Suggestion to improve 'Imperialistic' trait

spiffamoo

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 28, 2005
Messages
35
Hey all, I am by no means a Civ expert, but after playing with the different civilizations I find the imperialistic trait to be weak compared to the others.

Faster settlers are good but I find I can only land grab so much before my economy starts going into a downward spiral. Faster generals don't seem to have that much of an impact on my game, considering that now academies can't be built until education. :sad:

I really think imperialistic could do with an extra something, like, perhaps, newly built cities start out with 2 pop instead of 1. Of course, this might make imperialistic civs overly powerful, I'm not really good enough to know. Another would be to give them double production of national wonders like Hermitage/ Heroic Epic/National Epic. I think these changes fit in well with the idea of an 'Imperialistic' civilization, one that tries to expand and build an empire. :king:

What do you guys think? Or am I just not using this trait correctly?
 
spiffamoo said:
Hey all, I am by no means a Civ expert, but after playing with the different civilizations I find the imperialistic trait to be weak compared to the others.

Faster settlers are good but I find I can only land grab so much before my economy starts going into a downward spiral. Faster generals don't seem to have that much of an impact on my game, considering that now academies can't be built until education. :sad:


What do you guys think? Or am I just not using this trait correctly?

Generals can be used right away to give +2 bonus to experience and +3 beakers by making them Military Advisors. No tech is needed for this option, only to make an Academy (+50% production).

I believe that the new perks to Expansive have emasculated the Imperialistic trait to some degree since an Expansive civ can actually pop out a settler faster by using worker chops, but I still think Imperilistic is a decent trait. Not great, just good. When I play Imperialistic I often use a setter first build to leverage the trait right away.
 
Faster generals don't seem to have that much of an impact on my game, considering that now academies can't be built until education.

Yeah, I found myself shooting for education earlier then I would with a warring civ in my current game with Vicky. Before then you use them as advisors and make one unit a warlord to start working on a lvl 6 unit.

But to the theme of the op...yeah. Over and over I think Imperialistic sounds really fun and cool, but the delivery never comes through. Im taking out my second civ and Im only had four GGs. For a trait that is supposed to promote them, they sure seem to come in slow. And it takes an awfully long time to get enough GGs that you have a super-city cranking out extremely powerful units...and if youve done enough fighting to get a lot of GGs the game is probably over anyways. I still find that I war better with charismatic, and I think aggresive and organized are more handy war traits as well...you dont have to wait several hundred turns to really see an advantage. And then there is of course other factors. You lose the city you have a bunch of GG in, well so much for taking Imperialistic trait. Or if youre building something other then military...again the trait is wasted, even though you put up many many turns and lots of hammers to get these GGs.

I would do some combination of the following: increase the % of getting GGs higher to maybe 150%, change the requirement of needing education (my capital with bureaucracy can make troops faster then a city with he and an acadamy, so the buff to acadamies doesnt make them overpowered, and making cities very hammer strong isnt that difficult), maybe make a military instructor give some kind of bonus like happiness through increased moral, and give the trait some kind of peaceful building bonus (maybe like a grocer or bank, and sell it thematically as businesses coming in to exploit captured resources).
 
Generals can be used right away to give +2 bonus to experience and +3 beakers by making them Military Advisors.

Assuming you're running Representation, which of course you wont be till about mid-game unless you got the pyramids.
 
Mr. Civtastic said:
Assuming you're running Representation, which of course you wont be till about mid-game unless you got the pyramids.


You know what? I believe you are totally and absolutety correct and I never realized it.

I run Representation so much that I forgot when I checked that the beakers came from that civic. Now, allow me to just go turn red in the corner and die of embarassment. :(

But, be that as it may, you can merge them without needing any techs or attach them as Warlords, so I think they still have great value when used assertively.
 
Over and over I think Imperialistic sounds really fun and cool, but the delivery never comes through. Im taking out my second civ and Im only had four GGs. For a trait that is supposed to promote them, they sure seem to come in slow. And it takes an awfully long time to get enough GGs that you have a super-city cranking out extremely powerful units...and if youve done enough fighting to get a lot of GGs the game is probably over anyways. I still find that I war better with charismatic, and I think aggresive and organized are more handy war traits as well...you dont have to wait several hundred turns to really see an advantage. And then there is of course other factors.

I think Mr. Civtastic summed up my thoughts pretty well. I am a warmonger myself, usually trying for a conquest or domination victory, with some buildup period somewhere in between, but at most I see, what, 2-3 more GGs? Thats nice, but Aggressive and Charismatic have more immediate and potent benefits. Consider that for Charismatic you can easily get a level 4 or 5 unit, without any military advisors. And Aggressive gives you Combat I, promotions you are likely to get with the extra xp from the military advisor anyway.
 
Suggestions huh? well the most obvious improvement to the trait would be to give it double production on certains buildings, like they did to the Creative and Organised Traits with the new patch. The only available military buildings that have not been taken by other traits I can remember are Airports, Jails and Stables.

Although Giving Double production to Stables would make Genghis Khan Agg/Imp quite overpowered with his UB Ger (Stables)

I forgotten what it's called when you recently caputre a city that isn't yours and and it goes into civil disorder or a riot. To Improve the Imp Trait We could Half the time it takes for a City to Assimilate into your civilization?

How about -25% War Weariness? Too Overpowered? Might make Mt. Rushmore naitonal wonder obsolete with the Imp Trait

I hate having +3 Unhappiness We Want to Join and Return to our Mother country Modifier Especially if I can't eliminate the Civ Becuase they Planted a City on the other Side of the Continent. Maybe with the Imp Trait they Could Remove or decrease this Modifier.

I wouldn't want the Imp trait to have All these improvements, Any of these will be fine as long as it balances the Game, maybe add one or two of these improvements.
 
Well, I just slapped together a mod that gave Imperialistic +200% GG emergence and gave it a go.

Here it is if anyone else wants to experiment with it.
 

Attachments

Watiggi said:
Well, I just slapped together a mod that gave Imperialistic +200% GG emergence and gave it a go.

Here it is if anyone else wants to experiment with it.

200% GG emergence!!! ... Would make the Great Wall Less Appealing to Imp Civs.
 
Someone said it could be increased to 150%. I thought I would take it further on purpose, so that people could get a feel for it being really high and to see if it were the right direction to go in. I don't know if it would make it less appealing. I have never wanted to build the GW for the defensive Great General bonus because it only helps on defensive wars. Most of my combat is in enemy territory. Those who would like it, 300% wouldn't be bad anyway :)
 
I'm still not understanding why most people seem to think 'imperialistic' should be a pure military trait.
 
I'm still not understanding why most people seem to think 'imperialistic' should be a pure military trait.

I agree. The more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of 1/2 priced markets or grocers. Grocers might be a bit much with the health bonus, but Julius Caesar with 1/2 markets could be...strong. Anyways, the reason I like it is it doesnt involve warring, and it fits thematically with taking over and exploiting other civ's economies. Dont believe me?

"Imperialism is a policy of extending control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires. This is either through direct territorial; conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy."

Off of Wikipedia, I added the emphasis to "economy".

200% GG emergence!!! ... Would make the Great Wall Less Appealing to Imp Civs.

Yes and no. I find most of my warring goes outside of my cultural borders.



I recently finished my Monarch game with Victoria. If my army had been charismatic, it would have been sickenly strong. Aggresive also would have made my macemen+treb wars dominant. Instead I was still questioning the worth of GGs compared to all the fighting and hammers, while often running into fights against better prepared civs (agg, char, protective). Its going to take you a good good while before your GG advantage is equal to theirs. Considering my trait is supposed to be getting extra GGs, I really felt underwhelmed.

Three things I took from the game.
1. Im going to always push for early wars now if I play Imperialistic. Simply because if the earlier I get the GG the more units I can have built under military advisors. I waited a good while to fight because I didnt have iron and it definately slowed my entire game down.

2. Whipping your cities with acadamies can be hurtful. One of my acadamies was on a coastal city that was under constant attack because it was maybe 10 squares across from Isabella and we didnt share religions. A couple times I had to whip to produce troops for defense. Even with the acadamy, it slowed down my troop production behind other cities without an acadamy.

3. While doing advisors with my GGs is something I do eventually, pre-patch I always built acadamies first. Now I shot for education. The effect was fairly big before I had education. I much rather have more troops then troops with 10% more strength (assuming combat I and II from barracks and one advisor).

Im assuming they added the education requirement because they were afraid the buff to acadmies might be too strong. I really hope they remove or push the education requirement back...before I got education I had three GGs, two advisors and one warlord. Big deal. How strong do you think my army would have been by the time I got to education if I was charismatic?
 
Mr. Civtastic said:
I agree. The more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of 1/2 priced markets or grocers. Grocers might be a bit much with the health bonus, but Julius Caesar with 1/2 markets could be...strong. Anyways, the reason I like it is it doesnt involve warring, and it fits thematically with taking over and exploiting other civ's economies. Dont believe me?
Nope. I don't :) It would be cool if cheap Grocers or Markets actually did exert control over other nations economies (which is what the definition is about), but it doesn't.

Bast said:
I'm still not understanding why most people seem to think 'imperialistic' should be a pure military trait.
True. In the context of the game though, there are really no other ways for a leader to 'exert control over another nation'. Imperialistic is essentially about authority and power to influence others.

Maybe it could be made so that it is easier for other civs to become a vassal or something, give into demands or otherwise gain complience. Maybe that's the reason for the cheap settlers - able to capture the resources quickly and easily and put it into a dominant position.

Maybe it could culturally convert other civs much easier or something.
 
First of all - imperialistic is one of my best traits. Lately I play almost only as Victoria, cause financial is the best trait in game and can't be replaced by any other (unless game is played on some very strange settings like small pangea map with many players). From all the available traits combinations I think fin+imp is the best one and I don't think that imperial is too weak. Cheaper settlers are more important for me than those extra GG points because as someone wrote - you get only few GG during game.
 
My current game with Vicky I was quite happy to have the Imp trait.

An early Axe rush removed Saladin from my continent, and I was left as sole Civ on a continent that could support about 12 cities (Small World). Being able to build those Settlers with only 1/2 as many hammers as normal was pretty sweet.

On the other hand, the military side of the Imp trait won't come into play at all. The early war was so short that no GG was created. And now it looks like a Space Race win is the most likely outcome. I may go the whole game without a GG.

BTW, to maximize the Settler benefit of the Imp trait, be sure to chop/pop all the Settlers you build. And, of course, don't build them in the food rich cities like you might if you're not Imp.
 
I changed mine to include faster markets and each city produces +10%:gold: so it becomes a military trait in way that you can afford a large empire.
 
I am trying to screw around with the GG scaling in order to see if I can get more interesting GG threshold values.

I want to try and get it so that it is 60/62/64/66/68/70, etc. With it like this, the Imperialisitic leader will get Great Generals 100% more often - which is what "+100% Great General Emergence" is actually supposed to mean. Right now, "+100% Great General Emergence" actually translates to "+30% Great General Emergence".

Unfortunately I need to get into the SDK and that is beyond my experience.
 
Idaknow, id rather see Imperialistic give some bonus for having a Vassall or something.

Or no "away-cost" for troops outside your borders, which would make even more sense.
 
Nay said:
Idaknow, id rather see Imperialistic give some bonus for having a Vassall or something.

Or no "away-cost" for troops outside your borders, which would make even more sense.
Nice suggestions. Like the second particularly. Lower military costs would be interesting, especially if they linked it to troops outside borders.


The most obvious suggestion is cheaper buidlings. But there aren't that many left, and none seem to really fit. Some sort of no/lessened "away cost" would be interesting, or perhaps simply more free unit support...
 
I believe that the new perks to Expansive have emasculated the Imperialistic trait to some degree since an Expansive civ can actually pop out a settler faster by using worker chops

Couldn't you say by this logic that a financial leader could build theatres faster than a creative leader because they have more gold for research and could reach drama in less time?

Anyways I just got Warlords and haven't tried an Imperialistic leader yet but I think the two bonuses are a nice balance between militaristic and economic/productive extensions of influence.
 
Back
Top Bottom