My Argument for FIN as Top Tier Trait

In addition to having roughly the best traits and a good UB, Hannibal also has among the best UU.

Mansa Musa looks pretty good at first, but Spiritual is sometimes not useful.. and that gold bonus is not so massive if you are aiming for 100% research.

Pacal is solid but not necessarily better than Darius. I kind of count Darius having 3 traits because of the UB giving health bonus equal to Expansive trait.. but it does come later and the base UB is not attractive, and Exp of course has other bonuses. Pacal's UB -- already competes with HR happiness to some extent.

You are really missing some of the great moments in this game if you think SPI is not always useful.
Caste while preparing whips, and then food gathering (in specialist cities) while using slavery in others (or getting some buildings into GP farms) is awesome.
If you can also use OR and Paci, it's almost another game within your game
Spi is just so much fun, you (almost) get Cristo Redentor for free..!

I've had an itch to play a lot of Fin games the last couple of weeks. Been mainly playing a lot of Pacal and Mansa Musa games. It is very nice with cottages everywhere for sure. I like the following Fin leaders the most:

Hannibal - Fin + Cha means working up to two extra cottages per city from the start of the game, and on coastal maps cothons are amazing.

Pacal - Gets a similar bonus to Hannibal but needs to build ball courts first. However combined with EXP means working more tiles as cities grow due to being able to support a higher population.

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Mansa is the only one who can work cottages right away so I think I like him best (and his UU lets you choke/slow on high levels)? Both Hannibal and Pacal might need 4 techs to even start cottages. On non coastal games I prefer Pacal next because he'll reach max population quite a bit faster.

The ball court, although it is +3Happiness doesn't excite me. You wont reach/trade construction in normal games anytime soon. So as in most games you'll just use luxuries from expansion and trading for resources. Now in isolation and no happiness it's great .

And Imo CHA is not nearly as wonderful as it seems. You won't actually be working 2 extra cottages from the start of the game. Not at all. Gotta take into account the time it takes to get monuments in place, not to mention how long it then takes to grow to whatever your happy cap is. And then of course factor into what tiles you can actually work (still need to wait for border pops in lots of cases). Actually, some EXP leaders who pick up some early luxuries through quicker expansion might be working many more tiles (although w/out the FIN bonus). So imo, Pascal will normally work more cottages because he can grow/expand faster.

As far as CHA leaders go, I actually think Washington is the strongest. Exp gets granaries in place quickest and then you can whip whip whip and then whip some more because CHA gives you a higher ceiling so to speak. Anyways, lot's of potential to mass lots of early units (early rush or simply massing settlers/workers and or infrastructure).

I prefer Willem and Mansa as my two favorite FIN leaders. Also, although they're not FIN you can have some nice early cottage potential with leaders like Mehemd, Hatty, Giggles, and Louie. All can start making cottages asap. With an Agriculture as food Mehemed can really start off fast.....just go Pottery and build a granary while making some cottages. Not uncommon to reach 5 population at 3000BC as you're throwing down cottages and building your 1st settler.

And about the previous post............SPI is amazing on Deity (AI demands). Below that I'm only soso on it.

Stonehenge is an easy chop for Cha leaders.

What??^^

Its a spammer, reported.

Mehmed is a beast, even more so on archi maps with GLH.

50% off lighthouse, granary, harbor, courthouse and later on factories, OH MY YES!!!

Id rather have all of that than have FIN.

Map-specific strats aren't really good to use in a debate about traits.

That being said, FIN is great on water heavy maps specifically because coastal tiles are food neutral, give the same has half a fully developed riverside FIN cottage, and can represent nearly 50% of workable tiles on water heavy maps. I'm thinking Carthage for a similar scenario that you describe. Lighthouse is fairly cheap to begin with, generally a "must build" on water maps, and the cheapest part of building TGL so having it discounted is nice but not really a gargantuan gain. But the extra trade route from Cothon combined with TGL and commerce from coastal tiles means that you probably don't have to lay a single cottage down all game. In fact, in such a scenario, building TGL and Colossus as the only 2 wonders could easily carry you through to victory especially because the AI has a hard enough time with water maps.

Not sure about Deity, but this is true on Imm

Dont know why not because you can play on whatever map you like.

Yes but when debating traits, focusing on a single map type or situation doesn't really answer to the strengths/weaknesses of a trait on the whole. I could easily say that FIN is nearly useless on a highlands map or that IMP is completely useless in a OCC whereas PHI is extremely important. AGG is nearly useless with an isolated start.

It may be a good exercise in discussing strategy to focus on single map types / situations, but when discussing a trait in general, it just seems like bad form to me.

It just came to my mind that AGG is the only trait that can become 100% useless given a specific setup: always peace, no barbs (IMP in an OCC at least retains the GG bonus).

In that case even PRO would be better because of the bonus to castles.


Anyway, I don't think there is much merit in discussing which trait reigns supreme over the others. The effects of the traits have been laid out. Now it is up to the individual player to leverage them. If a certain trait just does not jive with what you do it does not matter whether the elder supreme council of deity slayers voted it best trait of all time or not.

BigBizkit said:

If a certain trait just does not jive with what you do it does not matter whether the elder supreme council of deity slayers voted it best trait of all time or not.

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Though true to a degree, there is no doubt that PRO is a weak trait since it helps the human player in so few situations compared to most of the other traits. "What you do" in a game should depend on the land that you start with and is generally trait-agnostic. However, how much a trait helps you in a variety of situations is worth discussing. After all, the map and rival list are really the only things that change from game to game so discussing how fixed things (such as traits) aid you in a majority of situations is good practice IMO and helps players understand the traits better.

EXP and ORG dont become weaker on pangea maps, the combination just gets a lot stronger with coastal cities for half cost lighthouses and harbors.

ORG is a mid-tier trait on all maps IMO as previously discussed. Cheap lighthouses are nice, but they're really not all that expensive to begin with and outside of water maps they are usually only built in 2 or 3 cities max. Cheap factories are great but they never get built in half of my games! Cheap courthouses were great until I found building wealth/fail gold/resource trades to be better sources of maintenance abatement.

EXP is a great trait in general not because of the harbor, but because of everything else it offers! I don't build harbors in most of my games unless I'm working off of a mostly trade based economy / GLH. Even then, I'd rather a full price Cothon than a half priced harbor. The other bonuses make EXP a top tier trait IMO.

I prefer Suleiman when it comes to the Ottomans. PHI is one of the strongest and most versatile traits IMO and IMP is nice for early expansion (although mid-tier trait as well)

If you were to change PRO and/or some other trait in order to make it more viable yet keeping it balanced (and ofc keeping the basic theme/idea behind it) what would you do?

In the theme of keeping it near useless. Reduced costs of walls and castles.
To make it more desirable but sill in the same theme, make the two free promotions combat 1 and combat 2.

rah said:

In the theme of keeping it near useless. Reduced costs of walls and castles.
To make it more desirable but sill in the same theme, make the two free promotions combat 1 and combat 2.

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No, Drill 1 and Guerilla 1.

Personal preference but I could be convinced either way. Almost anything instead of city protection. I always figure if I'm using that promo, I've screwed up already.

There are times where city garrison is helpful (small enemy stack flanked through another bordering civ). Having a CG1/2 promoted unit can be the difference between keeping the city or having to recapture it. An incredibly niche situation but worth mentioning.

bhavv said:

No, Drill 1 and Guerilla 1.

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I sorta like it. WHat I don't like about it is that this would make the Celts' UB pointless (when you play unrestricted leaders).

How about Drill 1+2 + free walls in every citiy + happiness from castles? Imbalanced?