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

I just uploaded the latest version with some minor revisions.

Sisi...banks, markets, and grocers do not increase a city's commerce. They increase a city's gold that it is taking in, and has no effect on the commerce at all. These buildings are no more helpful for a financial leader than they are for any other leader unless you are running a low amount of science and having a lot of your commerce produing gold.

Stock Exchanges are nice yes, but they aren't something you build in every commerce city. Many of my commerce cities have absolutely 0 gold coming in, so wasting valuable production on these buildings would be a waste. I usually only build them in a holy city that has a shrine, and in perhaps one other city that has some great merchants settled or something like that. This is the only misleading thing I found in your guide.

Maben said:

Sisi...banks, markets, and grocers do not increase a city's commerce. They increase a city's gold that it is taking in, and has no effect on the commerce at all. These buildings are no more helpful for a financial leader than they are for any other leader unless you are running a low amount of science and having a lot of your commerce produing gold.

Stock Exchanges are nice yes, but they aren't something you build in every commerce city. Many of my commerce cities have absolutely 0 gold coming in, so wasting valuable production on these buildings would be a waste. I usually only build them in a holy city that has a shrine, and in perhaps one other city that has some great merchants settled or something like that. This is the only misleading thing I found in your guide.

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Here's a cropped screenshot of London from a recent off-line game of mine:



As you can see, banks (and stock exchanges, in this case), markets, and grocers plainly do have an impact on things. Granted, it's after everything goes through the slider, but it's significant nonetheless and has good synergy with Financial's +1 commerce on every tile with 2 or more, since there should be more wealth to be multiplied on the other side of the slider.

In addition, if you're playing as a Financial leader then you're probably running a cottage economy. The commerce from cottages goes through the slider, becomes wealth/gold, and then gets multiplied. The effect is indirect, but it's there, and it's substantial.

Granted, I have often found the game's distinction between commerce and wealth/gold to be confusing and I've often gotten the two mixed up in the past, but I've got a good handle on it now. Many other players seem to get confused in the opposite direction, however, and think that there's no relationship between commerce and wealth/gold, when there plainly is.

The only time I could see these buildings not having any impact in a commerce city is when you're running the sliders in such a way that science, culture, and/or espionage are getting 100% of your commerce input. That's pretty rare, not to mention difficult.

Sisiutil said:

The only time I could see these buildings not having any impact in a commerce city is when you're running the sliders in such a way that science, culture, and/or espionage are getting 100% of your commerce input. That's pretty rare, not to mention difficult.

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I think people generally avoid the gold boosters because they're running at well above 50% science, and hence they're a lower priority than the science set of buildings, albeit still useful.

There is also the issue that in the latter half of the game it is not unusual to be running at 0% gold and turning a profit in BtS, thanks to corporations.

If you're running your sliders near the middle (as in your screenshot where you're at 40% gold) then obviously it is worth building the gold buildings.

Thanks for the article, you made me realize how good Elizabeth is.

Sisiutil I see your point, I guess I'm in the "rare" case of usually running my research slider at 90% or more commonly 100%. Perhaps it's because I play on Noble or because I like Financial, I'm not sure but I don't usually have too much of a problem getting it up there once I hit mid-game. As long as I found a religion and get the shrine with a Great Prophet I start raking in the gold from spamming missionaries and having them spread it around. Building the +gold buildings in the city with the shrine then becomes godly and from there I never look back .

If you were running a specialist economy primarily or had your slider on less than 70% I could definitely see where having many instances of these buildings would help you out. In fact, if you are forced to run less than 100% research you can turn your misfortune upside down pretty fast by making a nice profit on the excess gold you are getting. You just can't turn that around and go up your tech again or you'll lose the bonus .

Edit: Why is your maintenance so freaking high? Is that from like a slower speed or something? (I only play on normal)

Maben said:

Edit: Why is your maintenance so freaking high? Is that from like a slower speed or something? (I only play on normal)

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I would say because of corporations; in any case, I don't know if you're usually expanding a lot or not, but it seems to me a good reason to drop the slider to less than 90%. Maintenance can go really high when you have a good chunk of land

Maben said:

Edit: Why is your maintenance so freaking high? Is that from like a slower speed or something? (I only play on normal)

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Mining Inc + Sid's Sushi Co.

Ah the corporations, of course. And yeah, I have to drop the slider like everyone else when I expand, but later on in the game I'm running 100% as much as possible. Once you have enough gold to outweigh your net loss, much more extra is just dead weight.

this was a very usefull guide for me since I just picked up BtS. Thanks for the time and effort you put into this. Also, thank you to all that replied with your own ideas and strategies. With everyone sharing their ideas, we all become better players!

SisUtil,
I don't agree that Protective is the weakest trait. I've found it very good for warmongering - at least no worse than Aggressive. Yes, Barracks are much better than Walls, but Castles became much better now, as they provide espionage points. Do you know many other buildings that provide extra Trade Routes? Especially for 50 hammers? With Stone, you will get your Walls and Castles even cheaper! Thus, Castles repay their maintenance, while Barracks and Drydocks don't - and every gold coin count at the highest difficulty levels.
Then comes the defensive bonus. You've wrote: "The problem with the Protective trait is that it’s largely defensive in nature. The free City
Garrison promotion is only useful when units are under attack while in a city.The problem with playing defensively in Civilization IV is that the AI is so fond of pillaging. If your units cower behind city walls, the AI will gleefully send your economy spiraling down into ruin by pillaging every tile improvement in sight. Your units have to venture out of your cities to defend your territory, which makes walls and castles next to useless—ditto with the City Garrison promotion."
While all this it true, there is another side of the coin. Nobody suggests hiding behind the Walls all the time, but the defensive bonus can help you to keep your cities during the sudden enemy invasion. So you have a Stack of Doom upon your head and just lack time to assemble your defensive troops from your empire - would you prefer losing a city to losing some land improvements? OK, you will lose some land improvements, but your forces will dispatch the intruders and gain some experience instead of losing some cities permanently or having to keep much more defending troops in case of non-Protective Civ.
If you consider barbarians, the Protective advantage will become even more clear. Just one Protective archer is enough to thwart any early barbarian assault, and your archers will quickly gain a lot of experience.
Finally, Protective gives your troops more than Agressive. You get two useful Promotions for two useful unit types (Archery and Gunpowder), while Aggressive provides just one Promotion, and Melee units are much less important than Archery units. I mean, you can live without Melee units, if you have good Mounted units (most Melee units become outdated very quickly anyway), but you cannot live without archers. Even Stacks of Doom need some protection troops - cavalry usually doesn't get defensive bonuses, and Siege machines are too precious to serve as defenders against enemy attacks, so pumped-up Archers finish up your invasion force and stay in the conquered cities as the garrisons.
Protective Civs are very well at early warfare. If you wish to analyze the best leaders for Protective, you should keep this in mind. Chinese Cho-Ko-Nu is really great, but all existing Chinese leaders aren't very good for early warfare. Tokugawa is obviously the beast, and becomes even stronger after appearance of Samurai and gunpowder units (THREE free promotions!) Sitting Bull is decent, since you can run SE with his Philosophical, build farms instead of cottages (they are much easier to rebuild after enemy pillages), and beeline to the most important techs like Feudalism. Churchill is also awesome, especially after your upgrade your veteran archers to Redcoats.

One thing that has struck me only recently despite Industrious being one of my favorite traits is how much of an advantage cheaper National Wonders is.

Things like the National Epic, Heroic Epic, Ironworks, etc. are wonders that everybody builds, so far as I know. Industrious gets a nice discount on these buildings, and that applies in every game, no matter the difficulty level.

Another point regarding Charismatic: In the early game, Char gives in fact two more population to cities (+1 happy by itself, +1 happy by Monument). In terms of percentage, this is HUGE, especially at higher difficulty levels and/or if you happen to lack happiness resources.

So you have a good reason to actually build these Monument things (and not just for the border pop if you don't have a religion...) and by the time they become obsolete (Astronomy), you usually have Calendar and can trade happy resources overseas - so no big deal.

Finding (or battling for) happiness resources, maybe even "double" ones (with Forge / with Market), building temples or researching / acquiring Monarchy may not be with the highest priorities in this case (the difference between 10 and 12 is not as huge as between 5 and 7 in the early game), although you still want to run at least Monarchy soon since a lack of military police gives unhappy faces and a decent power rating helps with the other AIs (except when you are isolated, then a token warrior suffices except at the border cities against barbs).

Of course, as mentioned before Char helps with warmongering as well (promotions, war weariness), but even the most peaceful builder will get a lot out of Char in my experience.

Of course you do sort of have to leverage the trait this way. At difficulties above Monarch, the extra population at the extremely low difficulty level limits is a really big deal. Of course, at that level, even the health afforded by Expansive becomes a big deal, just because the limits are so darned low.

I did some revisions/corrections to the guide. Many thanks to Diamondeye for his detailed suggestions!

(Though I'm still not fond of Protective. Sorry, dude...)

This is a pretty nice guide you written (one of FIVE?!?). I ranked it 5 stars.

The only thing I would recommend changing is that there are 9 Industrious civs, not 8 like you said.

DMOC said:

This is a pretty nice guide you written (one of FIVE?!?). I ranked it 5 stars.

The only thing I would recommend changing is that there are 9 Industrious civs, not 8 like you said.

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Fixed, and thanks!

Protective is actually a somewhat decent trait. Castles are nice, yes, but here's my analysis:

Protective gives Archery and Gunpowder Units Drill I and City Garrison I. Forts act like cities during combat. Thus, a Protective Gunpowder/Archer unit gets a sizable bonus in forts, which can grab resources (like Oil pre-Combustion, or Uranium pre-Fission) and protect them.

Drill I leads to Shock, Cover, Pinch, and Drill II. This is an extremely versatile set of options. A Protective Rifleman has an extra First Strike chance, and can specialize to beat down Longbowmen or even other Riflemen. Throw in Theocracy and Vassalage, and you'll have Riflemen coming out of the Barracks with 8 XP. This is (IIRC) 2 promotions, which can create Drill I/II/Speciality Riflemen. This is a Rifleman with 1 First Strike (negating that of a defending Archery unit), and 17.5 STR versus Melee Units (Shock), Archery Units (Cover), or other gunpowder Units (Pinch). I think that really rocks, personally.

I could've sworn I saw this question a hundred times, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Perhaps a more formal treatment then:

If I am imperialistic, I settled on a plains-hill and I have a plains-hill to work on, should I start off with a settler? For simplicity assume standard settings, prince difficulty.

sylvanllewelyn said:

I could've sworn I saw this question a hundred times, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Perhaps a more formal treatment then:

If I am imperialistic, I settled on a plains-hill and I have a plains-hill to work on, should I start off with a settler? For simplicity assume standard settings, prince difficulty.

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As with everything in this game... it depends.

If I was playing as Rome, where I want to get Iron Working for Praetorians going as soon as possible, and I was lucky enough to draw gold, silver, or gems in the capital's fat cross, I would probably build a Worker first.

Even if that's not the sitch, I usually prefer to settle my second city to claim a strategic resource (horses, copper, or iron, though the latter means a long delay). If you finish the Settler before you know where those resources are, you're either going to leave the unit sitting around for awhile--turns you could have been pursuing a build that allowed your city to grow and the Settler to appear faster--or you risk founding the second city in a spot you'll regret--say, with copper in the third ring. Finally, remember that your Settler will not have any protection (unless you forgo exploring so your sole unit hangs around your capital--far from optimal), so you risk losing it to barb animals on the way to the city site.

BUT if you start in a location where you can immediately see an ideal spot for a second city (this is rare), then Settler first may make sense, especially for Imperialistic. And/or if you can plan it so your Settler appears on the same turn you finish Bronze Working or Animal Husbandry.

But as you might gather, I'm not a fan of Settler first.