Financial vs. Organized

[alex sword]

Madscientist: I 100% agree with you. It makes no sense to choose the best trait without consideration of game & map settings. That was my point. BTW, if you play raging barbarians perhaps you will find protective very useful.

Everyone: Comparing financial vs. organized, some people consider pure financial aspects. In real-life, when you do business-planning, you consider not only expected profits, but also expected risks. Doing cottage-spam, it makes sense to consider risk of being pillaged and being blockaded. AI is not very smart in these sorts of wars, but play online and you will see what risk I mean .

It does not mean though that organized is better. Financial = more profits with more risk. That's it. If you play with non-agressive AI, perhaps risks are lower. But you may change the settings or play online and check the difference. The point is that the best trait choice depends on map settings, game settings and game parameters.

 

[Iranon]

Organised is a warmonger trait in disguise. It allows me to keep cities I might otherwise have to raze. It gets the essentials quickly so new acquisitions can get around to something useful (build up or produce more units). It will keep my economy afloat in times of extreme War Weariness since a discount on upkeep is more valuable than a larger amount of additional commerce as that will go to waste anyway.
While it might not help win a war like Aggressive or Protective might, it makes the investment smaller and the rewards sweeter.

Financial on the other hand is possibly the most peace-oriented trait in the game, and this goes far beyond not providing unit bonuses. It won't net underdeveloped conquests growth, culture or happiness - neither directly nor by building discounts. Its single benefit can become almost insignificant in times of heavy warfare. It comepletely ignores the hammer side of the economy.
However, its peacetime benefits outshine Organised by quite a margin under normal circumstances. Its raw efficiency means it can also fuel your conquests, but an approach that favours it would be to spend a lot of time building up and keeping the wars themselves as quick and decisive as possible. Once things get ugly, Financial won't help you.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Imagine having an Organized, Agressive leader. Currently, there is none. But imagine what you could do with one. You could have all of the early attacking capability of an Agressive civ, in addition to the cheap infrastructure (from civics discounts and courthouse discounts), which you build in the wake of military production of a war.

There is such a leader unless you are playing warlords. In vanilla it is Tokugawa of Japan, in BtS it is Hammurabi of Babylon. In BtS you'll have to live with Babylon's crappy uniques if you want to use that trait combo, but oh well.

 

[madscientist]

Hammarabi is pretty damned impressive in BTS.

The UU assures he can get his civilization up a going without concerns about losing cities and they are fairly efficient attack units. Not the best and not teh worse.

The UB basically turns him into an expansive civ for a cheap building, similar to HC's UB turning him into a creative civ.