Changing Personality Traits?

[vorlon_mi]

Given that each added personality trait -- or upgrade to a trait -- costs an increasing amount of diplomatic capital, one would need a good reason / significant return on investment to swap out a trait late in the game. If one has chosen wisely, then a swap is usually not necessary, correct?

I'm wondering about the case where one chooses the "Developer" trait for Domestic to get the base health early in the game, while my cities are small. Later in the game -- say turns 200 and later -- I usually have plenty of health from clinics, cytonurseries, and pharmalabs. It might pay to swap that trait for "Industrialist" for the increased production, "Innovative" for the increased science, or even "Vigilant" for increased protection against AI covert ops.

 

[Aldor]

In my experience, health isn't critical (just try to stay above -20). It's probably more effective to just choose the trait you want right away.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I tried this switch in my Chungsu game last night. My health rebounded just fine, and grew much larger (above +50) even as I annexed some Slavic cities that I had puppeted earlier.

What I didn't expect was the broken agreements. The "Developer" trait had enabled a number of agreements that I had with about 4 or 5 other AI civs. When I swapped trait, all those agreements were broken, and the AIs all griped at me. The unexpected diplomatic cost is part of the calculus as well.

Perhaps this is a feature that the developers put in, but it doesn't provide the benefits that they thought it might.

 

[legalizefreedom]

That is a decent strategy since DC is less useful once all traits are maxed.
Health is generally low in the beginning and more than enough later, so you could just pick what you want from the beginning and if anything rush towards Biowells.