General trait categorizations; acquire vs. utilize

[Polobo]

When looking at organized or financial there really isn't anything helping you to expand to the point where organized can effectively reduce costs OR give you more tiles for cottages that financial can increase. Expansive, Industrious, and Philosophical also fall into this "improve existing" category.

Aggressive/Charismatic/Imperialistic and to a lesser extent Protective directly give you the means to acquire this land through military means (or quicker settling)

Spiritual and Creative are more hybrid in nature, with spiritual focusing on upward growth while creative focuses more on outward growth by helping you acquire and more quickly integrate land, although acquisition is somewhat more difficult (although culture flipping should be easier so this may equalize somewhat). Upward, creative helps somewhat by allowing you to run the culture slider and get happy and culture to expand already existing cities to higher population and land levels, albeit not as effectively as spiritual. Spiritual, with proper support, can raise happy caps quicker and without the culture slider and can switch between civics without cost to take advantage of opportunities to improve their military and building situation (most commonly) quickly.

Depending on the game and victory goals the "support" trait would be the one that is less important toward overall victory. Calling creative a support trait works if the goal is space but if the goal is domination then creative becomes a primary trait since the goal is to acquire more land. The support traits make keeping that land, without tanking your economy, feasible.

Now, all traits have some form of dual-role and can be made to both grab more land as well as grow/utilize already existing territory, but thinking of them in the as acquire/utilize is something that I haven't seen before (maybe I just haven't read enough) and seemed helpful.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Its not that easy. Financial helps you acquire a tech lead which can then be used exactly as you would use aggressive - to acquire more land.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Interesting analysis, Pobolo.

And although I don't think you really captured the true power of my favourite trait - Spiritual - it did get me thinking about exactly why I rate it so much higher than many (most?) other players do.

I don't think there's any disagreement that most traits favour certain strategies. Or that, while most traits have passive benefits for whichever approach you take, you'll be wasting much of a trait's potential if you ignore the strategies it favours.

Now, in many cases the favoured strategies will be pretty obvious - Aggressive favours warmongering, Financial favours cottage spamming, Industrious favours wonder building, etc. (These are just examples, btw. I certainly don't mean they are the only traits that favour these strategies). And, if you know what you're doing, you'll try to plan your game around making the most of them.

With Spiritual, though, the favoured strategies are a lot less obvious, for a number of reasons:

Firstly, the name of the trait is somewhat misleading - it's not really about religion (though having at least one religion is vital, and having several is extremely helpful).

Secondly, Spiritual only has a latent advantage in the earliest stages of the game, and the importance of gaining access to a range of civics (and, ideally, religions) asap, so as to start taking full advantage, is easily overlooked.

Thirdly, the strategies in question are more or less unique to Spiritual - if you tried to use them without it, you'd could end up spending as much as 20% of the game in anarchy.

Fourthly, the strategies require a hell of a lot of micromanagement (iirc, Imperialistic and Expansive are the only other traits whose strategies demand micromanagement, though neither needs anything like as much as Spiritual over the course of a game).

Finally, and most importantly, the strategies favoured by Spiritual are context-specific in a way that other trait-related strategies are not. Consequently, they're nearly impossible to describe in any general sense, other than to say "change civics frequently" and give a few examples (eg. "spend five turns in Slavery and OR to whip out some improvements" or "switch to [a leader's] religion so you can make a tech-trade with him"). Such explanations barely hint at the cumulative benefits resulting from a carefully-managed Spiritual strategy.

As a result of these factors, I think that many players only really gain a passive advantage from being able to change civics without anarchy. They may well change civics a bit more often, but they don't adopt the radically different approach to the game which Spiritual makes possible.

 

[Iranon]

It doesn't really clash with your classification, but I'd make a distinction between 'brute force' and 'convenience' traits.

The former give you a direct advantage to leverage; this includes military traits as well as FIN, IND and PHI.



The latter 'merely' allow you to smoothe out your game... CRE and SPI are obvious examples; I'd also count EXP and ORG among those with CHM being a bit of both.
ORG might require a little elaboration: If you're being kind to your economy, FIN is likely to do more as much or more for you during the early part of the game, even if aren't running a commerce-based economy.
ORG, however, better allows you to abuse your economy without facing total collapse... for example by excessive warring or overexpanding, which can have considerable strategic benefits. Similarly, there are usually ways into happiness and health... and if all else fails, you can whip away revolting, smelly citizens.

Generally, for me brute force economy > military > convenience. Maybe that's only because my play simply isn't tight enough to make the most out of small advantages and smoother planning... but a leader without any of PHI, IND, FIN seems suboptimal to me (a different secondary trait is often welcome, particularly ORG and SPI, although my favourite is Huayna Capac).

 

[Artichoker]

Actually, all of the traits will somehow improve your ability to control more land and/or improve your economy. Because, after all, these two basic concepts are tied hand in hand.

The categorization you are looking for, however, is the relative timeline by which each trait affects economy and/or military. Aggressive/Charismatic/Protective tend to make immediate improvements to your military strength by improving military units directly. On the other hand, Financial/Organized/Philosophical tend to act over an extended length of time, so that a concrete tech/monetary lead is accumulated over time.

This is why Aggressive civs will favor a warmongering strategy earlier in the game, whereas Financial civs may want to wait a while before warmongering, so they can leverage their economic advantages.

 

[Polobo]

@Artichoker: More directly I would state that I am probably focusing on the early-mid game and how each trait fairs in that time period. Obviously, over time any traits leveraged correctly can (and better) give advantages to the other aspect of the game otherwise you will either be out-teched or out-gunned come the industrial and modern eras. The classifications above really apply to the early game.

@InvisibleStalke: with a financial (for example), if you only ever build two or three cities the 33% (or less) bonus to commerce from financial can be easily overcome by a civ that has twice as many cottages as you (roughly speaking, probably even fewer than double). Plus, those cottages are more open for pillaging by a civ that does have a directly aggressive trait, and it is harder to stop them in the early game when you don't have a tech advantage.

@Winston: With spiritual my personal take from an enjoyment perspective is that I tend to setup my game so that I am either in a war footing or a peace footing (or GP footing), and set my religious civic accordingly. Slavery/Serfdom/Caste System become situational civics now that I can switch to as need, staying away from slavery until it is needed (and generally in serfdom unless I really need the extra specialist slots long-term AND don't mind resetting all my specialists after I work some slaves). The other categories are less prone early-mid game random changing and I don't often play until the late game so really can't comment there. Basically, I dislike the heavy micro-management approach to unit/building religious benefits, thus I discount the utility of Spiritual accordingly (or rather don't value it is as highly as some others who would do this).

@Winston: in what ways do you find Imperial and Expansive to require heavy micro-management?

@Iranon: I don't try to make an "optimal" argument, my idea was to provide an alternative way of thinking about the traits and for beginners especially to see how mixing an early "land acquisition" trait and an early "land improvement" trait can give them some measure of balance between war and growth. Picking two traits in the same category is going to lead them to a warlike or peaceful early game just because without the balance you NEED the primary early game gambits of the one in order to have both a strong economy and military in the later parts of the game.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Basically, I dislike the heavy micro-management approach to unit/building religious benefits, thus I discount the utility of Spiritual accordingly (or rather don't value it is as highly as some others who would do this).

Aye, having to rearrange all your cities every few turns isn't everyone's cup of tea, but anyone who dislikes heavy mm is never going to get the best out this particular trait.

Actually, I don't use Spiritual that often these days because the games take so long to play and require so much brain work. I'm jobless at the moment, though, so I might just fire up a Gandhi special this afternoon...

in what ways do you find Imperial and Expansive to require heavy micro-management?

It's not that the mm is especially heavy with Imp or Exp, it's just that you'll waste a lot (and maybe all) of the hammer bonus if you don't mm when building settlers or workers.

I can't think of any other traits which actually require careful mm to utilise one of their bonuses (I suppose there could be a case for Philosophical, though).