This is the Game Options discussion for Civ Traits.

What kind of challenge do we want to face as one in DG4? Let us discuss this for some time before we actually choose our civ.

Commercial
Expansionist
Industrious
Militaristic
Religious
Scientific
Totally Random

This discussion will run for 5 days, after which I will post a poll.

I want expansionist and religious. Getting an early lead and having no Anarchy between Governments sounds good.

I concur with Cyc. We can use the advantage of the expansionist trait. That particular trait gives us a free scout and the ability to build scouts also.

Yes, I like those too. ALthough scientific is also a good choice IMHO.

Scientific and Religious - think of all the cheap culture improvements!

-- Ravensfire

Totally Random.

If we keep everything totally random, we know as little as possible and the discussions are going to be taking this into account. Why Benefit ourselves with pre-selected traits ? We are going to win no matter what. Let's keep it more fun to play.

Random sounds fun, though if we are not going for random I would like Industrious and Scientific.

We did total random and we did Ind. Sci (Persia). How about the Babs? Play as the guys who always ended up against us in all the DGs. Or what about the Americans? Expansionist/Industiral isnt bad. Or Joan. People may hate her and the color Pink, but Com/Ind is a great trait.

BTW- Who is Exp/Rel? It slips my mind at the moment

The Iroqouis are Expansionist and Religious. :)

I would tend to agree with SaaM on Commercial/ Industrious. I like the idea of having all improvements on full shields, only to have that problem offset by faster workers and more rush cash.

It will make the early game interesting though. But I love a challenge, and since we will most likely be playing on Monarch, this is the best challenge we could ask for. :)

Militaristic and Religious. That is just how I feel these days.

Lets be French! We could have some fun storylines with that, too.

Originally posted by Stuck_As_a_Mac
Lets be French! We could have some fun storylines with that, too.

And for the absolute standard for storylines, I give you ....
RBD5. the French Musketeers! (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14518)

Read, and discover that yes, it is possible, almost, to overuse the work "glorious"!

-- Ravensfire

I'm reading it now, but what do people think of France? Seems great for a builder game, and if you need to go into war mode, its great there too. More shields and gold then your neighbors, so you're fine with wonders and tech. Vote France! Viva La Republique!

I go with TerminalMan, and put a name on them: The Japanese.
No Anarchy, more elites (more possibilites for leaders) plus cheap temples and baracks early on. The Samurai is much handier than the Muskateer if you ask me, they come in a pretty good time for the war effort and are really made for big crusades where we wash the enemy with them- the higher defence can make a big difference when fortified in a city just conquered- they actually have the defence of a Musketeer.

Meanwhile the French have their own significant advantages- if we place cities right we can really have them bloom with bonuses both to trade and production, and workers preform really well. I just think I'll miss the peaceful change in governments and all the elites the Japanese get.

I guess it has to do with the way we want to win this game- the Japanese are better for conquest, French are more on the peaceful side trait-wise. And RPG-wise I think we can do equally fun things with either.

Religious, Industrious, or Commercial all sound good... I'm usually a warmonger in my games, so trying to build a dove empire with France might be fun.

As a side note: if we use France, how about changing the civ color and/or leader name?

True... or, we could put the following theme on our game:
"Queer Eye for the Straight Civ"
We could do a 20k culture game for a city which is "Fabulous!!"
-SaaM, who just pushed back the gay rights movement by at least 20 years with that one phrase. Ehh... Blame the Fab5

Well, SaaM......I did promise a "makeover" of sorts for DG4. :lol:

Just so everyone knows, the upcoming poll for this topic will be multi-choice so you will be able vote for as many(or as few) options as you wish. Let's try not to get too caught up in the actual Civ just yet. The selection of suitable civs will be narrowed down by the Traits poll.

How about agricultural and seafaring? :rolleyes:

Oh, that's right, those aren't available in the game we'll be playing... :lol:

So I lean towards scientific and religious, and go for diplo which will keep us on our toes to have good relations most of the time.

Expansionist and Religious sounds good. I wouldn't vote random since I wouldn't want a civ we've already played.

If not, I'd vote commercial/expansionist. I'd love to go to something opposite to what has been played so far.

Industrious and Religious. No Anarchy and fast production.

Let's be crazy: INDIA!!

i'd like us to play an elegant, ancient, civ. greece, persia, egypt, babylon, ottomans.

After some more consideration I suggest we either go for Commercial and Militaristic or Commercial and Industrious.

Commercial is more important in the DG than it is in single player, because of the lesser corruption- after all we're hoping to have a big landmass and have many provinces to let more and more citizen take an active role. We would also like to keep corruption low because it's much more fun to play a province of actual cities rather than "fishing villages".

Industrious would also help out in making cities that would normally become fishing villages a bit more productive, and our workers will work faster which is quite powerful in the early ages, and in fact all the way 'till the railroads are built.

Militaristic would let us have a stronger army- the cheap barracks would come in hand in the very early game, and harbors are always a good addition for any coast town. We might want to build Sun Tzu's Art of War (really handy for crusades- every city we conquer automaticlly has barracks and we can heal up entire armies in there), when we do the cheap barracks will be rendered useless- however I believe that since the art of war is in the middle ages the cheap barracks will have already played their role by then.
What's really good about militaristic is the faster promotion rate- more elites means stronger army and more chances for a GL.

As I said before, it's a matter of how we want to play the game, warmongers might push towards the militaristic while peacemongers would rather see us industrious or scientific.

Lets be the Japanese.

Let's be the Babylonians. Perfect for a culture/diplomatic victory.

I like the Babs idea, sounds good trying a cultural victory.

Random. Preselected civs are for the weak :mischief:

We could just create our own civ from scratch with our own UU. :)

See my above post, replacing "Preselected civs are" with "Modding is" :D

I would like to say Random – but what if we get the Romans again, would we restart to get another? My first 5 Civ games were all random, and each time I got the Japanese!

If we’re picking traits – I like to play industrious – I do like those fast workers, it certainly reduces the tedium of cutting down jungle! I also like Militaristic – more leaders/cheap barracks, Scientific - the free tech comes in useful or Religious – less anarchy! I tend to be unlucky when it comes to random events and get few leaders (despite trying carefully) and long anarchy.

Of course if we go for PTW we get a greater choice of Civs. I did consider suggesting our own Civ, and UU having played the GOTM with the Mayans, but if we’re likely to end up with Vanilla to maximise participation, having to download mods would put off even more people.

Originally posted by Rik Meleet
Totally Random.

If we keep everything totally random, we know as little as possible and the discussions are going to be taking this into account. Why Benefit ourselves with pre-selected traits ? We are going to win no matter what. Let's keep it more fun to play.

I agree. Particularly if we continue to play at monarch level, we should give ourselves some further handicaps.

Bah! Not knowing which tribe you are going to be is not a handicap or a strategy for challenge. With as many different points of view we have here, some people are going to be happy with anything we get. So where's the disadvantage? Suprise, you say? Gee, that should last all of 5 minutes. After that, we'll have to figure out the name of our nation and start work on city names. Oh, fun and challenging. Ek is wrong here, I believe. Randon is for the weak and indecisive. Random is for people who are bored with Civ3.

Originally posted by Eklektikos
See my above post, replacing "Preselected civs are" with "Modding is" :D :rotfl:
Well said Señor Ek.

I usually choose "random civ" for my civ games so I don't have any problem with randomly selecting one for DGIV. Sorry Cyc ;)

However, if we are going to pre-select our civilization, and we are going to persist in playing this game with vanilla civ (:vomit: ), then I'd recommend either England or America since their UUs would do very little to influence the game in our favor.

Dangit Cyc! You tricked me into participating again. :wallbash:

Originally posted by Cyc
Bah! Not knowing which tribe you are going to be is not a handicap or a strategy for challenge. With as many different points of view we have here, some people are going to be happy with anything we get. So where's the disadvantage? The starting location is far more improtant than a start than the choice of civ.

Originally posted by Cyc Randon is for the weak and indecisive. Random is for people who are bored with Civ3. Not at all, Cyc, random is for those who, rightly so, are comfortable enough in the game to know that it doesn't matter who you are and what you're good at, but make decisions based on the current situation.

Cyc: it seems our similar ways of thinking of DG3 has not extended itself to DG4 :)

Sorry, RM, I don't understand yer first answer. I think starting location is far more important than choice of civ, if that's what you meant, but how does that fit with what I said? :rolleyes:

Random is fine for solo games at home, I agree. But this is the Demogame. We share this game with many people around the world (you and I are two good examples). These Demogames take 5 months to play. That's a long time. Why do you think we debate different winning strategies? Why not always go with Conquest? or Space Ship? or even (god-forbid) Diplomacy? Because it would be boring that's why. You have only played one Demogame. I have played 3. I don't want to play as the Persians again, nor the Germans, nor the Romans. We can choose, let us do so. Besides, to me it's kind of silly to elect a President of the ________ . Let's here it for the people of _________ ! Boring. Besides we have better things to do the first two weeks of the game than trying to decide what to call our nation. I just don't see your point.

And it's good that we don't always agree on things, RM. It gives us something to debate. ;)

Well, moving the topic back to attributes, not civilization choices...

Commercial

Charon is right. Commercial would be our best bet. In a game like this, where every decision is made to the most-detailed debate, corruption will be at a all-time low. This will help increase each cities’ wealth for the entire nation. Being rich is great. You can pay for anything and get more of what you want, where you want.

Expansionist

Expansionist, in my opinion, is the worst attribute anyone would choose. You receive a scout in the beginning and maybe get two or three free gifts from the barbarians around. This won't effect the late game one bit.

Industrious

Along with commercial, industrious would extremely help building our nation, from the connection of roads and the production of city improvements. But unlike commercial, it won't make us rich, and however, more poor. Building and increasingly amount of units and improvements does come with a price, and without the side-attribute of Commercial, I would disagree with this ever choosing industrious.

Militaristic

The cheaper barracks and walls make militaristic an excellent choice. The fact that elites and leaders have larger chance of forming alone is a wonderful. Leaders are greater than more production in a city, more money in a nation, or higher culture ratings. I, personally, don't like military campaigns and wouldn't choose this, though.

Religious

Temples are extremely helpful in the early states of the game and at their cheaper price you can produce them in every city. The no anarchy would help our plans to run smoother and more productive. If our culture is running smoothly, everything else will.

Scientific

Scientific is a bit worthless when it comes to city improvement. Three free techs in the entire game isn't that impressive. The science improvements, which take too much time to build, usually cost too much upkeep and would decrease our income.

So, my first choice is defiantly commercial. My second would be religious or industrial. Industrial and commercial would create a very powerful nation with those two together. Cities would spring up vastly. Commercial and religious would also create beautiful cities and a grand empire. Both of these choices fit my liking.

with all the talk over france because of thier traits, may i sugest the carthigans (spelling?) they have the same traits, with one difference, there UU is actually helpful,the extra attack for that musketeer, isn't going to do much, while the numadian mercenary (i hate spelling) is versital, and has extra stats where they could actually be helpful, my personal vote is for the ottomons (gotta love the sipahi) of course this is all acting like we are playing on PTW, which if we are playing vanilla, i think greece would work well with most players stratagies, as bieng scientific, they are highly versitile

Poll has been posted. Please vote here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71563).

I like Religous and expasionist

I am kind of more sliding to the traits of the French.