Why didnt firaxis ever improve AGG / PRO?

Given all the years of negative feedback and dislike of these traits from the community, one would think that they would have listened.

¿Whats the problem with Agg? Faster barracks and free combat 1 melee units (allowing for Shock, Cover or Medic right after creation) give Agg leaders the strongest early rushes, and the trait doesnt lose much power as the game progresses, even in late game it still buffs Gunpowder units.

No economic advantages make those two traits the weakest.

I think a nice boost to AGG would have been 50% more gold from pillaging (or some %), inclusive of city capture. It would give it more economic potential.

Is more efficient conquering not an economic advantage?

My theory is that AGG/PRO are multiplayer traits and they did not buff them to keep mutiplayer balance.

Also, a civ's strength is not determined by a single trait. Perhaps fireaxis considered the weakness of AGG/PRO to be offset by the second traits, starting techs, UUs and UBs available to the civs which have them.

Personally, I don't find AGG/PRO to be that bad. Access to second line promos with a barracks meaning units never have to fight without them is a benefit.

Its not a weak trait if you are constantly waging war, and having units that are stronger than those of leaders with pure economic traits allows for Agg to win more combats and kill more units while losing less, effectively gaining a production advantage, not to mention he can use his stronger units to capture cities, and each city he takes means a difference of 2 cities with the other leader eventually.

False, CHA & IMP (Cyrus) are vastly superior for constantly waging war.

Agg doesn't even affect mounted or siege units.

I think a source of misunderstanding lies in the fact that when certain traits are considered to be better than others, it doesn't mean that some are great while others are terrible. The spectrum is not that wide - having two bottom-tier traits may be a slight disadvantage, yet can be countered by other factors, such as UUs, UBs, starting land, and/or, of course, good play.

When talking about aggressive and protective specifically, it should first be noted that aggressive is generally considered to be much more useful than the latter, for reasons mentioned in the previous posts. In fact, I wouldn't regard it as a low-tier trait at all. However we evaluate its value, it makes more sense to look at both traits individually and not lump them together.

Protective is arguably the least useful trait - in single player. The case can be made that every trait is potentially useful, as long as you adopt an according playstyle to make use of your traits' potentials. Because of the nature of wars in Civ4, in many cases it is simply suboptimal to modify your playstyle to make use of protective.
However, everything changes in multiplayer, in which I'd rate protective among the top-tier traits. Not only does it help immensely in the early run for city sites and land grab (which is usually the most important part of the game), it also acts as an efficient deterrent throughout the game.

The problem with AGG is that it really only makes your Axe rush stronger. Which is a path I very seldom choose to go. On lower levels it makes warrior rushes stronger, so on levels up to prince I'd give it more credit.

AGG doesn't do anything for chariots/war chariots/immortals, HAs, Elepults or Cuirs and the benefit when going Siege+melee is not that big, because you'd be doing most of the damage with siege anyway. It does buff gunpowder units, like rifles, later in the game. However, many of the other traits would help me get those rifles much earlier, which makes those traits much stronger traits for rifle wars.

I agree Cha is better for constant war, and Imp faster settlers are definitely a factor, but i still think Agg is best for rushing, and in the early game, which is really important since the development of civilizations is not linear, a limited advantage in the beggining (say a captured city in the bcs) can help your civ gain an increasing advantage over time against your neighbours. Of course, all depends on the game, and on wether your opponents are AI or human, and esentially on how you play it, but i wouldnt be so fast to dismiss the potential of Agg.

IMP +100% GG rate = more super units, or settle if Cyrus in your HE + Military Academy city to pop out 5+ promo units.

Plus they have economic bonuses, extra happiness or faster settlers, both provide a massive snowball expansion effect plus military superiority.

One would like to believe that the developers considered all aspects together, not just the comparative strength of a particular trait. As in; does this leader with these stronger traits make this civ with this UU and UB and starting with these techs overpowered, or do the strong traits just make up for relatively weak UU or UB? Of course they might not have, but ideally...

Yea sure because Darius with Immortals, Apothecary, and Fin / Org is equal to Toku with Agg / Pro, Samurai and Shale Plants ...

Nope.

For a game this complex it is inevitable that some choices are weaker than others. Alternate difficulty.

Cyrus needs war EXP to become stronger, but immortals are tough if the opponent lacks strategic resources. Boudica is a threat at first war, and additionally has exotic melee units (especially in K-mod +1 exp from dun). Wood IIIGuerilla III melee is not far from mounted 2-move.

It takes a good while for the CHA benefit to catch up with a free AGG promotion:
AGG - CHA
2 C2 - 2 C1
5 C3 - 4 C2
10 C4 - 8 C3
17 C5 - 13 C4
26 C6 - 20 C5
37 C7 - 28 C6
50 C8 - 38 C7 <- at hypothetical combat VII promotion they would be roughly equal

Boudica has both though. I'm not sure how much I would value the double GG EXP from IMP - intuitively it is the least useful warmongering trait out of these three, though Cyrus has the best mounted bonus package, except that Hannibal is better because he owns. PRO is a lightweight warmongering bonus as well.. for China and gunpowder units at least. PRO IMO could give 50% bonus to espionage points or something to have nice flavour.

Most games for most players here will not involve an early war at tech parity, which is where AGG is most useful.

dutchfire said:

Most games for most players here will not involve an early war at tech parity, which is where AGG is most useful.

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That is indeed true. I think one of the problems here s assuming everyone starts in ancient (though it is undoubtedly the most common). Starting as an agg american late start would be perfectly fine. Economic advantages mean far less when there are significantly fewer techs to be researched, and since parity is always true at game start for such games (deity gets no tech advantage on later starts), agg and pro go way up in usefulness (as does IMP and ORG, as long as pre-factory start).

It's been a very long time since I played multiplayer... but in single player I can say;

Protective is one of the best traits to have in the type of games I play.

Huge maps at marathon makes the AIs just make death stacks with regularity. Fending off 200 horse archers in a single stack can be downright scary... and protective is what makes Charlemagne one of my favorite civs to play. Well that combined with Imp's extra generals, and the rathouse to make cities super cheap.

Pro = super machine guns, in a fort. Even Tokugawa's samurai cant touch one of my Pro MGs. I've gotten one up around 800xp. I've never gotten an offensive unit that much xp before.

bhavv said:

Yea sure because Darius with Immortals, Apothecary, and Fin / Org is equal to Toku with Agg / Pro, Samurai and Shale Plants ...

Nope.

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True.

Cyrus just cant match Tokugawa's power... ever.

Typical Cyrus game for me;
Explore my area, find a defensable position and if I need to rush somebody to own it all, I can. Build great wall. Farm generals from AI attacks that wont get anywhere near my cities. Stay relativly small and win easy culture/spacerace.

Typical Tokugawa game;
Build 2 starting cities... Beeline civil service and machinery. Conquer a continent.
Spend the rest of the game fixing my economy until infantry conquer the next continent, game won via dominance.

(Darius would be fishfood after the first horse archer rush... I never play him.)

Who are you and where did you come from?

bhavv said:

Who are you and where did you come from?

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I used to post pretty active on Apolyton back in the day... I found my way here looking for mods and maps. Figured I'd chime in on the forums a bit, as Paradox's EUIV forums been a little boring as of late.