Does anyone miss traits?

So I've been thinking about it for a while and I used to like UAs, but now I think I prefer traits that are taken from a common pool:

Are the French people really more cultured than any other civilization, but only until they discover the power of steam?
Do the English really build ships that move significantly faster than any other civilization in history?
Did the Babylonians produce twice the number of great scientists relative to other civilizations?
Did the Spanish really receive lump sums of money from discovering world wonders?

I hope you get my point. The fact that these civilizations are different is a very good and necessary thing. Making each civilization have traits that no other human civilization can acquire seems unrealistic and is just another point of immersion breaking for me lately.

Am I alone on this? I used to like UAs for their uniqueness but now I'm beginning to detest them.

And, per Civ IV, do workers in India really work twice as fast as anyone else?

This is the least of the differences between the two.

gethe said:

And, per Civ IV, do workers in India really work twice as fast as anyone else?

This is the least of the differences between the two.

Click to expand...

I don't have a problem with unique buildings or units (unless OP), but the fast worker is pretty silly as you can use it throughout the entire game.

I think minutemen, legions, hoplites, immortals are realistic enough. France always prided themselves on being cultured. Germany was really just a collection of barbarians for most of history. English sailors were extremely good (they sailed to India!)

What's the problem? These are merely approximations of reality. Are they any more different than representing a living breathing, self-motivated group of soldiers by a little icon on a screen?

Is it different from the fact that horses and trees apparently have the same height? And people are like giants compared to cities? Its just a necessary approximation to raise enjoyment.

I massively prefer the design that makes each civ actually unique, rather than just have a couple of bland abilities from a shared pool.
This was one of the big wins for Civ5 for me; more faction differentiation.

Ahriman said:

I massively prefer the design that makes each civ actually unique, rather than just have a couple of bland abilities from a shared pool.
This was one of the big wins for Civ5 for me; more faction differentiation.

Click to expand...

Agreed! Everything except Ottomans, who I still view as too useless to be played

Traits are good in some way, but they lose a bit of luster. Were Victoria and Wang Kong really "just as financial" as each other?

To me, the fact that the UAs are so different from each other makes me want to dig deeper. So in civ4, I never got around to playing each leader, it wasn't hard to play each trait. And once you've played the traits, and some fun combos, I really stopped caring about them. But with the abilities, each one being quite different from the others, it means that I really want to get through games with everyone just to see how they play differently.

Well this is only something that I was recently feeling. Before then, for the last few months, I actually preferred UAs. I guess for now it's just me then.

I think it's a tradeoff. Traits in common pool = limited number and variety of effects that can be achieved - not a limitation with specific unique units. The perk is, it gives a direct frame of reference for comparison between Civs, since they all essentially share the same abilities. Also, with two traits per leader, you often had more raw bonuses on leaders in Civ IV, even if the bonuses were common among the leaders.

Personally, I don't mind the change, and I can see advantages and disadvantages to each system.

Though, I do have to ask, from an immersion standpoints... Do you really think that the traits more accurately represented leaders than unique abilities? I mean, did something spiritual leaders do really make their peoples immune to the negative effects of governmental change, did all industrious leaders really effect changes in their empires that resulted in vastly increased productivity when building great works, did all aggressive leaders REALLY effect changes in their military systems that left their forces roughly 10% more capable than those of their opponents? I think it's pretty safe to say the application of a lot of traits was questionable at best.

Ironically, UA's are basically the same thing as traits, but each one is unique to each leader. I personally never saw a difference between them that would result in one breaking immersion and another not.

I'll tell you what I miss... The Pro/Org Civ they never gave me But, in the case of UA's, I'm actually looking forward to seeing some really off the wall abilities come about as they release more civs.

Edit: Also, I'll say this.. In Civ IV I tended to gravitate towards protective or organized civs, and I had certain playbooks for each that I tended to use with slight variations based on UU's and UB's. In Civ V, there aren't such common traits, so I'm playing quite a different way each time. Playing a lot of France, China, Iroquois, India, and Rome recently - my gameplan for each one is wildly different, particularly the Iroquois, to a degree I didn't find quite as much in Civ IV.

JohnnyW said:

So I've been thinking about it for a while and I used to like UAs, but now I think I prefer traits that are taken from a common pool:

Are the French people really more cultured than any other civilization, but only until they discover the power of steam?
Do the English really build ships that move significantly faster than any other civilization in history?
Did the Babylonians produce twice the number of great scientists relative to other civilizations?
Did the Spanish really receive lump sums of money from discovering world wonders?

I hope you get my point. The fact that these civilizations are different is a very good and necessary thing. Making each civilization have traits that no other human civilization can acquire seems unrealistic and is just another point of immersion breaking for me lately.

Am I alone on this? I used to like UAs for their uniqueness but now I'm beginning to detest them.

Click to expand...

I think traits should be more radical, more specific in order to really push the advantage/disadvantage balance for the overall gaming experience.
Many players have claimed civs not being "feeling" different enough. That's a serious issue for a game, that apparently put so much effort in creating emotionally believable characters. Some traits are just plain boring or don't seem to offer any real advantages. I think, someone just wanted to avoid balancing issues or wanted to focus on a mp experience, where AI personality doesn't matter. In latter case, yet again, game developpers would be terribly wrong.

But, to be fair, the personalities pretty much match the nations so far in SP games, but not as far as to ruin the game experience. You gotta give credit to Firaxis' effort, creating personalities but still allowing the player to chose their own path is somewhat hard. I just think the compromise they had to take is just not fair to anyone really.

JohnnyW said:

So I've been thinking about it for a while and I used to like UAs, but now I think I prefer traits that are taken from a common pool:

Are the French people really more cultured than any other civilization, but only until they discover the power of steam?

Click to expand...

I'm sure french people feel that way

JohnnyW said:

Do the English really build ships that move significantly faster than any other civilization in history?

Click to expand...

They were master ship builders, I wouldn't doubt that the best ships of the medieval and renaisannce era were found in England

JohnnyW said:

Did the Babylonians produce twice the number of great scientists relative to other civilizations?

Click to expand...

This one I'm not too sure about, although the Babylonians did have an impact on mathematics

JohnnyW said:

Did the Spanish really receive lump sums of money from discovering world wonders?

Click to expand...

Well it wasn't that easy in reality, but the Spanish were explorers who financed their expeditions with gold from the new world

Also, Germany was barbarians for quite some time, Mongolia conquered tons of land, Russia has tons of uranium and other resources as well as a productive work force, the Americans can be frugal and expand rapidly, the Arabs have a lot of oil and markets and merchants, Greece was once an empire of united city states, Rome spread their culture by building buildings wherever they they settled or captured, and bushido is a real thing which means way of the warrior

Like someone said before, it's about balance. To that end I think it's good to at least have a UB and a UU for each civ. However, civ traits should be adaptive and change periodically throughout a game depending on how a civ plays in that game.

Adapative civ traits make sense from both a gameplay and historical point of view. In real life, the strengths of particular civilizations change over the course of their history: for example the English were not exactly a major commercial power in the middle ages, and the Greeks have not been leaders in philosophy and scientific innovation since ancient times. As for gameplay, a major appeal of civ games is that it allows you to explore the what if aspect to history - what if the Roman Empire survived till the modern day, what if the Aztecs conquered Spain, what if China had become a major colonial power? So why shouldn't a civ player be able to explore possibilities such as what if the Mongols had become a major seafaring power, what if the Ottomans had been pacifists? Historically, civilizations have tended to develop particular traits and strengths as an adaptive response to their natural, political, religious, cultural, and economic environment.

Future Civ games should acknowledge this by allowing civs to acquire a limited number of traits (2 or 3) at any given time based on how they are playing the game. These traits would be able to change over time as the civ's situation and priorities (and play-style) changed. Some of these traits might include:

Maritime: increased sea commerce and naval unit bonuses, acquired by building cities mainly on coasts and building lots of sea units, harbours, sea trade routes

Militaristic: increases military unit strength and production rates, acquired by fighting lots of wars and getting lots of combat XP

Artistic: increases culture and rate of Great People, acquired by emphasising culture buildings, cultural output, and running artist specialists

Scientific/philosophical: increases rate of scientific advancement, acquired by building lots of libraries, giving alot of funding to science.

The likelihood of acquiring particular traits would also be affected by the wonders a civ owns (e.g. the Great Lighthouse increases the likelihood of acquiring the Maritime trait) and the civics it runs (e.g. Theocracy decreases the likelihood of acquiring the scientific trait, while Free Speech or Rationalism increases it).

I agree. I like the civ and personality traits better.

The Fall from Heaven 2 mod, and specifically its submods, made each civilization more diverse. On top of the usual traits, each civ has unique abilities and mechanics affecting development. One civ can only build a limited amount of cities, but these cities have a larger work radius, another civ only increases in population when an 'evil' unit of another civ dies, and another starts sided with barbarians and can produce more units per turn at a cost of research.
As someone here suggested, some of the leaders can change their traits during play - the insane trait randomizes a leader's traits, and the adaptive trait allows you to change a trait, both around every 100 turns

Poke said:

The Fall from Heaven 2 mod, and specifically its submods, made each civilization more diverse. On top of the usual traits, each civ has unique abilities and mechanics affecting development. One civ can only build a limited amount of cities, but these cities have a larger work radius, another civ only increases in population when an 'evil' unit of another civ dies, and another starts sided with barbarians and can produce more units per turn at a cost of research.
As someone here suggested, some of the leaders can change their traits during play - the insane trait randomizes a leader's traits, and the adaptive trait allows you to change a trait, both around every 100 turns

Click to expand...

Never played any civ4 mods. I wasn't a member of any civ community when I played it. Sounds kinda crazy.

Also, I do want to say that I do like how civilizations have unique abilities. I just think the way they are implemented now some of them can be too powerful for certain strategies. I also like how traits give leaders personality instead of saying "my culture can fight really well when hurt!" Personality is definitely something I miss from leaders in civ5. They all act like crazy ex-girlfriends.

In Civ IV, I found the traits worked well with the different leader personalities. Tokugawa was a thorn in the side not just because he wouldn't trade tech or open borders (personality) but also because his promoted archers (trait) made him tough to budge with ancient units if he was next to you. Mansa Musa was a mixed blessing because he teched fast (financial trait) and would trade even techs only he had (personality) but would also stab you in the back quite happily (personality). etc.

JohnnyW said:

Never played any civ4 mods. I wasn't a member of any civ community when I played it. Sounds kinda crazy.

Click to expand...

If you have Civ 4 BTS you should definitely try it out. It's a great mod that's actually pretty well balanced considering the variety of the civs. The tech tree for it is probably the least linear I've seen in any game that has tech advancement too

The ability to tailor bonuses to each civ is definitely useful for designers if they know what they're doing. This freedom isn't fully explored and used for variety, but I don't see anything wrong with it.

Apparently the Egyptians built the Pyramids without the help of engineers. In fact, the first engineer didn't show up in ancient Egypt until about 1000yrs after the Pyramids were completed.

No wonder we have so much trouble reverse engineering the methods used to build the Pyramids. Perhaps we'd be better off consulting a tribal village.

Traits were okay as an idea, but they held too much influence over playstyles.