the most out of some of the "weaker" traits. But I don't find protective to be useful at all really. It almost seems like the Protective leaders have only one trait to use. Protective is like a hidden trait because it so rarely seems to come into play for me. If the AIs were attacking my cities, it'd be useful I suppose, but the AI rarely goes on the offensive against my cities. Sure, the first strike for my archers and gunpowder units is okay, but how much of a difference does that really make? Cheap walls and castles? That won't make a difference against the AI either.

But I didn't start this thread to complain about protective. I want to hear how other people best use the protective trait. How do you get the most out of protective in order for the trait to actually impact the game, like every other trait would?

I know some people will post about how Tokugawa's gunpowder units come out with three promotions. Some people will mention how China's UU is so fierce with the first strike promotion. But what about a leader like Saladin? How do you use Protective for Saladin to make a difference? When I play with Saladin, I feel like I basically only have one trait...

So I'd love to hear any suggestions how to make the most out of the protective trait (and again, I'm not looking for your ideas of how to improve the trait). ;)

I'm a big promoter of use of the protective trait. great for civs that want to play peaceful rather than warmonger... archers are not very good at attack but a CG1 Drill 1 fortified in city archer is a brutal defender. 3 of those in a city, 2 with cg 2 and the other with medic 1 can seriously tear up just about any pre catapult stack.

i'm fond of using korea and taking archery early. especially if I have camp related resources (furs, ivory) to make use of the hunting tech.

very helpful if you are delying bronze working in favor of oracle beelining etc. archers are stupid cheap to produce and will protect you from barbs. they also help with power rating to keep the AI at bay.

if your economy is in good shape, taking some barb promoted archers and upgrading them to xbows makes great offensive weapons. knowing this you start with CG 1 and drill 1, and follow the drill line instead so you get xbows with extra first strikes.. damn handy against macemen I tell you

you'll find plenty of people who dislike protective but I hope this atleast gives you some insight into its usefullness

NaZ

I like it when I find that one of my neighbors has the trait. It makes me think twice about attacking, and plan a bit more. I have not tried it so much myself, but should try.

Protective really needs to be buffed in some way, since attackers are content to pillage all of your lands the city garison is mostly useless, sure it makes your cities easy to defend but without improvements they are virtually useless. While it has its uses, the best of them are not effective for homeland defense. One of the best parts of protective is being able to bring strong garrisons to newly captured cities. After conquering an outlying enemy city try placing a handful of strong drill promoted defenders (longbows come to mind) and move your attacking stack away. Your enemy will most likely waste most of their army/all of their seige on your nearly invincible units in the city, after that feel free to raze the rest of their empire.

Thanks for the replies so far...

Perhaps my problem is that I'm not peaceful enough for it. I agree when I see my neighbor is Protective, I definitely think twice about attacking him. Especially early in the game. It's way harder to attack someone who is Protective, but I doubt the AI considers that before it attacks, and it rarely attacks me anyway so it just doesn't come into play much for me. I will try giving my Crossbowmen the extra first strikes and putting them on the offensive.

Also, I have another question about Protective and the First Strike. So am I correct that gunpowder units cannot normally get the First Strike promo? But Protective gunpowder units do get it, but can't get any additional First Strikes? If this is the case, I think I would like to see the Protective gunpowder units have this promotion available, but not for non-Protective leaders... Just to make Protective more unique.

^^Let's kill two birds with one stone and allow protective leaders to build forts over improvements without destroying them.

^^Let's kill two birds with one stone and allow protective leaders to build forts over improvements without destroying them.

That's probably the best suggestion I've heard to improve Protective and to make Forts useful... Though forts would still only be useful for Protective civs. But I build Forts anyway just for fun :D

I prefer to use Longbowmen with Drill III promotion over, well, any unit. They're amazingly powerful, and once they get to Drill IV, they're nearly invincible.

How about using archery units to fortify in the hilly forests of your enemies' land (standard) AND to range around, pillaging everything, even on flat land (less standard)? While 2-move units are good at pillaging for obvious reasons, tough-as-nails archery units would make nice pillagers, too. The problem is that sometimes you want to take a city whole, not pillage it to death. Bah!

How about Protective gives you a 25% defensive bonus on any improvement within your cultural borders? It would guarding specific resources more powerful without giving any real offensive bonuses.

Bh

How about Protective gives you a 25% defensive bonus on any improvement within your cultural borders? It would guarding specific resources more powerful without giving any real offensive bonuses.

Bh

Or perhaps 50% on improvements and 25% anywhere else inside your cultural borders. That would definitely be a true protective. The thing with protective is, if an AI civ has it, it seems like such a good trait because it makes things a pain, but usually humans are more aggressive. It seems like Protective would be more useful in MP, but since I haven't played any MP, someone might correct me on that.

On the Chinease protective cho-ko-nus, the strategy for non-Chinease crossbows isn't all that different. Chinease use a stack of cho-ko-nus and spearmen. Other protective civs can use a stack of crossbows, spearmen, and siege units (cho-ko-nus are crossbows + collateral damage). It rules out a beeline so non-Chinease protective leaders will have to wait a bit longer but otherwise it's still a fairly solid.

Alternative protective trait:

Half price walls and castles,
All archery and siege units recieve free city garrison (CG) I and drill (D) I.

Machine gunners aside, CGI won't do siege units much good (just like DI doesn't do gunpowder units much good), but giving them a head start down the drill promotion line is a much greater advantage than giving gunpowder units a free CG promotion. Reasons why this provides a greater advantage:

1) CGI is powerful enough by itself that it isn't a hinderance when going for CGIII but DI is quite weak that it can be reason not to go after DIV.
2) The drill promotion line is longer than the city garrison promotion line. With Warlords it's quite easy (relative to Vanilla) for non protective players to give newly built units CGIII in the early gunpowder era, which takes the wind out of the sales of the CGI-for-gunpowder-units bonus. But it's a lot more difficult to give DIV to newly built units in the same era.

Other benefits:

1) Machine gunners - already pretty good - become even better city defenders with their shiny new CGI promotion.
2) Siege units are available for most of the game while archery and gunpowder units are only available in certain eras.

Possible criticism: 'it's the protective trait but that's an offensive bonus'.
Response: I don't care. Protective is just a name tag. Also, protective, in previews of Warlords, was described as giving DI and DII to all archery and siege units - no mention of CGI or gunpowder units - which is stronger again than what I'm suggesting and, possibly, even overpowered.

m u l t i p la y e r. Seriously the trait is quite good in mp. In singleplayer there realy isnt much you can do with it other than in very rare circumstances... I used it to great effect as my last game as china but that was like 100% only cause of the UU's extra first strike... If the AI's are attacking your cities someting have most likely gone very wrong indeed:p.

multiplayer blocks, at level 1 giving them a hill promotion and tossing them on the enemy's hill iron/copper early on screws them out of the resource unless they already have a few metal units or build 50 archers to take out two hill defense archers on a hill. Forested hills especially, if you can crank out archers fast enough you can deprive an enemy of most of his hill tiles, ruining his production.

Drafting is bound with the trait too. All your drafted troops have CG1 and Drill1 automatically. It should be enough. If you want Pinched Musketman or Rifles - no problem - adopt Theocracy and you will get 1 exp from barracks and 1 exp from civic. If you do not want to change civic - settle Great Military Instructor - same effect (1 exp point). And Drill1 opens possibility to Pinch unit.

mgs are seige. not gunpowder.

Yes, I was treating them as siege, not gunpowder.

Its not a bad trait at all IMO.

First the main reason its in the game is to make some opponents more challenging. Its hard to take out a protective civ early on which means you can't always win through early rushes. Makes the game more interesting. (This is the biggest plus of the trait to me).

But when playing it yourself, to me its almost as good as aggressive. Consider:
- Both allow access to the second level promotions of pinch, shock etc (the main benefit IMO). On gunpowder units I would be just as happy with Drill 1 + CG1 as I would with combat 1.
- Cheap walls aren't as good as cheap barracks, but both have the effect of allowing you to build the building in every city, whereas otherwise you would have avoided this. Cheap walls increase your power a lot which is a deterrent to aggression.
- A promotion on archery units isn't as good as a promotion on melee units - unless you don't have metals. So that balances out for me - protective is safe - you can always escort a stack of catapults with drill longbows, but you can't rely on always having swords or maces around.
- Protective has good synergy with the leaders that have it EXCEPT for Saladin. Consider:
- China gets a UU that benefits directly from the trait. CNKs are even more awesome.
- Korea gets a UU that counters melee and would ideally be protected by longbows - great for a non metal, non horse start (which I had with him).
- Japan gets vicious combinations for gunpowder units making them pretty scary at this stage.
- Churchill gets probably the most scary combination of all - a UU that can be drafted immediately with these two promotions, and the chance to easily get drill 4 longbows promoted to drill four redcoats which are lethal.

- Protective has good synergy with the leaders that have it EXCEPT for Saladin.

So is there any way to make Protective useful for Saladin? Is he basically only Protective for trying to get a cultural victory and using protective units to protect your cities in the late game culture race?

In my current game I drew Korea. I'm not quite sure how First Strikes work in this game, but I felt like it gave my Grenadiers an edge. I didn't need to build as many to get the job done.

So for the Gunpowder units that are used on offense, I think it's fairly beneficial. But for defenders the bonus will rarely come into play.

One other thing - I heard that Walls will boost your Power rating relative to other civs, but I haven't tested it out. If so, spamming Walls in all your cities could be a viable deterrent to attack.

Korea gets a UU that counters melee and would ideally be protected by longbows - great for a non metal, non horse start (which I had with him).

Are you sure about this? Horse archers are a counter to siege units. Longbows (and crossbows) are not particularly good at protecting a stack from horse archers - offensively, it's a tie, defensively, horse archers withdraw bonus gives them the advantage. Protective doesn't help at all; with the exception of Keshiks, horse archers are immune to first strikes. Against melee units in the open field, notably macemen, hwachas may be good on the offence but both longbows and hwachas are vulnerable when defending.

A hwacha/crossbow stack would be better (defensive bonuses against melee) but spears are needed as well to protect against mounted units.

Try Hwachha + Jumbos nothing has a chance against that stack except for enemy jumbos or mass cat saccing. Even then your hwachhas will be immune to collateral.

I forgot about elephants. They're certainly pretty tough combined. Well promoted spearmen/pikemen/macemen would be required to beat such units. Crossbows could be added for extra protection. It doesn't change the fact that protective really doesn't provide much synergy for the Koreans.

Exactly, there is no synergy between the traits and UU.

Still, I am starting to like Korea. Each unique aspect helps a different part of your game. Granted, Protective is weak. But the free first strike for Crossbows and Grenadiers is worth something.

Also, my previous question about walls adding to your power score - still not sure about that. I will have to check it in the game sometime.

No you cannot beat jumbo-hwachha with pikes. Reason Hwachha has a 50% bonus against melee units.So pikes ,axes, swords get destroyed by hwachhas. Only way you might destroy the pack is superior numbers , suicide cats , superior technology or your own jumbos.

You're right. Hwachas don't recieve defensive bonuses so I assumed that the melee bonus only applied when on the offensive - I'm fairly sure that this happens for some unit.

You're right. Hwachas don't recieve defensive bonuses so I assumed that the melee bonus only applied when on the offensive - I'm fairly sure that this happens for some unit.
not for hwachas
pretty good UU :)

Protective really shines when you draft riflemen.
Draftees are low on Xps, but with the free promotion, your draftees are not totally naked.

Short version: Protective encourages you to sit back and develop during the early years, as well as pushing you to research towards Longbows and Crossbows. To do that you will need to go down the southern research path towards Feudalism and Machinery, which has opportunity costs that I talk about a bit more below.

In short I think it encourages the player to alter their playstyle and research priorities from some strong strategies (centered around melee units and Math-based techs) that have been developed and refined since the game came out. There might be some great plays to be made with a protective/religious game, but they seem to be more specialized plays which makes them less robust and flexibile, therefore harder to apply as general principles when playing the early game.

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When you compare Protective with aggressive its shortcomings are evident:
Unit Comparison: Early game, melee units are superior to archery units. Gunpowder units I'm willing to call a draw.
Cheap Building: Cheap barracks are leagues better than walls and castles. Barracks also scale and allow flexibility - it improves the value of each hammer you invest, and you choose which promo it goes towards. Walls and Castles are fixed investments that don't scale in value and are rarely used.
Promotions: Protective gets two free promos at no XP cost, and Drill was changed to open up the same promo paths that Combat 1 does. Protective has the edge here.

Looking at all of those, it seems clear to me that the cheap building is where protective falls apart. If Protective allowed cheap barracks I think it would often be considered superior to aggressive, but I've heard that it wasn't allowed to preserve the defensive flavor of the trait.

Or perhaps even something like a 10% universal bonus while defending inside your own cultural borders would be warranted. Or maybe remove the free CG promo but make it so that all archery/gunpowder units built in a city with walls get CG1 for free.
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The issue is larger than the comparison between Aggressive and Protective traits - it's also about which units and technologies it rewards you for pursuing. We've seen the dominant strategies in SP gravitate towards Bronze Working, Civil Service, and the cluster of techs around Mathematics (Calendar, Construction, Currency, Literature). It's rewarding to skip archery (put your beakers elsewhere) and Feudalism is prohibitively expensive to research in addition to being along a less robust research path (Religious instead of Mathematics).
Unit types: Archery units are strictly archers until the early AD years and Feudal Longbows.
Melee has more variety that you can tailor to fit your needs - robust and flexible, again. Spearmen, Axemen, and Swordsmen.
Machinery opens up both crossbows and macemen, so I'll call that a draw, but shortly after you can grab Engineering with increased road movement and pikes, which handily counter Knights, the beefiest unit on the southern/religious tech path (which again has lots of opportunity costs).

Are you sure about this? Horse archers are a counter to siege units. Longbows (and crossbows) are not particularly good at protecting a stack from horse archers - offensively, it's a tie, defensively, horse archers withdraw bonus gives them the advantage. Protective doesn't help at all; with the exception of Keshiks, horse archers are immune to first strikes. Against melee units in the open field, notably macemen, hwachas may be good on the offence but both longbows and hwachas are vulnerable when defending.

A hwacha/crossbow stack would be better (defensive bonuses against melee) but spears are needed as well to protect against mounted units.

I tend to hug the hills and forests as much as possible with my invasion stacks, so Longbows beat horse archers when they get a terrain advantage. And once the city is captured, they defend it easily. The drill promotions become pretty useful for mopping up on a city attack too.

Its not a huge synergy I'll admit, but in a game where I found myself with no metals or horse or elephants, I appreciated protective and Hwachas hugely.

So is there any way to make Protective useful for Saladin? Is he basically only Protective for trying to get a cultural victory and using protective units to protect your cities in the late game culture race?

I don't think he is ideal for culture at all. For culture I want industrious, financial or philosophical.

But spiritual and protective could be considered both war traits. You can make sure every unit you build gets +4 xp from civics while still getting the benefits of other civics for building and research by clever queue management.

Can longbows get cover? Drill Two + Cover might be an interesting combination for an attacking longbowman. At the same time you can build CG3 longbows to hold the cities you take - let the AI waste their attacks on those.

Drafting is a good fit with protective and a spiritual leader finds it easy to switch in and out of draft mode.

The UU doesn't have any particular synergy, except that it doesn't require any resources. Maybe Saladin is well suited to warring when you don't have any starting military resources.

I don't think he is ideal for culture at all. For culture I want industrious, financial or philosophical.

But spiritual and protective could be considered both war traits. You can make sure every unit you build gets +4 xp from civics while still getting the benefits of other civics for building and research by clever queue management.

Can longbows get cover? Drill Two + Cover might be an interesting combination for an attacking longbowman. At the same time you can build CG3 longbows to hold the cities you take - let the AI waste their attacks on those.

Drafting is a good fit with protective and a spiritual leader finds it easy to switch in and out of draft mode.

The UU doesn't have any particular synergy, except that it doesn't require any resources. Maybe Saladin is well suited to warring when you don't have any starting military resources.

I disagree with this. I think Saladin is good (not the best) for culture because of his building and Spiritual. He is able to find many religions and build many shrines with his great prophets from the Madassas. The Madassas also give +4 culture instead of +2, which isn't a huge bonus, but if you consider that its culture doubles after 1000 years, that's 8 culture points per turn. I find spiritual good for culture because the cheap temples are huge when you have three religions. Build temples in all your cities, then build the cathedrals in your culture cities, etc...