I keep reading that this trait sucks. Why do ppl think this?

I used to only play with financial/philosophical leaders (and for a while only played as Lizzy), but now I've begun a series of monarch/marathon/huge pangea games where I'm playing every leader.

I gotta say, two of my most succesful games were with protective leaders. They rock! Played with Japan and after a couple of GG's was producing cg3's with fs1, and cg1 with fs3 tandems out the gate. Unkillable bastards they were. I upgraded a cg3 fs1 unit to a mg and he gained over 100 xp's defending a city. I ran out of promotions to give him. The entire world declared war on me and I was able to hold them all off with a minimal defensive force, which allowed me to play my builder style.

This trait permitted me to build to my hearts content, while the rest of the world continued to build huge suicide stacks to throw upon my impregnable defenses.

And Native America. Oh my. That's just sick. Their archers start with like 18 promotions (exaggeration), and their UU kills all melee units.

I've actually found this trait to be too overpowered. For builder ppl like me, this trait makes the game easy. In most games I struggle protecting myself bcz I just won't stop building buildings, but this trait makes it so I don't have to build an army. But, lol, with this trait, war became so fun I actually did start building an army.

Hell, the two best units I've ever built came from this trait.

Because people can't grasp the concept that all the traits are situational.

;6974151']Because people can't grasp the concept that all the traits are situational.

I think it's just a matter of learning to leverage the potential power of each trait.

I think it's mainly because you're a builder ... and that means you need good defence. For an aggressive player, defensive capabilities generally don't help much, they're more in need of things like gold and happiness.

I think it's mainly because you're a builder ... and that means you need good defence. For an aggressive player, defensive capabilities generally don't help much, they're more in need of things like gold and happiness.

And for the aggressive player they also need the commando promotion. See my other thread regarding this unstoppable first strike tactic.

Eh, it's probably my favorite trait. Argued about it plenty of times in the forums. Have fun, and don't get Bhruic started on it ;)

And for the aggressive player they also need the commando promotion.

Nice, but comes a little late - my critical wars (the ones that give me an unbreakable foothold) come earlier. Barrage and City Raider are the ones I use most.

Simply Playstyle. However you're feeling after a hard day's work, Attack or Relax?

Eh, it's probably my favorite trait. Argued about it plenty of times in the forums. Have fun, and don't get Bhruic started on it ;)

Eh? What's he say about it? And is his word infallible? :lol:

He just gets very up in arms about it... He's in the camp of "best defence is an offence," "pillaging makes it useless," and a few other nasty (and only situationally accurate) things about the trait. I think his playstyle just doesn't match it, and he doesn't give credit to people who play in a manner that stresses the incredible defensive strength while leveraging the notable offensive power of Drill IV (oh, he has a lots of odds calculations for drill VS combat line - but he doesn't really factor in its health saving properties or its siege resistance).

And of course I don't think his word is infallible - he thinks my favorite trait sucks ;) Protective ain't for everyone, but with myself as the only example I really need to name for myself, some people make the trait work for its money.

Yes, I noticed that when I stack of mixed cg3 and d4 in a city, it was impenetrable. The cg3 units took care of mismatches, and the d4 could survive siege attacks relatively unscathed for the actuay battle.

In all of the protective games I've played, I noticed that the trait permitted me to simply build to my hearts content, while the AI wasted itself on wars and paying for its armies. I simply out-teched them until I gained a significant tech lead and could walk over them (paratroopers versus cavalry armies).

I'm really rather excited to take this trait to the immortal level and see how it goes. That's the hardest part of that level, is surviving with a tiny army while trying to build. This might just enable me to do that without any problems now.

I stepped down from immortal just to try out the other civs and other traits and experience more aspects of the game (and for a more relaxed game), and really fell in love with this trait. When I first started both the NA and Japanese games I didn't really expect much from the trait and thought it would be useless, but over the course of the two games I became greatly impressed with it.

I think the Natives might be my favorite civ now.

I don't think there's a financial/protective combo, but I'd love it if there were.

Yes, I noticed that when I stack of mixed cg3 and d4 in a city, it was impenetrable. The cg3 units took care of mismatches, and the d4 could survive siege attacks relatively unscathed for the actuay battle.

In all of the protective games I've played, I noticed that the trait permitted me to simply build to my hearts content, while the AI wasted itself on wars and paying for its armies. I simply out-teched them until I gained a significant tech lead and could walk over them (paratroopers versus cavalry armies).

I'm really rather excited to take this trait to the immortal level and see how it goes. That's the hardest part of that level, is surviving with a tiny army while trying to build. This might just enable me to do that without any problems now.

I stepped down from immortal just to try out the other civs and other traits and experience more aspects of the game (and for a more relaxed game), and really fell in love with this trait. When I first started both the NA and Japanese games I didn't really expect much from the trait and thought it would be useless, but over the course of the two games I became greatly impressed with it.

I think the Natives might be my favorite civ now.

I don't think there's a financial/protective combo, but I'd love it if there were.

Heh, you're walking down the exact same path I did a while ago - and I'm using Protective very successfully on Immortal as of not long ago.

Keep in mind, drill not only makes units take almost no damage VS siege, they also make units take almost no damage VS units they have an odds advantage against. Longbows with drill IV and CGI oftentimes kill multiple attacking macemen/trebs with hardly getting hurt... Stack a few of them in a city, and it gets just freaky.

And yeah, Sitting Bull has become my favorite leader. Phil is a great trait, and his uber protective game rocks... Also, look up "stasis rush" in the search function - I started a thread on the subject, and it's a great way to leverage a bit of an early game advantage against an Immortal level CPU - and Sitting Bull's UU is incredibly well suited.

Good luck in any case. Enjoy the trait - I sure as heck have! And have a good chuckle when people tell you it is underpowered.


PS - Wang Kon is Financial protective - one of my favorite leaders. His UB is a university that produces 10% more tech (ideal for turtling and teching), and his UU is a catapult with +50% vs melee (ideal for taking out melee units, one of the things heavy drill longbowmen have trouble with - he has a spectacular early-mid game resourceless army). There is no protective organized though :(

Yeah, I keep hearing about the early game rushes, but it would just violate my conscience to do it. I'm an isolationist, and just let the AI pick my enemies for me.

War makes the game exciting, but I just won't start them until maybe late game when I've got an important reason to do it. Besides, I rather enjoy the 2000 year defensive wars.

I haven't got to Korea yet, they should be fun to try. Looking forward to Sumeria too, I think they're protective.

I like Charlemagne best of all protective leaders. Playing him my favourite strategy is to spread cities fast, build GW and lauch a couple of endless defensive wars against warmonger freaks like Monty or Shaka. Just beat their countless stacks wave after wave, receive packs of GGs and strengthen your defense.

I think the Natives might be my favorite civ now.

I don't think there's a financial/protective combo, but I'd love it if there were.

Yes, the Natives kick a$$ all too easily :D. Imo Fin/Pro would be interesting, but weaker than Phi/Pro.

I don't think there's a financial/protective combo

Wang Kon.

XCL.

Prot is weak for me because the AI almost never goes for my city first. They -always- pillage.
A drill'd archer/longbowman isn't going to really help me as much as a land unit would in that case.
For that reason, I find that Aggressive is far superior. Even if you aren't a warmonger. With aggressive your unit is already a bit stronger, and now you're free to give him a speciality against whatever the enemy is tossing at you.

Maybe it's just that I always play on Noble difficulty, and the AI goes more for cities in the higher difficulties.

Personally, I think the trait should give a defensive bonus to all units when they are on their own soil.

Prot is weak for me because the AI almost never goes for my city first. They -always- pillage.
A drill'd archer/longbowman isn't going to really help me as much as a land unit would in that case.
For that reason, I find that Aggressive is far superior. Even if you aren't a warmonger. With aggressive your unit is already a bit stronger, and now you're free to give him a speciality against whatever the enemy is tossing at you.

Maybe it's just that I always play on Noble difficulty, and the AI goes more for cities in the higher difficulties.

Personally, I think the trait should give a defensive bonus to all units when they are on their own soil.

An archer's/longbowman's place is in the city/fort or atop a hill guarding your mine, not taking care of marauding units. Leave that job up to your horse archers and mounted units. Alternatively you could throw some catapults and axemen at the pillagers, but your archers/longbowmen are defenders.

I wish Civ IV carried over "zones of control" from Civ II. That way your archer on top of that hill can keep units from rampaging through your turf.

While that archer could be impossible to unseat from that hill, that same archer could not attack and rid the land of raiders.

An archer's/longbowman's place is in the city/fort or atop a hill guarding your mine, not taking care of marauding units. Leave that job up to your horse archers and mounted units. Alternatively you could throw some catapults and axemen at the pillagers, but your archers/longbowmen are defenders.

Archery units are good at defending cities is my point. They're pretty useless at doing anything else.
It's just that whenever I bash Protective, people try to tell me "oh its not just for defending your city"
...Yeah. Yeah it is. The Drill 1 promotion isn't going to make an archery unit suddenly good at defending things from getting pillaged.

That's why I want to make Protective good for defense in general.

^ ok. But Drill IV can wipe out units without taking any damage sometimes, like capturing a piece in chess... So Drill promotions can be nice. Protective suits me cause I'd rather lose a unit on the offensive (i.e. Maceman with 1 less promotion than an Agg leader) than in my city where it counts the most. If your defensive units fail then your cities fall, and it's Game Over. I don't have this marauder problem though, because Pro civs tend to have great UU's. The Dog Soldier, Landskecht (spelling)... there are others too! No one can convince me Pro is weak. When you see who's in my city protecting it, yeah... you'd better go try and pillage my land. Or, you could just turn that stack around and head for an easier Civ to conquer. You will take heavy losses battling a Pro Civ, or if controlled properly, you'll spend all game at war... feeding me GG's. Agg is a great trait, and I'm not saying one's better than the other. They are only used to their fullest though when not battling each other imo.

Protective is weaker than the rest of the traits, and needs a slight boost IMO such as some sort of boost to espionage. Because at the moment, it's a 1 trick trait, and that trick requires you to be attacked at the city walls. So leveraging this trait to its fullest means you have to fight to defend your cities the entire game, which, unless youre playing always war, is quite unlikely. ;)

^ ok. But Drill IV can wipe out units without taking any damage sometimes, like capturing a piece in chess... So Drill promotions can be nice. Protective suits me cause I'd rather lose a unit on the offensive (i.e. Maceman with 1 less promotion than an Agg leader) than in my city where it counts the most. If your defensive units fail then your cities fall, and it's Game Over. I don't have this marauder problem though, because Pro civs tend to have great UU's. The Dog Soldier, Landskecht (spelling)... there are others too! No one can convince me Pro is weak. When you see who's in my city protecting it, yeah... you'd better go try and pillage my land. Or, you could just turn that stack around and head for an easier Civ to conquer. You will take heavy losses battling a Pro Civ, or if controlled properly, you'll spend all game at war... feeding me GG's. Agg is a great trait, and I'm not saying one's better than the other. They are only used to their fullest though when not battling each other imo.

And this is where Prot civs have a problem.
I can just waltz in, destroy every improvement you have, disconnect your cities, etc. And then just wait for your already-made units to eventually walk outside of the city.

And this is where Prot civs have a problem.
I can just waltz in, destroy every improvement you have, disconnect your cities, etc. And then just wait for your already-made units to eventually walk outside of the city.

Sure you could do that if all a Pro Civ built were archers. But that would be pretty dumb to only build archers now wouldn't it. You seem to think that's all Pro Civs have at their disposal is archers. Having one more combat promotion is not going to give your stack free reign on a Pro civ's land. You are in enemy land and he has more units than you collectively... You'd tear up a good deal of land around 1 city possibly 2 if they were close together, but all parties come to an end. I would blame the user for not building a balanced army if you went in and tore up all their land, not the Pro trait. That Pro trait is doing its job... you are too scared to attack the city! Had it been a regular Non-Pro Civ, the city would have already been conquered.

Sure you could do that if all a Pro Civ built were archers. But that would be pretty dumb to only build archers now wouldn't it. You seem to think that's all Pro Civs have at their disposal is archers. Having one more combat promotion is not going to give your stack free reign on a Pro civ's land. You are in enemy land and he has more units than you collectively... You'd tear up a good deal of land around 1 city possibly 2 if they were close together, but all parties come to an end. I would blame the user for not building a balanced army if you went in and tore up all their land, not the Pro trait. That Pro trait is doing its job... you are too scared to attack the city! Had it been a regular Non-Pro Civ, the city would have already been conquered.

No, that's living proof that Protective is a useless trait.

Archery units end up being pretty much worthless unless your city is attacked. Even with Prot, all they can do is stay in the city. So, the player has to build a lot of units that don't get the free boost the player could have gotten (unless you're playing as Tokugawa or... Who is Cha/Prot?)
In the end, your city isn't as well defended as someone who is Aggressive.

Aggressive covers:
-Marauder protection
-Medics
-Invasion forces

Protective covers:
-Archery units that will never leave the city.
-...
-...
-Oh wait, that's it.

So why not instead make a few cheap medic units and a couple of archery units? Sure, they won't start off with Drill and City Defense, but they'll still be pretty damn powerful because you've got medics with them.

It's a broken trait. Protective is in the same group as the espionage nuke, the Qin/Kublai switch, etc.

I have rarely heard of defense paying off in any endeavor that isn't on the operational level. Protective is almost TOO situational to be useful to me. Not to mention sitting back and engaging in a defensive war doesn't seem to be worth it in this game. It only makes lowers my research (as well as the attacker's) to a point where both of us lose any tech advantage. Meanwhile, Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa, and Asoka type civs are not warring and enjoying peaceful wonder building/researching on the other side of the continent.

protective isn't bad, it just isn't great compared to other traits I think.

It sure is handy if you play with Raging Barbs.

dF, I can see you are as content with the Agg trait as I am with Pro. The Agg leader's stack is not invincible, and might want to reconsider DoW on a Pro Civ. The best wars are quick ones. I'll leave it at that.

May I ask what difficulty the OP plays on?

Sure you could do that if all a Pro Civ built were archers. But that would be pretty dumb to only build archers now wouldn't it. You seem to think that's all Pro Civs have at their disposal is archers. Having one more combat promotion is not going to give your stack free reign on a Pro civ's land. You are in enemy land and he has more units than you collectively...

If you are going to protect yourself by simply building a massive army, then you can win defensive wars without any military traits at all. The advantage of protective, I have always been told, is that you don't need to spend as much production on your military. And that means you won't be able to field a massive stack of axemen and spearmen to go along with the archers you build.

I am not hostile to Protective, it has just never worked for me. If I have to build a large army anyway, I might as well use it on the offensive rather than hiding behind my city walls. If I don't have copper or horses, protective hasn't saved me from having the AI pillage the living crap out of my empire. It only seems useful for people who have no interest in pursuing conquest.

I find expansive to be a poorer trait than protective. Protective is a good trait for conquering simply because your troops are much less susceptible to the inevitable counter attack after taking a city.

Also, I find industrious to be crap on the higher difficulty levels (emperor and above) where building Wonders is not guaranteed. All it takes is for an AI civ to have early access to stone or marble and it can completely nullify your industrious bonus.

One downside to Protective is that double speed Walls is a bit meh (but still being able to whip a wall is helpful at times), and castles totally meh - which aren't that good.

Protective is great on offence too don't forget, those bonuses apply when you take a city making it harder for the AI to take it back. A longbow/crossbow/pike combination with a couple of promos off the bat is particularly nasty to beat, and nastier still if on a hill.

Oh and drill IV/CG 3 machine guns are a b*tch to dislodge, and it's not hard to get them racking up loads of XP as hordes of infantry fall by the wayside attacking them.

I rather like protective. It is probably better in MP than in SP since human opponents are rather more dangerous when conducting war. Still tho it has its advantages even in SP especially after gunpowder.

cheap walls and castles are no worse than cheap barracks and drydocks. Barracks are pretty cheap anyway and you don't really need to build them in every city and drydocks hardly need be built at all except in one or two cities.

The idea that the only way to leverage the free promos is to only build archers and turtle is very shortsighted. The advantage of the free promos is you DON'T have to build dedicated city defenders AT ALL since any and all archery or gunpowder units can furfill that role better than average if need be.

He just gets very up in arms about it... He's in the camp of "best defence is an offence," "pillaging makes it useless," and a few other nasty (and only situationally accurate) things about the trait. I think his playstyle just doesn't match it, and he doesn't give credit to people who play in a manner that stresses the incredible defensive strength while leveraging the notable offensive power of Drill IV (oh, he has a lots of odds calculations for drill VS combat line - but he doesn't really factor in its health saving properties or its siege resistance).

I think that the Drill line is the hands down best promotion line in the game. When it comes to defending cities, stacks, newly captured territory, and resources, a few Drill IV machinegun (or crossbow in earlier eras) will defend your SOD, stop an invading mounted unit from pillaging vital resources, and guarding your newly acquired cities.

Protective is weaker than the rest of the traits, and needs a slight boost IMO such as some sort of boost to espionage. Because at the moment, it's a 1 trick trait, and that trick requires you to be attacked at the city walls. So leveraging this trait to its fullest means you have to fight to defend your cities the entire game, which, unless youre playing always war, is quite unlikely. ;)

I gotta disagree here. The protective trait allows your gunpowder units to start with CGI and Drill I. If you get 3 promos straight outta the barracks, your units can have CGII and Drill III or CG I and Drill IV which makes for some insane SOD defenders. I like taking these units to lead my tanks/arty/infantry/sam-infantry in all out assaults. They defend the stack from any of the AI's stack busters, then after the city is taken, they hold onto it with no fears of having it retaken. You can use these guys as conquered city garrisons, resource guards, and they can travel around with gunships/mounted units to rape your opponents land with no fear of losing units.

Yes Protective had been talked to death since Warlords. It is very useful after gunpowder but compared to say Aggressive, which just happens to always be useful from beginning to end... well maybe not the end since tanks and mordern armour don't get the free promos.

Protective's weakness happens to occur during the early game before gunpowder where most offensive players tend to not build archery units and prefer to defend with other units.

I actually pretty much do that too, my defensive unit is the Catapult at that point in time, if the AI just happens to send a SOD then I just Collateral Damage it to death then pretty much any unit can clean up.

It's other weakeness is it's cheap buildings (some traits relies heavely on it's cheap buildings like Expansive and to a lesser extent Organized) which happen to also happen to be very situtational, hecks 99.99% of the time I never build them, probably because of the way I play military where all my defensive wars occur outside my city so why build walls or castles?

the secondary benefits of cheaps buildings are ok (wel walls dont' have a secondary benefit) but they obsolete too early, castles have a very short lifespan and even if I delay the obsoleting tech, it sometimes conflicts with my playstyle (eg - Economics eventually leads to coperations and Sid Sushi).

There's also the fact that the cheap buildings actually obsolete, do you know any other cheap building in the game that actually obsoletes??? I can't think of any, sure there are some cheap buildings you can't build because of map type but still being useful for only 1/4 or less of the game is very unappealing.

There have been many ideas on how to improve the trait though.

Eg

- Extend the lifespan of Castles
- Give Walls a Secondary benefit
- Great Wall should require 3 Walls before being available to be consturcted like SOZ.
- Cheaper EP Missions
- Increased EP Points Accumulated

and many more, not all of these should be included in the game

cheap walls and castles are no worse than cheap barracks and drydocks. Barracks are pretty cheap anyway and you don't really need to build them in every city and drydocks hardly need be built at all except in one or two cities.

Well your Playstyle maybe different but whenever I play Aggressive I make sure I build a Barrack in every city I know that can grow to size 6 because I'll eventually draft it later in the game becuase that extra 2XP from Barrack and Theology will be useful for 1 Promotion. Almost always, all of my cities will grow beyond Size 6.

I gotta disagree here. The protective trait allows your gunpowder units to start with CGI and Drill I. If you get 3 promos straight outta the barracks, your units can have CGII and Drill III or CG I and Drill IV which makes for some insane SOD defenders. I like taking these units to lead my tanks/arty/infantry/sam-infantry in all out assaults. They defend the stack from any of the AI's stack busters, then after the city is taken, they hold onto it with no fears of having it retaken. You can use these guys as conquered city garrisons, resource guards, and they can travel around with gunships/mounted units to rape your opponents land with no fear of losing units.

By the time I get to gunpowder units, the game has generally already been won or lost. Which is why every other trait is better. They all have a decisive early game bonus, while Protective requires you to turtle until Gunpowder.

^ ^ ^ In no way have any of my games begun to be decided when discovering Gunpowder. I was using gunpowder as an example of how you can use Protective in the later eras. Protective in the early game is amazing especially if combined with the likes of the Totem Pole. I had pre-Classical Era archers coming out with CGI,II, and III AND Drill I. No one was going to attack me. Then, when I hooked Machinery, I had Crossbows coming out CGI, and Drill I, II, III. These are early game mammoth units! I marched 6 cats, 5 Swordsmen, 2 horse arch, 4 dogmen, and 5 of those beefed crossbows all over enemy territory and they didn't have a chance. This is pre-macemen. So that's pretty early game goodness right there.

Since this is becoming a comparison of protective vs aggressive (which is a fair comparison) I will like to point out some things. Post-gunpowder protective is better than aggresive because two useful free promos are better than 1 useful free promo for gunpowder units. So if aggresive is better than protective it had better be so before gunpowder.

So for aggresive spears, axes, swords, pikes and macemen get C1 for free.

For protective archers, longbows and crossbows get CG1 and DR1 for free.

Immediately I see an advantage protective has over aggressive. xbows demolish EVERY single one of agressives melee units offensively as well as defensively.

Consider the protective + barracks + vassalage/theocracy xbow. CG1 DR2 with formation. Kills EVERY single medival pre-gunpowder unit defensively or offensively except knights. And in most cases does so with little damage to itself.

Here is a typical medieval protective city taking stack.

8-12 no of siege (catapults/trebuchet) promoted with CR mainly - With enough siege no melee city raiders are necessary at all.

4-8 no of xbows (CG1, DR2, formation) (versatile stack defenders as well as strong attackers when siege have finished collateralling the defenders.)

2-4 no of longbows (CG1, DR2, G1 Or CG1, DR1, G2 AND CG2, DR2 Or CG3, DR1) for defending stacks on hills as well has defenders for city taken.

2-4 no of pikes (C1, .. whatever) for defending stack against knights (unnecessary if enemy doesn't have knights yet).

+ of course some kind of medic.

Note this fearsome beast can be fielded with just fuedalsim, machinery and engineering (civil service not necessary)

Actually fuelalism is optional especially if the target cities do not have many hills on route. And construction will do for catapults if you want to rumble earlier than engineering.

What is more once this stack has taken a city it is nigh impossible to shift from it because of all the CG and DR promos.

I used to be an AGG fanatic and mock protective, now I rarely use AGG leaders.

Speaking objectively from experience, protective is far more powerful than aggressive. I've been playing a round-robin session using all of the leaders, and aggressive just doesn't compete. The protective promo's nullify the aggro's promo's, but then add in the defensive bonuses and an attacker can't bust a grape.

As a protective civ, no one can touch you early or late. If you're a builder it frees you to actually build and tech without worries. If you're a warmonger you still promote the same as most other civs but you get drill for free, and the ability to easily defend newly acquired cities.

With your defensive units you can simply seal off all of the borders, park archers on hills and forests, while your attack units sally forth from the fortresses to crush any would be pillagers.

When I play as protective civs I fear nothing. When I play as aggresive civs and there are protective neighbors, I sigh, and give up any dreams of conquest until siege weapons and gunpowder.

I'm entirely objective in my assessment. My preferred traits are Philosophical and Financial, I simply tried the others for variety. My experience has shown protective to be unstoppable, whereas aggressive is simply an adjunct that might give a very slight advantage over under-promoted units (10% is by no means a huge disparity in battles, especially in comparison to any 20 or 25% defensive bonus).

As an aggressive civ I can realistically attack only 1 civ at a time (multiple fronts reduces concentrated power), and still require a larger force than the opposition. As a protective civ, I can and have fought the entire world at the same time, and lost very few units while I watch them suicide on my defenses. I can imagine that this disparity grows wider the higher you go up on levels too, since the AI is simply able to out-produce the human, can maintain larger armies and probably maintains a nearly constant tech lead. The aggressive trait would be nearly useless on immortal (especially next to a protective civ).

I played as Shaka the other day. I thought to myself, ok, let's go out and conquer the world from the starting gate. Unfortunately, my neighbor was Gilgamesh with these interesting units called Vulture's. That made my melee units (and therefore the aggressive promo) useless. I also possessed the unfortunate circumstance of not possessing horse. I was also an a peninsula and became boxed in and confined to dusty patch of tundra, desert and plains. What a useless trait aggressive was in that game. I had no choice but to turtle up and say "yes sir, whatever you say sir...you want a calendar resource?...well here you go...you want a tech?...but of course, here it is...you want me to declare war?...certainly, just name the villain, sir...what religion do you want me to follow?...of course, your god will be my god." I became Shaka the btch. Shaka the cultured one. I wrote symphonies and plays for Gilgamesh's religion. I horded religions and built monasteries. I sailed the sea and colonized a desert isle off the coast of the pangea map. I built many wonders. I became sweet and civilized Shaka.

It wasn't until I had gained a significant tech lead that Shaka shook off his smile and became the arse he was destined to be. By then, however, my conquest came as a result of my tech advantage, the little c1 promo was just an interesting sidenote for my infantry/marines/paratroopers as they waded through the blood of knights and curassiers.

What's so special about a little 10% bonus? I can't see it.

Protective is a solid warmongering trait, the problem is that it doesn't allow you to do something unfair in the early game.

CRE, EXP and IMP allow a crucial speed advantage for the initial landgrab.
AGG can also translate into more land by strengthening your rush.
FIN and ORG allow more vigorous expansion without crashing your economy.
PHI allows gamebreaking gambits.
IND saves more crucial early hammers than anything else if you rely on wonders.

This leaves SPI, CHA and PRO as the only traits with no associated high-impact early strategy. The first two are universally useful and great support traits for pretty much everyone, PRO isn't.

China can dominate warfare for centuries with Cho-Ko-Nus, and Protective supports that just fine... but that really rests more on the sheer power of their UU than traits.

Protective is a solid warmongering trait, the problem is that it doesn't allow you to do something unfair in the early game.

CRE, EXP and IMP allow a crucial speed advantage for the initial landgrab.
AGG can also translate into more land by strengthening your rush.
FIN and ORG allow more vigorous expansion without crashing your economy.
PHI allows gamebreaking gambits.
IND saves more crucial early hammers than anything else if you rely on wonders.

This leaves SPI, CHA and PRO as the only traits with no associated high-impact early strategy. The first two are universally useful and great support traits for pretty much everyone, PRO isn't.

China can dominate warfare for centuries with Cho-Ko-Nus, and Protective supports that just fine... but that really rests more on the sheer power of their UU than traits.

Actually cha really helps with early expansion.
On Noble that means that with a warrior and before happiness-generating buildings, you can get your cities up to size seven.

Protective is a solid warmongering trait, the problem is that it doesn't allow you to do something unfair in the early game.

Actually, while it doesn't allow you to do something "unfair" in the sense of an early rush of a bolstered economy, it does give you a notable early advantage. As a non-protective Civ, I am simply not confident using archers to defend against axemen/swordsmen/horse archers. With a protective Civ, I am quite comfortable doing this. The early advantage? Not needing to chase resources, and not being in deep trouble if I don't have them. Oftentimes I find myself overstretching to get vital resources I know I can't do without... With protective, I feel I can, and I choose prime economic and production spots ahead of horses, or even iron/copper... Not to say I won't put some effort into getting my hands on these powerful resources, but I don't feel I *have* to.

A stack of protective archers is formidable, to say the least, and cheap to produce - and prior to macemen, takes *significant* resources to deal with. Non-protective archers? Not nearly so much. I'd argue this early advantage rivals that of aggressive, at least... And when longbowmen come into the picture, protective really hits is stride.

Though I'm a fan of Aggressive, I've come to value Protective. It's more versatile IMO, as you can have defenders follow the CG line, but have the bonus of Drill I; and attackers follow the Drill line and have CG I as a bonus. Thus, you're defenders are more resiliant, and your attackers are harder to dislodge.

True, those attackers won't have access to CR, but you can't have everything in life! As already mentioned, any stack should have the right mix of units, so a few CR melee, catapults etc still have their role, but fighting in the field I'd put my money on Drill, except against cavalry (damn them! must order some new spears). Those Drill attackers are also excellent at wiping up the mess left by your siege engines while taking minimal damage, and will shrug off enemy collateral.

Of course, you could play Tokugawa, and boom out your most maniacal fools-fools-I'll-destroy-them-all laugh when you reach gunpowder.

Upgraded Samurai are the best. Make them MG's and laugh at the world.

played sitting bull recently and found that protective is just great trait
CR promotions can be given to siege units. anyway i use all the stack of catapults to get XP for them, more GG points and to weaken defenders to their possible minimum. catapult with cr3 is just like axeman with cr3, except for it can retreat, and has not bonus vs meelee (this is not essential because defenders are usually archers). after catapults weakened defenders, drill-promoted crossbows/longbows entering city for easy kill. and then they can effectively defend it.

castles are good for their trade bonus and espionage. full-espionage economy can be established with castles+nationalism. you have to build only a cheap castles in your commerce cities, instead of building libraries and especially universities that can take forever. strategy of beelining for engineering and then for nationalism can be used for isabella, for conquistador unit tech is somewhere near nationalism.

also castles are useful against unexpected attacks from the sea. you can bring reinforcements from the other side of the continent, while enemy bombards your walls.

What's so special about a little 10% bonus? I can't see it.

It's not the 10% increase in strenght it's the Promotions available after combat 1, eg- Cover, Shock Formation etc... as you require less XP then a non-agg leader.

Yes Protective can also do the same but pre-gunpowder, they're limited to only using Crossbows for those Counter Promotions as most people tend to prefer to promote Archer/Longbows down the CG line. While the Agg Leader can mix up the Counter Promotions, like Formation Spears if you're up against War Elephants, or Shock Axeman if you up against Prats or etc....

btw i dunno how crazy or desperate your game was with Shaka vs Gligamesh but I would've attack once I had Construction for Catapults and probably would've checked the Diplomacy to see if any of the 3rd Party leaders were willing to attack Gligamesh if I bribred them.

So, I have never, *ever* played a protective leader, but it seems to me that a lot of the complaints about it being weak because its advantages are only for cities is offset somewhat by forts.

Given most maps I've played on, there are choke points. It seems like you could very carefully place some forts and some defending units and suddenly the protective trait helps keep invaders from coming in and pillaging.

I know that when I've been on the defensive, I'll keep the enemy-facing sides of my border cities undeveloped. I can make use of forests or hills if that's all I've got, or forts if I have the technology. A few good defenders means they can't get into my heartland.

But again, I'm not the most experienced player... am I missing something?

So, I have never, *ever* played a protective leader, but it seems to me that a lot of the complaints about it being weak because its advantages are only for cities is offset somewhat by forts.

Given most maps I've played on, there are choke points. It seems like you could very carefully place some forts and some defending units and suddenly the protective trait helps keep invaders from coming in and pillaging.

I know that when I've been on the defensive, I'll keep the enemy-facing sides of my border cities undeveloped. I can make use of forests or hills if that's all I've got, or forts if I have the technology. A few good defenders means they can't get into my heartland.

But again, I'm not the most experienced player... am I missing something?

Just so. Protective makes forts a very viable option for all sorts of tricks.

And when it comes to countering pillagers protective is no worse than any other trait, military or otherwise. This is because the best way to counter small stacks of combined arms pillagers is with massed withdrawing troops such as horse archers, knights, cavalry, gunships. Even charismatic is not better than protective for this this function as mounted troops only need 2 promos flanking 1 & 2 which is available to anyone with just a barracks and a stable.

In fact becuase of forts the smart protective player can use mounted in-territory counter attacks to kill pillagers MORE effectivley than non-protective civs by using forts guarded by protective units as safe havens for his mounted units to stage attacks from and withdraw to.

For example consider the aggressive player sending in the standard 2spear,2axe, 1 horse pillager stack into the protective domain chortling with the glee at prospect of easy plunder. But to get to the glittering towns of the heartland he must pass by a fort gaurded by 2 CG/DR promoted archers... He laughs, he sure isn't going to attack it becuase that would be suicide but he thinks the archers aren't going to attack him either becuase that would also be suicide so he just moves past it. Hit the big red button and uh oh.. 7 flanking promoted horsarchers move into the fort and then sally forth into the pillagers... Any surviving pillagers now find they can't mop up the remaining horsearchers because that would be suiciding into a protective defended fort and they are too weak to continue their pillaging mission and are obliged to retreat in disgrace...

Hey there..I'm terrible at lurking and not giving my two cents but I figured I'd try it for once!

I haven't played a Protective civ yet, and I still suck at the game in general and haven't progessed beyond Warlord.. I do better when I go for a culture or diplomacy win and turtle but lately I've been trying to go the more conventional "best defense is a good offense" route and it just doesn't really work for me. I get behind in tech and culture scores and it just bothers me.

So I'm going to have to try this trait out. In theory it sounds like an awesome trait for me to play. I've been changing it up a lot lately trying to get a feel for who I like.

I *can* say that I played a game recently with Hatty where I took out Isabella early because I REALLY didn't feel like dealing with her Buddhist fervor, but the other neighbor on my continent was Wang Kon. As someone already said, Wang is pro/fin and although I didn't think about it at the time, it makes much more sense to me why I was dragged into a 1000+ year war. I had to quit that game because by the time I was finished I was so behind that it wasn't worth the trouble. That could be my fault for not sending big enough stacks with the right promotions, but I'm sort of a novice at all the lingo and technical jargon. I felt like someone from the 17th century trying to understand how a TV works reading some of your posts. :lol:

I know the AI usually pillages and avoids attacking a city outright but the fort theory makes a lot of sense. I did manage to wear Wang down until he capitulated to me but it drained my treasury and all. So protective is, at least, a pain to conquer for a player whose strongest suit isn't conquering.

Looks like I finally have a reason to try Sitting Bull out! I was never enthralled by him, he seemed kind of a pushover and in most games I play he usually falls into last place around mid-game.

That's my rather long two cents! :goodjob:

-- Matt

It WOULD be nice if PRO could gain some advantage in later ages to make up for their obsolete walls and castles.

My suggestion:

Fast bunkers

It WOULD be nice if PRO could gain some advantage in later ages to make up for their obsolete walls and castles.

My suggestion:

Fast bunkers

i think domestic general + 100% would be nice as well

Looks like I finally have a reason to try Sitting Bull out! I was never enthralled by him, he seemed kind of a pushover and in most games I play he usually falls into last place around mid-game.

That's my rather long two cents! :goodjob:

-- Matt

Lol. The reason he falls behind is because he forgets that's he's protective (defensive) rather than aggressive (offensive). He does nothing but spam units until his economy crashes, and then decides to invade some technologically superior neighbor so that he can become their vassal.

I personally LOVE protective. It makes it SO much easier to deal with barbs before/if you dont get the Great Wall.

Lol. The reason he falls behind is because he forgets that's he's protective (defensive) rather than aggressive (offensive). He does nothing but spam units until his economy crashes, and then decides to invade some technologically superior neighbor so that he can become their vassal.

I thought the AI was designed to play on the leader's traits. I mean, I've never seen any sort of REAL evidence of this, just what I've experienced and what I assume about the game's design.

Why else would Monty be a warmonger (aggressive), Hatty be a huge culture freak (creative), and Mansa be all about the techs (financial, which boosts science)?

Not to say that Protective is any less valuable to a human player, but when the AI plays it, in *my* observations, they seem to do little more than build decent-sized empires of great mediocrity when surrounded by other civs. Wang Kon usually fares better because of his financial trait but Sitting Bull, when played by the AI, just doesn't seem to live up to potential.

And I've never seen Sitting Bull in an offensive war with anyone, though I haven't played that many games with him on the map. I could be wrong though. :)

I thought the AI was designed to play on the leader's traits. I mean, I've never seen any sort of REAL evidence of this, just what I've experienced and what I assume about the game's design.

... but Sitting Bull, when played by the AI, just doesn't seem to live up to potential.

And I've never seen Sitting Bull in an offensive war with anyone, though I haven't played that many games with him on the map. I could be wrong though. :)

Again, preface this with I'm not a good player.

I played a game on a fractal map as Boudica. The Continent I was on housed a number of civs... mine, the spanish, the Babylonians and Sitting Bull's native americans. There was another civ, but Sitting Bull wiped him out. I can't remember which one (this was months ago), but I believe the wiped out civ was an agressive one.

Sitting Bull and I were on opposite sides of the continent. By the time we met half way, we were both "empires". He had dominated his side, and I had dominated mine.

I, obviously, didn't get to see how he had become so powerful. My guess is the neighboring civ went on the attack, broke on the walls of native american cities and suffered in the counter-attack.

Regardless, I found him a formidable opponent at the time.

-- SJN

thanks to this thread i tried some prot leaders.

found a new love for korea: prot allows you to build less defence units to survive and fin allows you to tech well. strong combo if you play it peacefully!

thanks to this thread i tried some prot leaders.

found a new love for korea: prot allows you to build less defence units to survive and fin allows you to tech well. strong combo if you play it peacefully!

Japan is great for warmongers. Both aggressive and protective, comes with tons of promos. Each gunpowder unit starts with c1, cg1, and d1 which allows you to pick any promotion line and start with some pretty tough units.

Natives are great for the specialist player who wants to build up his cities while being able to protect them at the same time.

Chinese Cho Ko Nus are pretty ridiculous. In my opinion the best unique unit in the game. Usually I can skip the Axemen rush and just expand until there's no more room, with a focus on ideal production sites. Then I beeline to Machinery and conquer a huge swath of land. The best part is that you don't even need many catapults, just enough to bombard city defences, because all the collateral damage is taken care of.

No, that's living proof that Protective is a useless trait.

Archery units end up being pretty much worthless unless your city is attacked. Even with Prot, all they can do is stay in the city. So, the player has to build a lot of units that don't get the free boost the player could have gotten (unless you're playing as Tokugawa or... Who is Cha/Prot?)
In the end, your city isn't as well defended as someone who is Aggressive.

Aggressive covers:
-Marauder protection
-Medics
-Invasion forces

Protective covers:
-Archery units that will never leave the city.
-...
-...
-Oh wait, that's it.

So why not instead make a few cheap medic units and a couple of archery units? Sure, they won't start off with Drill and City Defense, but they'll still be pretty damn powerful because you've got medics with them.

It's a broken trait. Protective is in the same group as the espionage nuke, the Qin/Kublai switch, etc.


This post simply shows you are either deliberately excluding information or you are tremendously narrow-minded.

It doesn't even take me half a second to note that gunpowder units get an advantage over non-protective civs' gunpowder units.

Medics... Oh please. Surely it is not a real argument that medics are a strength attributed only to the aggressive trait? In most games I can make my first couple of warriors into medics just by killing some animals and barbarians. Since you only ever need a few medics, and since medics are not hard to get at all anyway, it's not worth mentioning in this context.

I could go on for a while about why your other two strengths of the aggressive trait are also strengths of protective (and pretty much greater strengths for protective too), but I won't right now.



cheap walls and castles are no worse than cheap barracks and drydocks. Barracks are pretty cheap anyway and you don't really need to build them in every city and drydocks hardly need be built at all except in one or two cities.

QFT



I have been a fiarly vocal supporter of the Protective trait. It really is not in need of any boost IMO.

I think much of the dislike of the PRO trait comes from the general belief that each combat promotion is better than a drill promotion. This comes from directly comparing the battle odds when giving units these promotions. The problem is you can't view battle odds when defending against units (except review the combat log afterwards which is tedious). I assure you that your infantry sitting on a hill benefits A LOT more from Drill III than combat III when facing some attackers.

The point of Drill promotions is that they considerably boost a defender's expected hit points after battle when the defender has even the most measly of defensive modifiers. If you are smart and tend to build your cities on hills, it would be near impossible for any attacker to ever take one of your cities once you reach gunpowder.

Forts are also made more useful for PRO leaders, as has been discussed a fair bit already.

Whenever units have access to the drill promotions I more often promote them along that line than the combat line. For memory, the last two or three drill promtions each put -20% collateral damage in them making them EXCELLENT invading-stack defenders (or any stack for that matter). Also, the Drill IV promotion gives a bonus against horses (I think this is right, or is it Drill III?) though I can't comment much on its uses, just as the C4's extra 10% heal in neutral land is pretty much never used either (seriously how much time do Combat IV units spend in NEUTRAL land - the healing doesn't work in friendly land).

Whoever it was who said earlier that human PRO players tend to promote along the CG line instead of Drill line, I strongly disagree. I will never promote a unit to CG until he is in a city and I intend to defend against a stack the next turn. As you might guess, this is a very rare situation except when I'm defending newly conquered cities, where it is much more useful than anything an agressive leader can offer with his mostly damaged stack of units.

It may be true that the protective trait does not give a huge advantage pre gunpowder, but that doesn't make it useless. If you only ever play games where all your deciding wars are fought before gunpowder then you either need to up the difficulty of change map settings because IMO it doesn't sound very interesting. Gunpowder units are the primary units used in war for about half of the game. Melee units are only used in the first half of the game. Aggressive might have a slight edge over protective before gunpowder, but post-gunpowder protective walks all over aggressive with two free promotions (both generally more useful to gunpowder units than combat I) intead of one.

If Protective ever got buffed I'd be rofl'ing.:lol:

Aggressive is almost as bad as Protective IMO, but barracks are built in almost every town especially when playing with AGG. Which gives it that slight edge over PRO.

But barracks are cheap.

I think it depends a lot on what settings you play if building barracks in nearly every city is a standard strategy. I find that most of my cities have to focus on commerce out of necessity. My dedicated military pumps and usually the capital are the only ones who get barracks, plus captured cities which have military instructors etc.

But barracks are cheap.

I think it depends a lot on what settings you play if building barracks in nearly every city is a standard strategy. I find that most of my cities have to focus on commerce out of necessity. My dedicated military pumps and usually the capital are the only ones who get barracks, plus captured cities which have military instructors etc.

If I'm aggressive I'll build barracks in any city, because they'll be very cheap, and produce combat I + 3exp units right off the bat. Even if they only build 2 or 3 units over 100 turns, that's 2 more experienced units to counter an enemy than I wouldve had otherwise, for not much cost.

But barracks are cheap.

I think it depends a lot on what settings you play if building barracks in nearly every city is a standard strategy. I find that most of my cities have to focus on commerce out of necessity. My dedicated military pumps and usually the capital are the only ones who get barracks, plus captured cities which have military instructors etc.

Quite so.

Really only a few cities need barracks. Main military city (HE & WP) and 1-3 supplementary military cities and thats even if you war heavily.

Even when I play spiritual and use the trait to switch to theo & vassalage for empire wide unit building there will be plenty of cities (pure commerce, GP farms) that won't be building military units.

Castles are good in every city. Any city with a courthouse should have a castle for esp bonus.

Extra trade route is good in every city esp coastal cities with harbours and capital cities and other high pop cities and commerce cities.

border cites benefit from the culture bonus

potentially any city may benefit from the defensive bonus.

Walls make your cities almost invincible pre-construction. And tougher to defeat even after construction.

Really only a few cities need barracks. Main military city (HE & WP) and 1-3 supplementary military cities and thats even if you war heavily.

Sometimes, when I am in a war, hand haven't got the pyramids/fascism yet I find myself strapped for happiness. Switching into Nationalism can be great for the +2happy the barracks provide, and when in that situation I often find myself constructing barracks in my larger cities I.E GP farm and Commerce centers, which pretty much means that almost all of my cities have them.

Quite so.

Really only a few cities need barracks. Main military city (HE & WP) and 1-3 supplementary military cities and thats even if you war heavily.

Even when I play spiritual and use the trait to switch to theo & vassalage for empire wide unit building there will be plenty of cities (pure commerce, GP farms) that won't be building military units.

Castles are good in every city. Any city with a courthouse should have a castle for esp bonus.

Extra trade route is good in every city esp coastal cities with harbours and capital cities and other high pop cities and commerce cities.

border cites benefit from the culture bonus

potentially any city may benefit from the defensive bonus.

Walls make your cities almost invincible pre-construction. And tougher to defeat even after construction.

You're not leveraging AGG to its maximum potential if you aren't spamming barracks in most cities.

IMO it kind of sucks in single player. The AI doesn't really do anything to you that needs protective, so you'll wind up using it mostly for offensive longbow counter promos and gunpowder...both of which combat winds up a superior promotion in many cases (combat II amphibious, stronger toe to toe vs drill, etc). Perhaps more annoyingly the cheap buildings for protective obsolete way, way before they should as defensive structures, and I complain about that more than I should I suppose.

Archer rushes in MP though? Especially protective archer rushes so that the archers have access to counter promotions? Nasty, You can hit with 8 before 2000 bc, often somewhat considerably before that. At this point in time, they MIGHT have hooked up copper. If they didn't go archery, they'll be defenseless. If they did, even then 8 archers will overrun 2 archers defending.

I'm not great at figuring out the exact math, so I have a question. For offensive purposes, should I be giving my Cho Ko Nus Combat promotions or Drill promotions? Right now I tend to have 50% of them follow the Drill line and the other 50% do Combat, and I use the Combat guys to hit the city first, who are then followed by the Drill guys (they also double as stack defenders). Any way I can improve on this?

I'm not great at figuring out the exact math, so I have a question. For offensive purposes, should I be giving my Cho Ko Nus Combat promotions or Drill promotions? Right now I tend to have 50% of them follow the Drill line and the other 50% do Combat, and I use the Combat guys to hit the city first, who are then followed by the Drill guys (they also double as stack defenders). Any way I can improve on this?

I think it's best to maximize any line of promotions, whether it's drill, cg, or simple combat. The reason being that the truly great strengths of each line maximize at the end. As Piece of Mind stated earlier, besides the extra strikes both d3 and d4 reduce the amount of collateral damage taken, and d4 also adds a 10% boost against mounted.

Just as some ppl advocate city specializiation, in similar fashion it may be best to specialize your units. I try to utilize mixed promotions in all of my stacks. I'll have some units that are cr3, some that are c4 commandos, some that are 3rd degree guerilla's or rangers, and of course cg3 units that will defend cities. I also try to give some units the +25% counter promotions. I anticipate any all situations.

I should reitterate for emphasis, that instead of building an entire army based upon a single promotion line, it is far more effective to use a mix of different specialized units. You will need guerrilla's, rangers, commandos, city raiders, city defenders, anti-mounted, anti-archer, anti-melee etc... So anticipate it ahead of time and be prepared.

Yeah that's what I do, but I'm wondering if I should have more Drill specialists than Combat specialists (especially considering I get a Drill to start with anyway). Like I said I tend to make the Combat guys hit first, to hurt the top defenders of the city stack, then my Drill guys can do the major collateral damage.

Since you're already getting drill for free, I'd max out that line. Just make sure that you make some anti-mounted units too to stack with the drill troops.

IMO it kind of sucks in single player. The AI doesn't really do anything to you that needs protective, so you'll wind up using it mostly for offensive longbow counter promos and gunpowder...

Play Always war games :lol:
Pro saves the player's ass when 6 axeman rush to my city which only has two archers.
And I stop playing China in Always War games, for a good reason.

Thanks, I'll start using more Drillers.

And thanks for this thread, dudes. It made me feel better about playing my favourite civ China "despite" the Protective trait which I used to think was crappy. I still don't think it's GREAT, but now I'm at least convinced that it's slightly better than Aggressive, which I already liked.

Protective is a great trait for bunkered techers, cultural, or diplo victories. Usually a larger land mass is required for a score/time win, but you can achieve that with protective by warring. It plays off better for peaceful civs, but is useful for warmongers too.

Japan is a great war mongering civ. Perfect if you plan on steamrolling everyone before techers start taking off.