Which leader trait is best for REXing

[DABegley]

TheMeInTeam

Sorry, by approximate I meant that you can accelerate production of things to help that aspect of your economy. I did not mean to imply that you could replace the trait. For example you can accelerate production of settlers/workers or buildings but it would still be much faster if you were IMP/EXP. I agree that cottaging and proper research run helps the financial situation a lot but I usually still run into the money wall and organized helps that while I can still cottage up. As I said, I'm not a good REXer so maybe I haven't got the method down quite yet but for my style ORG really gives me a boost. My best REX games have been with Zara(ORG/CRE), Asoka(ORG/SPI) and Frederick(my current game going very well, ORG/PHI).

My best overall games have been with the trade/water based people, Hannibal(my personal favorite), Joao, Ragnar(OK, he's not primarily a trader) and William. The GLH/COL trade economy and I just click very well. I bulk up heading toward a cultural/space victory and veer into a domination path if I fall behind.

 

[budweiser]

To add to the power discussion, its important to realize that troops are only 1 way to amass a high power value.

Technology, population, certain buildings, and wonders all add to your power score. For example, just knowing IW is worth 3 swordsmen in power rating. Even a Galley adds to your power score. So, knowing when and what to add can help a lot.

Somewhere on the main site there is a page that lists all the power values in the game.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Building axemen takes a fraction of the time studying Ironworking would take. With stone, walls are a great way to boost power IIRC. Wonders add to power? I didn't know this. I know population and # of cities counts towards power as well (but fractionally compared to units IIRC)

 

[SJN]

I believe that the Status of Zeus ups power significantly.

-- Seth

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Oh, werd. That makes sense. The Great Wall probably gives you a boost to power too. Any others you can think of?

 

[budweiser]

Here is the link:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/demographics.php

It's good to study this page, then it becomes intuitive during play.

 

[AfterShafter]

I'm a fan of creative. The economic gains of some traits are really nice for having a lot of early cities, but there's a bit more to it than just having a slightly stronger economy...

If you're aggressively land grabbing, you're likely doing it because you're aggressively land grabbing from someone else. As in, your borders will be competing with someone else's. You probably want to try and create a border wall, seal off areas. Creative lets you do this at that vital early stage when you're at risk of having settlers slip through the cracks into what you're hoping will be your secure (for later expansion) backfield.

What's more, the faster you get your big fat cross, the faster you can really get your cities up and running. Having to wait for libraries or monuments to pop can be an unfortunately long process when it's early and you need stuff *now* to get you to the resources that will get a city off the ground.

Lastly, the fast libraries help a lot with the grueling culture wars that I find REX'ing leads to.

Basically, I think having the quickest and most commanding big fat cross is the king of REX'ing, and it's the weapon of peace that you gain the most out of by cramming down your enemy's throat.

 

[Supr49er]

Yeah, I like Creative too. You would think Expansive would be most conducive to the REX strategy, but it's not so.

 

[Iranon]

This depends a little on level for me.

On Deity, IMP will have the highest impact. War isn't always practical, so I need to claim enough land before those my neighbours do. Unsuckifying my hastily founded cities and fishing my economy out of the sewer can wait. Being able to whip settlers from size 4 allows for effective snowballing of expansion before I'm boxed in.
Also,on Deity, shrewd trading/stealing can keep one in business, and trying to tech well in one's own right usually takes a bigger investment than it's worth. If I can crash my economy in the first place, it's a better than average start anyway unless I'm isolated.

On Immortal specifically, I also rate EXP quite highly: We can usually expand a lot faster than the AIs, but it requires some concessions and will result in a few underdeveloped cities... EXP gets them online more quickly.

On lower levels, one can usually claim a fair amount of land without undue sacrifices, which makes resources more freely convertible - we don't need heavy emphasis on hammer tiles AND a hammer-saving trait to expand to a reasonable size in the first place.
ORG allows us to work more hammer tiles while maintaining whatever tech rate we wish, and allows better recovery once I get access to courthouses. On water maps, it also goes well with the Great Lighthouse - useless small fishing villages won't strain the economy and with easily whipped lighthouses they will become gainful very soon. Cheaper courthouses also mean quicker rewards in the recovery phase.

So...

Deity: IMP
Immortal: EXP>ORG>IMP
Below: ORG


***

Why not CRE? If I'm expanding hard, I'm usually going for a large number of cities rather than just covering a lot of land. Often I'm founding a blocker city or two, and the rest close enough together that I'll have a continuous empire without culture.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I'm a fan of creative. The economic gains of some traits are really nice for having a lot of early cities, but there's a bit more to it than just having a slightly stronger economy...

If you're aggressively land grabbing, you're likely doing it because you're aggressively land grabbing from someone else. As in, your borders will be competing with someone else's. You probably want to try and create a border wall, seal off areas. Creative lets you do this at that vital early stage when you're at risk of having settlers slip through the cracks into what you're hoping will be your secure (for later expansion) backfield.

What's more, the faster you get your big fat cross, the faster you can really get your cities up and running. Having to wait for libraries or monuments to pop can be an unfortunately long process when it's early and you need stuff *now* to get you to the resources that will get a city off the ground.

Lastly, the fast libraries help a lot with the grueling culture wars that I find REX'ing leads to.

Basically, I think having the quickest and most commanding big fat cross is the king of REX'ing, and it's the weapon of peace that you gain the most out of by cramming down your enemy's throats.

That's very situational, though. That's if you have rivals that are close enough to be able to challenge your REX. It depends your level, then. If playing below Monarch, you can just warrior rush that annoying neighbor.

I say CRE is a great REXing trait, but ORG is still the all around winner IMO. Once I move up levels, I may find my mind changed.

 

[AfterShafter]

He he, I've got to admit, my choice is definitely tailored towards the way I play... And that's always on fairly crowded maps on high difficulties. This does artificially inflate the value of being able to more consistently lock areas into a backfield, which I find is my dominant land-grabbing strategy on Immortal/Deity. For a lot of other situations though it just isn't nearly as important, and I will admit that prior to getting onto Immortal and Deity, I really wasn't all that gung-ho on creative...

 

[Iranon]

Fast expansion is very often practical. A dozen cities by 1 AD is my benchmark, and I have those as often than not, with positive cash flow (Immortal Difficulty) and usually a good amount of wonders. I've had 15, with a few settlers en route... but that was with Joao on a GLH-friendly map and no other shinies.

One thing that makes this easier is tight placement and settling on 2-hammer-tiles whenever practical. Tight placement means lower worker count to connect all those cities and saves hammers 'wasted' on culture otherwise, the additional hammer gets new cities online more quickly and they'll often end up building more settlers, saving travel time.
Skimping on garrison units (who needs archers, a few warriors are good enough if you fogbust aggressively) and emphasising 4-to-2 whips is another factor.

 

[DABegley]

Hum, the CRE argument would explain why I had the easiest time on Emperor with Zara Yaqob and his ORG/CRE mix. I do like the Oromo as well.

CRE does help a lot in early expansion as you don't have to wait for Monuments to pop borders but I still prefer ORG. I think that is a style thing, I can't argue that CRE is not a great REX option.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I gotta try playing as Zara Yaqob. I can't believe I haven't before. The Oromo is a pretty damn fine UU and his traits work well for just about any play style or map (except OCC of course ) Sounds like my first game after a 2 month hiatus will be as Zara!

 

[DABegley]

Zara was a monster for me. I settler land grabbed then beelined to Gunpowder. I switched to mass Oromo production after barracking everything and started churning out Drill III Oromo's from 4 production cities (kept 3 cities producing culture/artists and the rest money cities) who went to Drill IV after a few combats. I kept most alive until Rifling, upgraded and Drill IV Riflemen vs macemen/musketmen is a really not a fair fight. When they got upgraded to Inf it really got ugly. Gilgamesh, Hatshepsut and Bismarck didn't stand a chance. Great Artists gave me a cultural victory before I could finish the conquest win but it was fun to whack people that badly that early. I usually have to wait for Rifleman or even Tanks to roll that fast. I haven't played him again but I will probably try it now as a test.

 

[IAM]

I picked Imp. based one fast settlers and not recovery time, but my personal favorite is creative. Creative is sort of play style though I rarely overlap.

 

[GoodGame]

Yeah, I like Creative too. You would think Expansive would be most conducive to the REX strategy, but it's not so.

The only way Expansive wouldn't be conducive to REXing would be if you: 1. never research bronze working, 2. have no trees, or 3. have poor production potential (i.e no hills or only desert hills or only water tiles).

Creative culture boost synergizes well with REXing especially if you go for idealistic 'fat cross' cities rather than cities of convenience, but nothing about it makes producing settlers or stealing cities easier---except the situation where you found a high production 'fat cross' (e.g. stone and copper and elephants in one fat cross). If you REX by founding production cities around production bonuses---ok, I could say Creative = REXing.

 

[SirDrake]

Anybody run a test to see how much of what gets built?

I did-- Normal speed, Prince level, no barbs. I used World Builder to stick the other Civ on another continent, but I built a modest number of units (for simulation purposes). I also did not found a religion, assuming it would be less reliable on a larger map/ higher difficulty.

I played Washington, who is Expansive (and Charismatic for the extra happy).

I am not very fast at REXing, so the results are inconclusive. Probably, I built a few Libraries when I should have been working on Settler #7 or #8. But I did whip and chop fairly liberally.


Tech Path: Worker Techs, Sailing, Writing, Metal Working, Math, Currency, CoL.

I stopped one turn before discovering Code of Laws. Turn 119.


Cities: 9

Total city maintenance: 54

Average maintenance: 6.22

Workers built: 13

Warriors: 4
Archers: 7
Axemen: 1
Galley: 1
Scout: 1


Granaries Built: 9
Monuments: 5
Libraries: 7
Barracks: 1
Lighthouses: 2


Hammer savings for Granaries (provided by Expansive): 270
Maximum hammer savings for workers (from Expansive) = 12/worker * 13 = 156

(In reality, this was probably less than 100. The captial had three seafood, and there were simply times where it didn't seem optimal to whip away a citizen who was working a 5-food 2-commerce tile).

Total hammer savings: ~400


With Creative, all 5 Monuments would have been unnecessary. Hammers saved = 150
The libraries would have come at double-speed, but let's use 5 instead of 7 (because I built too many for a good REX). Savings = 45/Library * 5 = 225

Total hammer savings: ~375


And finally: There were 24 tiles being worked that had 2 or more
Realistically, if I'd been playing a financial leader, this number would have been closer to 30 because the tile selection would have followed the leader's trait (I was running about 4 Scientists at the time).

Total hammer savings from financial: 0
Total gold savings if, magically, 9 Courthouses appeared: 27
Total commerce rate increase for a Financial leader: ~30



Conclusions & Thoughts

Creative looks good on paper, but it depends a great deal on the city locations. If most cities have a food resource in the 3 x 3 square, you are much better off with double-speed Granaries that will allow them to grow faster sooner. However, if your cities are positioned with the BFC in mind and most of the food resources are in their BFC outer rings, you're better off with the ultra-fast Creative border pop.

And of course, the Worker savings start to roll in very early, which means they have more time to pay dividends (as it were). So I'll say that Expansive is better than Creative.

Nonetheless, I voted for Financial.


But the best combination of REX traits is Aggressive + Expansive.

-J

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I went with random leader on Fri night and got Ragnar. As it turns out, aggressive and financial make a decent REXing trait combo. Aggressive to take cities by force and financial to plop down riverside cottages for immediate economic relief. LoL. My vote remains with ORG as I would have over run the entire continent with ORG.

The economic gains of some traits are really nice for having a lot of early cities, but there's a bit more to it than just having a slightly stronger economy... If you're aggressively land grabbing, you're likely doing it because you're aggressively land grabbing from someone else. As in, your borders will be competing with someone else's. You probably want to try and create a border wall, seal off areas.

Well, the ORG actually helps much more in the mid-game to early late game when the civics that are being used will cost more (bureaucracy, organized religion, representation) and the more cities with more population you have, the higher the civic costs get. So when you have MORE cities with HIGH populations, ORG trait is amazing. As good as free 15 turn (marathon) border pops are, I'll take the quick whip courthouses and half price civic maintenance over it any day. After all, if I'm aggressive TAKING land, I'd rather go the extra few turns take and raze a city to allow breathing room than to suffer higher maintenance costs and have a free border pop.

That's my style, though

 

[DaveMurray]

I never understood the appeal of 500AD Lib other to just say that you did it. Certainly 1000AD Rifles would be more appealing. Or if you're like and are pushing a domination game on Huge Pangea a 1090AD Statue of Liberty on Monarch.

Back on topic, I would have to consider ORG to be the best. You can still crash your economy with heavy rexing as ORG but you can do it with more cities and more cities is usually a good thing.