How many extra promotions for your super veteran units will charismatic get you? It's friday night and I made a spreadsheet. Look at this!

For units between 0 and 10 XP, Cha gives an extra promotion 27% of the time.
For units between 3 and 20 XP, Cha gives an extra promotion 44% of the time.
For units between 5 and 30 XP, Cha gives an extra promotion 58% of the time.
For units between 10 and 40 XP, Cha gives an extra promotion 71% of the time (including the 2 extra promotions at 49 XP)

Which you can also of course interpret as 0.27 promotions on average, 0.44 promotions on average, etc

And for what it's worth in a real game, units between 40 and 90 XP get an extra 1.2 promotions on average.

Does this surprise anyone else?

I'd always had the vague notion that over the long term, the extra promotions from Cha would outweigh the 1 extra promotion from Agg initially. On the basis of this analysis, they don't. You get an extra promotion on all your units... perhaps a quarter of the time to begin with, up to half the time once your army is between level 3 and level 7. Compared to an extra promotion 100% of the time on the most important units from Agg, plus cheap barracks.

Doesn't this make the choice for a warmonger something of a no-brainer? Doesn't it?

That's for melee units. If you're playing a Charismatic leader in single player you can have a lot of elite siege units and use melee units for defense.

In another thread just now Invisible Stalker and I were remarking that Aggressive is good early with metal (especially Iron) and for drafting.

Don't forget the Happiness bonus, in a way it's "less" war weariness :)
If it was as good as Aggressive just with XP, it would be imba cause of the added happiness bonus, so your sheet looks good to me. :p

charismatic is FABULOUS because your troops get to level 3, 4, 5, 6 FASTER, which is great!!! it's easy to get a pile of cr3/combat1 melee units or blitz mounted units. early heroic epic is easy and can often be obtained just from barbs. level 6 for west point, no problem.

not to mention +2 early game happiness.

the trait is HUGE.

That's for melee units. If you're playing a Charismatic leader in single player you can have a lot of elite siege units and use melee units for defense.

In another thread just now Invisible Stalker and I were remarking that Aggressive is good early with metal (especially Iron) and for drafting.

Yes, that was what made me think of this. Good discussion.

charismatic is FABULOUS because your troops get to level 3, 4, 5, 6 FASTER, which is great!!! it's easy to get a pile of cr3/combat1 melee units or blitz mounted units. early heroic epic is easy and can often be obtained just from barbs. level 6 for west point, no problem.

not to mention +2 early game happiness.

the trait is HUGE.

Take your point about west point and happiness. But CR3/Comb1 and Comb3/Blitz are both Level 4 promotions starting with Combat 1. Point being, to get there with Agg, you need 10 xp. With Cha, you need 13. It's not faster.

Take your point about west point and happiness. But CR3/Comb1 and Comb3/Blitz are both Level 4 promotions starting with Combat 1. Point being, to get there with Agg, you need 10 xp. With Cha, you need 13. It's not faster.


CR3/Combo1 your right
But blitz/march you want for tanks and cavalry which don't get the aggressive bonus

Agg: Free CombatI for Melee+Gunpower

What about siege that most people use to take cities post Construction?
Tanks? Cavs? Navy? Gunships? Longbow defending a city?

With well placed GGs, Charismatic can create ANYTHING with 3 promotions right out of multiple barracks(Barracks+Vas+The+1 instructor=9xp). And these troops only need 4 more xp for 4th promotion. In case of mounted(my favorite for its mobility and high strength), You do not even need instructors (Barracks+Vas+The+stable=9xp). This gives you Formation Cavs that only rifles can compete with.

You can do a lot of things by mix-matching offensive and defensive units that take full advantage of the paper/scisser/rock concept of the game. In a skilled warmonger's hand, no other civ can compete with a Charismateic army whether on land or water.

I think anyone who argues Aggressive is better than Charismatic is limited to his experience with the standard Axe/Swords or Gren/Rifle/Cannon warfare. I would strongly recommend them to give Charismatic a try.

why charismatic is 10 times better then aggresive(or anything actually...):

1. +2 happiness with monument; this, on immortal, makes your city cap assuming no minable/campable resources nearby, go from 3 to 5(with monument). That's a 66% pop. increase; 50% in capitol city. If this ain't huge, I don't know what is...
2. theo+vassalage = lvl 3 units. with settled general.
Now, aggresive would be lvl 2 + combat 1. However, you want CR3 macemen, not combat 1/cr 2 macemen. Essentially, while you get same thing, you get to chose all 3 promotions. And there aren't many situations(bar the 3-4 stack protectors) where, in between your 3 promotions, you'd want combat 1. Yes, with aggresive, you'd get to cr3 fast; however... the unit has to survive those 1-2 fights, which essentially makes much easier char. cr3 macemen to get to lvl 4 and combat 1(because they get to survive) then the aggr. get to lvl. 3 and cr3(because often they don't survive).
3. it works for all units. Not only for gunpowder and melee.

Aggressive is an excellent trait. Free combat 1 is amazing really. But charismatic, as others have said, applies to ALL your units!!! Plus the free happiness really is huge, especially on higher level play.

Boudica in the xpac is going to be wtfpwnd amazing.

I still prefer aggressive to charismatic, because with aggressive you get the bonus NOW, and you win battles NOW. The best use for Charismatic is using the +1 hapiness for civil pursuits, stonehenge and Eiffel Tower, or actually just the +1 hapiness for overall better empire management.

If you want a nice trick, remember that great generals are more than just level 3 medics and military instructors. What's the most badass great general soldier you had?

Charismatic is stronger than Agressive for a long game, since it gives you promotions for all units, what good is having Combat I infantry when you're in the modern age fightnig with tanks, artillery and planes?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/111910/civ4w-20070622-220549.png
Persia (one of my fav civs)
This is on monarch by the way
3great instructors + barracks + stables + theo
4 upgraded Knights
an army of 4 star knights

my bad wrong screenshot this is earlier in game
i think i might hav 4 great instructors now
ill get the right one in later

charismatic = very good

Don't write aggressive off.

- Early game - you get cover axes and swords immediately. Fantastic barb killers and awesome destroyers of the AIs in the field. Combat 1+CR1 raiders will take less damage and kill more often than just CR1 attackers. You can get your early barracks online for an early rush much more easily. And we all know any early game advantage is worth more than a late game advantage.

- Drafting - when you get to drafting you will already have barracks in each city (good for happiness under Nationalism). Run Theocracy and you will get a promotion with each draftee. Take pinch. Now you are drafting pinch riflemen - effectively two promotions. I'd rather have 3 pinch riflemen every turn than a single combat 4 unit produced from a single city.

- The sheer badasseryness of aggressive. I don't know why, but when I am playing an aggressive leader, I have no fear. My troops are better than theirs. I know it, they know it and I am always the attacker.

BUT, charismatic is a fantastic trait. The higher level you play the more you will appreciate that extra happy face. One of the reasons I don't like Immortal and higher is that the starting cities feel so constricted.

One trend I've found is that I appreciate Charismatic more if my troops have a tech edge and survive to high levels. A few highly promoted high level troops can be extremely effective.

I appreciate aggressive more if I am fighting as tech equals and trying to crush my opponent through weight of numbers where my troops get build in lots of cities and often don't survive to high levels.

The thing is combat 1 is a wasted promotion if I'm trying to take cities.

Then again charasmatic in Warlords is set up to not be as powerful as it could. Barracks are only +3 now, so Barracks + Vassalage + Theocracy yields the same number of promotions for Charasmatic as it does non-Charasmatic. In Vanilla you could get one extra. It does mean that you're a lot faster to CR3 (8 XP) than with non-charasmatic. Usually early in the game you can get 5 XP units quite easily. That means they're just 3 XP away from CR3 instead of 5, which works out to 2 battles instead of 3 (or 1 instead of 2 if you have another +2 XP from a civic or GG). That can mean the survival of a unit, whereas combat 1 is usually only useful if you're trying to get something like cover, formation or pinch.

Plus you CANNOT understand the ability to have an early +2 happiness. You get +1 to begin with, which means your early cities grow faster, but then a monument gives you another +1. That can be HUGE.

The thing is combat 1 is a wasted promotion if I'm trying to take cities.


Its not wasted:

- Gunpowder units don't get CR anyway, so what else would you take as first promotion.
- You fight at +10% in every battle, not just city attacks. You have to fend off counterattacks too.
- You can get the Level 2 promotions immediately. Which means you can build medics and shock and cover troops immediately when no-one else can. You invasion stack will start with a medic. The charismatic leader won't - they will have to win two battles first. And to fight these two battles they will have to use a combat 1 unit. Similarly your stack will be protected by a shock axe. You will have some cover axes to kill archers in the field and who are just as good as Cr1 axes killing archers in cities.
- Most of the time you will have the same number of promotions as a Charismatic leader PLUS the combat 1. As the OP stated, very often you end up with the same number of promotions.

The way I look at it:
- Charismatic will eventually build better non melee/non gunpowder units.
- Charismatic will eventually build better melee/gunpowder units from the HE/WP city.
- Aggressive will build better melee units in the early game.
- Aggressive will usually build better melee/gunpowder units in every other city.
- Aggressive will draft better units.

On the military side I would take Aggressive as better.

But overall Charismatic is probably slightly stronger due to the extra +1 happy bonus. Both are powerful traits though.

Persia (one of my fav civs)
This is on monarch by the way
3great instructors + barracks + stables + theo
4 upgraded Knights
an army of 4 star knights

In this game I had 6 settled GGs with a military academy too. In fact there was another GG in another city (I now need 270xp for next GG!). I'm getting 19xp riflemen and 21 xp knights (cavalry shortly). ie level 4 riflemen with 1xp needed for next promotion and level 5 knights. Still don't have the pentagon yet either, or West Point for that matter.

I think Charismatic is very nice. By the way, this is Monarch with klokwerk's BetterAI, Aggressive AI.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/80491/Civ4ScreenShot0006.JPG
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/80491/Civ4ScreenShot0007_mod.JPG

the benefit from charismatic over agressive is (outside the happiness) in helping ALL units, not just gunpowder and melee.
I'm not a big melee fan.
My usual army is 90% non melee and non gunpowder.
So agressive gives me a free promotion 10% of the time only ;).

usual early army (except UUs of course):
- siege 60 to 80%
- mounted 10 to 30%
- melee 10%

usual late army (except UUs of course):
- siege 30 to 50%
- mounted 10 to 30%
- navy 10%
- airforce 10 to 20%
- gunpowder 10 to 30%

If I play an agressive leader, or one with an especially good melee or gunpowder UU, this changes of course (I won't disregard the free promotion I could have, nor will I disregard a praetorian or a redcoat).

But playing persia for instance, you can only be glad he is charismatic and not agressive, don't you think?

The issue is not that charismatic gets that many more promotions, but that they are available much earlier. It also applies to all units (and the ability to get highly promoted trebs cannot be overstated) whereas aggressive is limited. Finally you have a full choice of promotions, rather than being restricted to combat 1, which is not always the best choice.

Plus two extra happiness in each city is at least as valuable to a warmonger at high difficulty levels as the unit promotion bonus.

Combat I is not something I choose though, so I find the Aggressive promotion only gives me 10% on city attackers most of the time. The arguement for medic and shock axes is there, but how often is that used?

I make medics out of units that I know will not defend. A lot of players go for spearmen as medics, but I'd rather stick them on a catapult. Lately I've been using my first GG to give 20 XP to a catapult so that I can get Medic III and March. This makes land sieges a lot easier and since it's a catapult I can use it to bombard and I don't have to worry about it defending and dying. Thus, the easy medic promotion thing is lost to me. Maybe having a medic early will make the axe rush a bit faster, but I don't think 10% per turn is too big a deal.

Shock axes are very nice in case your axe rush runs into some problems, but what are you really using them for? If you say to defend against other axemen then I say why not build chariots? Okay so sometimes you don't have horses, but if you do have them you should really be building a bunch of chariots anyway since they are the best units for fogbusting, protecting your cities from barbs and exploring rival territory after you get open borders. The only real use for shock axes is protecting your cities after your axe rush, and yes I will concede that slightly. In a game against another human that would be important. Against the AI it usually isn't the end of the world.

I see the biggest benefit being with Spearmen/Pikemen. You need combat II to get formation, and that is pretty hard to do with Spearmen/Pikemen because they're pretty terrible attackers. An aggressive leader can produce formation spears/pikes with just barracks and vassalage or theocracy, giving them +145% against mounted units.

I still find the advantage more favorable for charasmatic since it is faster to CR III. +75% city attack and +10% against gunpowder units really makes for something special. If you upgrade a CR III mace to a grenadier and the AI is defending with rifles like it usually does then you're looking at a unit with 28.2 in attack power. That is a bit overpowered to say the least, and I find that without charasmatic I usually have 3-4 CR III grenadiers and about a dozen CR II's. The difference between those two against rifles is almost 5 points.

Shock axes aren't so much to protect an army of axes as to protect an army of swords or cats. And medics help your units recover faster - probably one less turn spent healing means the next city is attacked one turn earlier which means one less turn for them to produce defenders etc.

I like the catapult medic 3 though - did that in my last game and it was great. More useful than a medic 3 chariot.

Good point about spears. I love my formation pikemen.

I am not sure you are really faster to CR3. The thing about aggressive is that because the units start better, they survive better. You don't lose so often so your units reach the higher promotions in greater numbers. And once you get 10xp, the rest is really icing on the cake.

I used to downplay aggressive thinking the advantage wasn't that big. But my most devastating games have been with aggressive leaders, not charismatic. Playing as Monte on Emperor and drafting pinch riflemen en-mass, after my maces and axes had already cleared two AIs. Or Kublai and nearly taking out three AIs before civil service.