Civ Traits Revisited

[WoundedKnight]

A couple weeks ago I posted a thread about civ traits before the game was released. Now that I've had an opportunity to get started on CIV, here is a revisited analysis of my thoughts about Civ Traits.

Strong traits

Industrious: I thought this would be weaker, but it is actually quite good. The real power of industrious, with +50% wonder build speed, is that getting wonders allows you to reproduce benefits of almost all other traits, although at the cost of time and city production. Getting stonehenge will give you an obelisk in each city -- giving you expanding borders everywhere like the culture trait. Getting the parthenon will give you +50% great leaders in all cities, plus great prophet points. Getting pyramids will give you the opportunity to switch to any government civic, instantly enhancing your situation. True, the wonders are slightly watered down from C3C, but still quite good IMO. Industrious is my favorite trait.

Philosophical: 100% great people is fabulous. Problem is, you have to have great people points to get great people (200% of 0 is still 0). And what generates the most GP points? Wonders, that industrious will beat you to (unless you already have great people to rush the wonders in the first place). To assign specialist citizens, you must have special buildings available in the city or certain civics. So this really doesn't come into play much until the mid game, while the industrious wonder-building bonus applies right away. Of course no other trait can quite reproduce philosophical. The parthenon's +50% GP eventually expires, and is still below 100%. The ideal thing would be to build (or capture) wonders producing GP points AND have the philosophical trait, but in many cases the philosophical nation will get beat to the punch. An excellent trait overall.

Financial: The best financial trait, IMO. Initially the bonus applies only to coastal squares, but once you have a worker army and are developing your cities, the financial benefits of +1 gold in every tile already producing 2 or more become massive and can far outstrip the benefits of the organized trait. This can put you ahead in research, trade/finances, or whatever you want. In the mid and late game, this can give a huge research boost, letting you devote most of your income to science while poorer civs find their limited income consumed by upkeep and maintenance costs.

My favorite combo is industrious/financial or philosophical/financial. Others may find combinations better suited to their playing styles.

Medium traits

Expansive: Initially I thought this would be really good, but after playing a few games with it, I have to downgrade it to medium. The scout is nice in the early game. The granary bonus seems nice, but unfortunately in the early game when you need this the most, granary is a few techs away, and by the time you get it most cities are size 3-4 anyway. I haven't found granaries as useful in the early and mid-game of CIV as in C3C, as food is relatively more restricted in CIV. The ability to grow to +2 sizes larger before unhealthiness kicks in is nice, but there are lots of buildings that can provide this same bonus, as well as some civics. Since unhappy pops produce nothing, I have found that keeping pops happy is probably more important than maximizing city size. And by building all your cities (or as many as possible) near fresh water, you get the same +2 health bonus that the expansive place provides computer players (that seem to care little about whether fresh water is available or not). A middle of the road trait, has its uses but not the best.

Aggressive: Can't comment on this as I am not much of a warmonger type. I'd rather build a barracks (4xp/unit) in one or two cities and build my military units there rather than take a trait that for my play style has few benefits. Aggressive warmongers may get more good out of this.

Weak traits

Organized: A weak trait as it only comes in to play when you have the techs to switch to civic types that require more upkeep. Additional problems include that some of the best civic types require little or no upgrade. The financial benefit of the organized trait in most games seems to be quite small. Consider organized if you are addicted to some very high-upgrade cost civics, but even then I think the financial trait produces better long-term rewards.

Creative: +2 culture per city per turn seems like a nice trait in the early game to expand city radii. However, Industrious civs can easily reproduce this with a single low-cost wonder like Stonehenge (obelisk - +1 culture in every city to expand borders), and culture becomes rather pointless late in the game when cities are well developed and have high culture from other sources.

Spiritual: Benefits are minimal as anarchy only lasts one turn anyway and I do minimal civic switches. Spiritual may be nice if you want to play around with civics and see what they do, but it is doubtful that spiritual will find much role for experienced gamers. The one real benefit to spiritual that I see -- probably a bigger one than skipping anarchy, in many games -- is that spiritual gives you techs that put you closer toward developing early religions (hinduism, buddhism, judaism).

Edit: removed errors about pyramids, and corrected "creative" which I had mislabeled as "culture." Switched aggressive to middle tier. Thanks.

 

[Stefanskantine]

It all really depends on your playstyle. For instance, IMO I think your greatly underestimating spiritual. Control early religions + flexibility to switch civics based on situation + quick temples = win.

But yeah over the course of a long, relatively peaceful game financial is always gonna come out on top, as well it should.

 

[DaEezT]

Aggressive: Can't comment on this as I am not much of a warmonger type. I'd rather build a barracks (4xp/unit) in one or two cities and build my military units there rather than take a trait that for my play style has few benefits. Aggressive warmongers may get more good out of this.

I'd upgrade it to medium-high depending on your playstile and AI aggressiveness (never noticed this word had so many doubles ).
It supplies Combat I to all melee and gunpowder units which covers a lot of nice units including infantry, marines, rifelmen and mechanized infantry!

The effect only shows when your units reach level 2+ because a lot of nice promotions require combat I (cover, pinch, shock, medic).
I played a warmongering game with japan yesterday and it really came in handy. Baracks + Vassalage let me build lvl 3 samurais and thx to the free promotion i could take cover + city raider right away which made those longbow defenders far less scary

 

[Pinstar]

I wouldn't under estimate expansive. Sure that +2 health can be matched with buildings later on...but guess what: Expansive civs can build those too, and ratchet the city size even higher.

Population= Power. Each extra person you can make can either work an additional tile, or become a specialist and produce GPPs as well as hammers, commerce, science and culture.

You can throw money at unhappy faces (the culture slider) but you can't throw money at public health.

I always use the expansionist trait. It just suits my play style. Here is what I've seen so far..

Exp/Aggressive: Both traits make expanding your empire easier. This actually makes the combo a bit less effective since you have strengths in the same area.
Exp/Industrious: Haven't had a chance to test this one.
Exp/Creative: You become a culture God, your cities are massive because they are both healthy and happy. Very strong combo.
Exp/Organized: These two traits go hand in hand. If you settler pump early on and make a ton of cities, you'll need the organized to keep your costs lower. The benefit of organized begins to wear down once you have everything under control and your final borders secure.
Exp/Philosophical: Another two that complement each other. Expansive allows for large cities, large cities allow for more specialists, specialists make GPPs, and philosophical doubles that.
Exp/Spiritual: Helps cover up a weakness of expansive: Happiness. By being spiritual you are guaranteed one of the three ancient era Religions. You NEED a religion to keep your large and growing cities happy, otherwise the expansive trait is wasted in the early game. The cheap temples allow you to keep your growing cities happy. Getting an early shrine and spreading your religion to your expansive empire can help off-set the costs of running said empire.

Lastly, my current favorite combo: Expansive/Financial.

With this combo, you need only to keep one word in mind: Cottages. Expansive allows you grow your cities to larger sizes. Larger sizes means more workers in the field. Each cottage will produce 3 gold once it grows into a hamlet after 10 short turns, and get even bigger from there. With lots of citizens working lots of tiles containing lots of cottages, you can grow your economy to epic proportions. With the amount of money this combo can bring in, you can more than pay for the increased costs of an expansive empire, and once you get access to the culture slider (which can be fairly early due to the high rate of science) you can throw money at any unhappy faces that might crop up due to population size. The benefits of both traits last the entire game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The Pyramids only give you the Government Civics, so that means that things like Ecology, Vassalage, Theocracy that would replace the other traits are not available.

The benefit of Cultural is the +2 /turn only in the Early game, Late Game it is the cheap theaters.

The benefit of Spiritual is the the fact that you can switch civics every single turn of the game to whatever combination will be best on That particular turn.

Building mostly buildings: stay with Organized religion and Bureaucracy, and the instant you start producing units switch to Theocracy and Vassalage, as soon as you are building buildings again switch back.

Want to rush something: switch to slavery or Universal Suffrage for one turn, rush it, then switch back to something else more effective for your general plan. (one way to beat an Industrial civ in wonders, 50% faster isn't any match for one turn)

Also Aggressive civs get cheap barracks...so if you'd 'rather build barracks', then pick an aggressive civ.

Organized is also probably worthwhile for the cheap courthouses, which hits general city maintenance. Admittedly it is not useful until later in the game when you have a big empire with courthouses available and high upkeep civics.

 

[fightcancer]

awesome post! thanks.

 

[Khaim]

Please actually build Pyramids before you start talking about how to use them. Everything you said about them is wrong.

I'll agree that Organized is weak. However, Aggressive and Spiritual are decent; aggressive is great for the units it applies to, and spiritual's half-cost temples are quite good as well.

 

[Nyvin]

On the first post, you didn't list 'Creative' in there...lol, what do you think of that one?

 

[monkspider]

I agree that organized is the weakest, however you underestimate the early-game benefit of Creative, and over the long term as well, it can reap some solid rewards.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Thanks for the feedback. I have removed the errors about the pyramids, moved up aggressive to the middle, and have corrected "creative" (which I had mislabeled as "culture" trait).

I agree that playstyle can be important, yet some trends hold up: in almost any situation, I find that financial has far better long-term potential than organized.

 

[Sailsa]

I don't think there are any strong or weak traits. I think any trait can be strong is you take advantage of it and weak if you don't.

Aggressive: This trait is a huge bonus in the early game. Half price barracks allow you to quickly fill your cities with them. Then with the right civics, you can get two upgrades for your units right away. And since melee units get the free Combat 1 upgrade, they have lots of options for those upgrades. Cover and Raider swordsmen can rip through archer defended cities. If you want to attack early in the game then this trait is a great bonus although once you move from melee units to gunpowder then part of the bonus is lost.

Cultural: The initial +2 culture per city per turn is a great way to have your borders take up lots of territory early. In one game I used it to seal off the northen part of my continent so I could expand south and steal land from the other civs while saving room for 3 or 4 more cities until I was ready to expand. Normally I use religion to expand my borders, but if you don't want to get an early religion (which may be hard on higher difficulties) then this attribute can do it for you. Also, the cheap theatres later in the game are very nice as well. I was surprised at how well this trait works with a military strategy. Build a cheap theatre in a newly conquered city and that with the +2 bonus will let you quickly get a new border and build up a defense bonus in the city.

Expansive: Bigger is better and expansive helps with that. I also like building a cheap granary as my first building in new cities. Do that a few times and watch your population soar. The +2 health is even more important on higher difficulties where you start with less health. And it is basically a free specialist in your large cities since you will lose 2 less food.

Financial: This trait is somewhat unique in that it is not a great benefit early on, but definitely pays off late in the game. Settle on the coast or build cottages and watch your money soar. This trait allows you to keep your research high and chose expensive civics.

Industrious: I think the real power of this trait is the cheap forges. They really let you ramp up production quickly. The +50% wonder build speed is nice but only if you plan on building wonders which are no longer game breakers. You can still get beaten to the early wonders if someone else has stone or marble and anyone with a great engineer can finish them in 1 turn. However, your forges let you put the engineers in the cities to produce the great engineers and rush the wonders yourself.

Organized: If you want to create a huge empire or try a domination victory then this trait is a great bonus. It lets you keep the expensive civic options to support your war effort and build courthouses quickly in newly conquered cities to keep your maintainence costs down. I didn't think this trait was that great at first but once you get a large empire it definitely pays off as otherwise your costs get out of control.

Philosophical: More great people can never be a bad thing. This trait is nice because it can help in multiple ways. Give your cities the specialists to create the great people you need and this trait will speed up their generation.

Spiritual: One big benefit of spiritual is you normally start with mysticism so can found an early religion. Granted it is not hard to get one even without mysticism on easier levels, but I guarantee that human players or harder difficulties will make it almost a necessity if you want an early religion. The no anarchy trait can be huge if you use it. Originally I was only saving 5-`0 turns a game, but now I switch much more often. Any time I need military units, I switch, then switch back to build buildings. I can make cities happy until the temple or theatre finishes then switch back, etc. The civics give you lots of options and this trait lets you fully utilize them. I could easily see myself changing civic options 20+ times a game, thus I would get 5% more turns in a 400 turn game. This can't be a bad thing.

I still don't have a favorite trait or combination. It depends on how I feel like playing, and even then any trait can normally be used to benefit any plan. I used agressive to quickly create barracks and have an army early so no one would attack, and the AI was impressed with my strength and more willing to "donate" techs to me while I rushed ahead in tech and eventually won a space victory. I used cultural control newly conquered cities and aid my war effort for a domination victory. I'm sure there are going to be certain combos which will be great in certain cases but I think you can win with any trait and in multiple ways and anyone who decides that one trait is the best and only plays with it is missing out on a great part of the game.