Civilization IV Leader Traits: Self-Actualization, Axemen, and You

I agree with previousl posters on Libraries, Universities, Observatories, and Labs being best for Financial. Unless you are doing very heavy warmongering, then you will most likely have the science slider above 50% more than half the time. Great guide though. Perhaps you could find someone with some heavy MP experiance to write a section on each trait's relative multiplayer worth. I assume that you do not play very much MP if at all, and it would be interesting to see how SP and MP differ in trait choice and value.
 
I'm surprised you didn't put the following trait synergies as obvious:
CHA/SPI (Brennus) there's a lot of people thinking that his traits have the more synergies
CRE/IND (Louis) Culture Fest
AGG/SPI (Monty) the build unit change civic build building change civic thingie


just my two cents
 
First comment - dude, are you alergic to [h1] tags?


Sisiutil said:
Creative


How to use it

The big benefit Creative provides is allowing you more freedom in your city placement and in your early city builds. You don’t have to worry about placing a city so a crucial resource is in its first ring of workable tiles so you can access it right away; it will be workable within a few short turns of founding the city. You can also skip monuments, Stonehenge, and spreading a religion (well, you can be a little more relaxed about the latter, at least).

In addition, Creative allows you to win some early game tug-o-war with a nearby civ over a key resource tile. By the same token, if the map lends itself to it, you can use the trait to seal off territory at a choke point. Creative is also something of a defensive trait, a cousin to Protective. By expanding your borders earlier and infusing the tiles with your culture, you have more territory that the enemy has to trudge through to attack you. It’s also harder for another civilization to take tiles from you by city placement or by conquering cities....

The Downside

Creative is a trait that is extremely useful in the early game and gets weaker as the game goes on. The +2 culture becomes less and less of a factor as the game progresses and more methods of producing culture accrue in each city. Also, the cheap buildings are available early and are all relatively cheap, so their faster production times will be less noticeable later in the game. By the middle of most games, the Creative trait is mostly a non-factor.
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I think you might want to rewrite these paragraphs after you've had a chance to review the various passive/aggressive games:
 
Bravo for the effort of writing such a long and informative guide. I do think it was a bit short though in parts . Since some of the traits are somewhat easy to explain , trait combinations , trait synergies is a part of the article that you could expand a lot , a lot more. Or maybe that is for a second article ?
 
LAnkou said:
I'm surprised you didn't put the following trait synergies as obvious:
CHA/SPI (Brennus) there's a lot of people thinking that his traits have the more synergies
CRE/IND (Louis) Culture Fest
AGG/SPI (Monty) the build unit change civic build building change civic thingie
Click to expand...
I haven't played as Brennus yet, so that's why I probably didn't mention him, nor as Monty in a long time. The one time I played as Louis I won by domination, but you're right, he's an good candidate for a cultural victory. His main weakness in that regard is lacking any tech advantages in acquiring religions.

Galileo44 said:
I agree with previousl posters on Libraries, Universities, Observatories, and Labs being best for Financial. Unless you are doing very heavy warmongering, then you will most likely have the science slider above 50% more than half the time. Great guide though. Perhaps you could find someone with some heavy MP experiance to write a section on each trait's relative multiplayer worth. I assume that you do not play very much MP if at all, and it would be interesting to see how SP and MP differ in trait choice and value.
Click to expand...
I have not played MP--I keep hearing how it's nothing but constant war and that kind of turns me off. I war to build. But I'll incorporate the Financial building suggestions in a future revision.

VoiceOfUnreason said:
First comment - dude, are you alergic to [h1] tags?
I think you might want to rewrite these paragraphs after you've had a chance to review the various passive/aggressive games:
Click to expand...
Yeah, tags would be cool. I'll work them in later. It was a lot of work just marking up the text that's there. Hey, does anyone know of a good off-line app that functions as a word processor while using message board tags for mark up?

I'll check out those other games when I get a chance. Thanks for the links!
scy12 said:
Bravo for the effort of writing such a long and informative guide. I do think it was a bit short though in parts . Since some of the traits are somewhat easy to explain , trait combinations , trait synergies is a part of the article that you could expand a lot , a lot more. Or maybe that is for a second article ?
Click to expand...
I'll keep revising the synergy section; it was a little rushed and I felt kind of tired after working on the bigger section that precedes it.
 
Good article, but I can't help but think it's redundant with dh_epic's article already in the War Academy. What the Academy lacks is a "leader-centric" article that describes how to play each leader, utilizing both the traits and the unique builds. And from what I can tell, you're probably one of the best qualified CivFanatics to write that article, Sisiutil :)
 
bardolph said:
Good article, but I can't help but think it's redundant with dh_epic's article already in the War Academy. What the Academy lacks is a "leader-centric" article that describes how to play each leader, utilizing both the traits and the unique builds. And from what I can tell, you're probably one of the best qualified CivFanatics to write that article, Sisiutil :)
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I missed dh_epic's article--I'll have to go have a look at it. I could have sworn I didn't see an article on this topic a few weeks back when I started work on it, otherwise I might not have bothered. Oh well.

The leader-centric type of article you describe strikes me as an even bigger task. I would refer you to the pre-game threads for the ALCs, even though not all of the leaders have been covered yet.
 
sisiutil said:
Since you’ll have all that extra commerce rolling in, prioritize buildings that do something with it, and the technologies that enable them. Libraries, monasteries, universities, observatories, and laboratories all turn commerce into research, while markets, grocers, and banks multiply the commerce itself. In addition, Printing Press will increase the yield from your cottage investment, as will the Free Speech civic. Emancipation will make any immature cottages grow faster.
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You seem to still be making some basic errors about how commerce works, which is really surprising, considering how good you are.

Libaries, etc., do not convert commerce into research:)science:), they multiply research, regardless of the source. The science slider is what converts commerce into research.

Once again, markets, etc., do not multiply commerce:)commerce:), they multiply gold:)gold:), regardless of the source. The gold you get from commerce is what's left after the research and culture sliders take their share. The only commerce multiplier in the game is the civic Bureacracy, which is why the best buildings for the financial trait are the research multiplying buildings like librares and not the gold multiplying buildings like markets. In a CE, you want to keep your science slider as high as you can afford, so in most cases, you're really not getting your hammers worth out of the gold multiplying buildings.
 
Sisiutil said:
I missed dh_epic's article--I'll have to go have a look at it. I could have sworn I didn't see an article on this topic a few weeks back when I started work on it, otherwise I might not have bothered. Oh well.

The leader-centric type of article you describe strikes me as an even bigger task. I would refer you to the pre-game threads for the ALCs, even though not all of the leaders have been covered yet.
Click to expand...
True, that would be a huge task, but would definitely get a head-start from cannibalizing the pre-game threads for the ALCs.

Also, it may be worth mentioning that the Protective trait has great potential in multiplayer, due to the power of an early archer rush, plus the superlative gunpowder units it can produce. It may even edge out Aggressive in MP because of this.
 
Fantastic PRINTING ...........................................................now.
 
LlamaCat said:
So the Warlords expansion doubles the production speed of workers for Expansive leaders?
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Expansive adds 50% hammers when producing workers, not double, and not food.

Sisiutil said:
I missed dh_epic's article--I'll have to go have a look at it. I could have sworn I didn't see an article on this topic a few weeks back when I started work on it, otherwise I might not have bothered. Oh well.
Click to expand...

I think they complement each other, and once you get the minor errors fixed, I think yours is actually better information for newbies (like me).
 
Sisiutil said:
Overview

It may surprise some of you that I consider Spiritual to be one of the strongest civics in the game. Then again, considering how often I change civics in the ALC games, maybe you’re not surprised at all.
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I didn't know Spiritual was a Civic, I thought it was a trait :p lol kidding. (Please Fix that part btw)

Sisiutil said:
Stalin may pose the biggest conundrum of all: war or build? He has a trait to capitalize (excuse the ironic pun) on each! The answer is, as one of the esteemed posters at the CFC forums put it in one ALC thread, “I war in order to build”. Use the Aggressive trait to claim the territory and resources you need, then fall back on the Industrious trait to produce those nice, bright, shiny, sparkly wonders. Oooooo…
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How to use Stalin??? Well... I've used Napoleon's Vanilla traits (Agg/Ind) and basically you (Cheap) Oracle Slingshot to Metal Casting and build those cheap forges to increase production of your military and go conquering. That's the only way you can get the best of both worlds (indirectly).


Sisiutil said:
But hang on. Imperialistic’s boost to Settler builds comes from hammers, not food. This means you need to work at cross-purposes in the early game, building mines to ensure your Settler builds take advantage of the trait. If food also boosted the Setter’s build time, this would be a much more useful trait.
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Not wrong but personally I don't think it's the most efficient method of building settlers with the Imperialist.

Focus on working the Food Resource tiles as usual and focus on whipping settler every 10 turns (on normal speed) until you don't need settler anymore.

Remember whipping converts food into hammers and those hammers benefit from hammer bonuses like + 50% to settlers From the Imperialist trait.

a normal settler cost 100H, with a non Imp leader I'd whip 3 pop (90H) to get a settler, but with the Imp leader I only have to whip 2 Pop to get 90H for settler. Therefore I only have to grow my Pop to size 4 instead of 6 to effectively whip my settlers.

So in this case the +50% bonus to hammers is INDIRECTLY related to food. You should also do the same with workers for the Expansive trait, it saves a lot of turns, not working those mines.
 
Good article!
 
Imperialistic is good in my opinion Cyrus Genghis and Catherine have imperialistic for their UU which can't get the benefit or aggresive nor protective. They have their GG on mobile UU medic in very early war.
But that's maybe my favorite leader is is getting imperialistic and i refuse to think that they become weaker. :lol:
 
Re: Spiritual

In playing without the Spiritual trait, I've found that nonSpiritual Civs have to spend 2 turns minimum on anarchy in the late game. That's an incredible disincentive for any Civic switching.

Reasons for late-game Civic switching are for running Representation/Universal Suffrage in alternate for the building buy, using Vassalage/Theocracy to increase the XP for a spate of unit building and/or drafting, switching to Nationhood momentarily for massive drafts, and switching between Free Religion/Pacifism for wartime/peacetime situations.

If you have lots of forests, running Environmentalism to offset war weariness (on top of running Nationhood for the +2 :) from Barracks) can put off an urgent stop to a profitable war.

Late in the game, no civ without Spiritual can afford to juggle such Civics profitably.

Also, Spiral Minaret gives +2 gold per State Religion Building.


Re: Aggressive

The most effective way to use the extra promotion is to build a barracks to get a second promotion right off the bat. Cover and Shock promotions are popular in the earlier ages, and Pinch is often key in the latter ages.

Aggressive has an obscure economic advantage. You can spam the cheap Barracks in all your cities in order to benefit from the 2 happy faces from a Nationhood Civic. This can actually be useful if you've already got plenty of health and are hurting for the happy luxuries. The Nationhood Civic is available through Nationalism, but can also be used if you managed to leverage the Pyramids (from an Industrious trait).

Aside from the obvious, Aggressive Civs benefit the most from Drafting, since the first promotion is free. That means that they'll be able to draft large quantities of level 2 units even with just a Barracks and the Pentagon or any one of the +2 XP Civics. In contrast, even a Charismatic Civic needs to leverage +8 to draft a level 2 unit - not somethng easy to do across your entire civ.

Japan's drafted Gunpowder units are particularly scary. With just Theocracy and Barracks (an elementary setup), Tokugawa can easily draft tens of Riflemen all with City Garrison I, Drill I, Combat I, and one other promotion, usually Pinch. That's a match for even Churchill's Redcoats.


Re: Expansive

For me, Expansive is easily one of the most powerful traits in the game, trumping Financial. The trick to using Expansive can be most easily seen with Mehmed, who's got Health and Happies by the ton. Mehmed's health and happy limits are ludicrously high, so you can afford to grow your cities to size 20, even in the late Medieval period.

Once you've played that, you begin to find ways to make happies to leverage your Health benefits. The usual way is to get lots of luxury resources ASAP, or to found or borrow as many religions as you can get your hands on. Then you supplement that with unit happies from Hereditary Rule.

Whipping actually runs counter to Expansive play, since you'll never see the benefit of your Expansive trait if you're not constantly running your cities into the sewer - and you'll only do that if you run very large cities. Granaries help with this goal both by increasing your health limits and by increasing your city's rate of growth. At the limits of health, Expansive is worth +2 food per city. This can mean about +10 turns more of 1 additional population production, more if your city is growing when it shouldn't be.

Expansive Civs like to have the happies to be strong. They want religion, they want spices, they want incense. Just think "Spain" and you're probably right on on the money.

If you can't swing that, you might want to go to Drama for the early Theatres for happy faces. Diverting money into culture to grow bigger cities faster actually makes fiscal sense - you can always scale back the culture slider and rake in the benefits of your fast growth, while putting on the brakes.

The Hanging Gardens is actually not soemthing I would recommend, since you usually have other priorities to worry about. Rather than pursuing that, I might recommend building Cathedrals after Music. If you're Industrious, you might want to build the Pyramids for Nationhood and mass Barracks. Or you could be building more units to build up the happies with HR. I would more recommend Notre Dame, since that wonder gives you the happies that make the health boost so useful.

University of Sankore would also tie in well, since you usually have Cathedrals and Temples all over the place.

Contrary to what you say, there aren't all that many ways to increase health. In fact, as the game wears on, more and more sources of unhealth begin to pile up.

Granaries, of course, only continue to build more health as the game progresses, since you typically acquire the other resources that increase health through granaries, or manage to capture the resources yourself. In addition, the Harbor (also half price) can allow you to build truly massive coastal cities very quickly, with the attending massive trade route bonuses.

In the modern ear, health can be a continuing problem, as you build factories, coal plants, forges, and airports, not to mention bigger and bigger cities. Expansive Civs get to big cities faster and continue to grow where lesser civ's cities stop. At that stage in the game, there are so many ways to make happies that it's rarely an issue. Aside from the resources themselves, Cathedrals boost incense, forges boost gems, silver, and gold, and markets also boost their share of the resources. On top of that, you can create threatres and coliseums with relative ease, giving you as much as 3 happies with just a 20% slider modification. Multiple temples provide one happy each, and Free Religion provides one happy more on top of that for each temple.

Health is not so easy to come by, and that makes health the second most common city size limiting factor in the late game, after tile quality.



In like manner, I also consider Charismatic superior to Financial. Not every city or even every city tile can benefit from financial. EVERY city will eventually benefit from Charismatic by one population, and this limit will usually be strained to the limit throughout the remainder of the game. Obvious exceptions are the Globe Theatre city, new cities, and cities that are for some reason purposefully small, but these are corner cases.

In terms of war, Charismatic is possibly the best trait for fielding in elite units.

Upgrading units plays to Charismatic, as 10XP isn't nearly as disastrous for it as it is for other Civs, but its real benefit is in fielding in highly decorated units right from the get-go.

West Point is a key wonder for mid to late game warmongering. It's absolutely divine in a bay cty (a coastal city that doesn't have a lot of ocean sqaures), since it'll upgrade your Battleships as well!

I like to make a goal for myself with Charismatic: to have a level 6 unit before Military Tradition, but if you have to leverage the West Point with a GG, it's no biggie.

Aside from the obvious synergies with Charismatic, I aim for West Point in order to get a very specific promotion: Blitz. Blitz is a level 5Gunship/Mounted/Armored promotion. That means 4 promotions, or 13 XP for Charismatic. You'll need Barracks (+3XP), Stable (+2XP), West Point (+4XP), Military Instructor (+2 XP) and either Theocracy (+2XP) or Vassalage (+2 XP).

That's 13 XP, and that allows you to produce a Combat 3 Blitz Cavalry fresh from the Academy. If you can swing for another GG, you can settle it in the same city and keep on producing Combat 3 Blitz Gunships straight into the Modern Age.

You could do the same with a nonCharismatic Civ, of course, but you'll need to be locked into BOTH Theocracy and Vassalage, or have 1 extra Military Instructor (which could have been a Warlord, and may not be available just yet). Moreover, the XP your Blitz Cavalry will accure using their multiple attacks will most quickly translate into more promotions with a Charismatic leader.

What to do with Blitz Cavalry? Why kill multiple weakened units in a stack of course! With the right promotions and the right support later on, your elite Blitz core of cavalry will tear through virtually anything. This means that you'll need less units in the stack, and you'll have higher level units overall.


Re: Protective

Actually, I think that Japan benefits the most from the Protective trait, since protecting acquired cities cheaply is often a headache for other Aggressive civs who don't receive any bonuses for archers, and could be doing something better with those Swordsmen.

Japan can use cheaply made Archers with City Garrison II (!!) to protect its newly acquired holdings, and if that's not enough, it can build walls quickly in its new cities.

Once the Gunpowder Age Arrives, Japan's Gunpowder units enjoy the benefits of BOTH Aggressive AND Protective. Japanese Marines are fully capable of taking on Navy Seals and giving as good as they get. Similarly Japanese Riflemen are almost as good as Redcoats. Their Samurai, in fact, is almost a disappointment, since it's not all that much better than a normal Maceman, though the extra first strikes are nice.


Re: Imperialistic

Actually, I think that Julius Ceasar's Organized makes for the best combination with Imperialistic, since he can use Imperialistic to expand through whichever way seems best, and Organized helps him to keep the costs of a massive empire manageable. Making Settlers isn't weak if you're going to be doing it a whole darned lot, and +100% GG production is pretty spiffy if you know you can keep and profit from whatever land you manage to grab in the war.

If anything, I think Cathy is the weaker of the two, since her borders are still limited stictly by her tech, so there's a smaller limit as to what she can profitably acquire, and her Creative advantages peter out along with her Imperialist advantages mid game, leaving her with little to work with, whether in war or in peace.
 
Yeah. I reviewed the game. My bad. I get really confused on the Civics at times, and I curse my bad memory every time I pop the Pyramids and I find that it doesn't open Nationhood. Despite this happening like three times already, I always seem to forget.

Duh.

Stupid me.

I do go for the Nationalism beeline, though, and it helps that it's on the way to Cavalry with Military Tradition (or am I getting that wrong again?).
 
Roxlimn said:
I do go for the Nationalism beeline, though, and it helps that it's on the way to Cavalry with Military Tradition (or am I getting that wrong again?).
Click to expand...
That's correct, and often why I'll select Nationalism as Liberalism's free tech.

Lately, though, I've been getting Chemistry from Liberalism by avoiding Machinery, using a GS to lightbulb most of Liberalism, then getting Machinery and Engineering through trades before finishing Liberalism.
 
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