How to play traits

[Underseer]

I am not very knowledgeable about Civ. I am just writing this to get the ball rolling so to speak hoping that someone who knows what they're talking about will take over and rewrite this because I think it would be useful information, particularly for people new to the game. Other threads exist that cover traits, unique units, specific leaders, starting technologies, etc. This post concentrates entirely on traits and tries to describe the best way to get the most out of each trait as you play.

Agressive

• Effects - Free promotion (Combat I) of melee and gunpowder units.
• Double Production Speed - Barrack, dry dock.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Build a powerful military and use it. As long as you're getting a free promotion, you might as well make sure your units start out with as much XP as possible. Build barracks, build wonders that start your units out with more XP, and use civics that start your units out with more XP.

Creative

• Effects - +2 culture per city.
• Double Production Speed - Theater, coliseum.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Creative adds benefit no matter what you do. This trait allows your borders to start expanding long before any of your opponents have developed religions or any other means of extending cultural borders. During early expansion, try to create new cities along the cultural borders of other civilizations as soon as possible. The earlier and more rapid border expansion also gives you an advantage in grabbing resources early in the game.

Expansive

• Effects - +2 health per city.
• Double Production Speed - Granary, harbor.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Play at a higher difficulty level. At most difficulty levels, health is not much of an issue and health problems are easily solved. Being able to build granaries more cheaply can allow you to expand more rapidly in the early game.

Financial

• Effects - +1 commerce on plots with 2 commerce.
• Double Production Speed - Bank.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Build lots of cottages early. One of the limiting factors to early expansion is money. More commerce alleviates that problem and allows you to keep the research slider at a higher setting for longer. Furthermore, since the Financial trait affects commerce (not money directly), it also boosts your total research output. The financial trait works well with almost any strategy since money and research are always important. Build lighthouses as with the Financial trait you can get +2 food and +3 commerce from coastal squares.

Industrious

• Effects - Wonder production increased 50 percent.
• Double Production Speed - Forge.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Build forges early (research metal casting). Build wonders early and often. Getting forges sooner and more cheaply has a big impact on production. Getting more wonders generally means getting a lot more great people, which can be used to great effect in a variety of ways.

Organized

• Effects - Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.
• Double Production Speed - lighthouse, courthouse.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Switch to more expensive civics sooner. Build courthouses for more rapid mid-game expansion. Civic upkeep costs are generally fairly trivial unless your strategy really needs one or more of the more expensive civics early on. Cheaper courthouses are actually useful as they negate one of the primary disadvantages of overexpansion. Play on archipelgo maps to benefit from discount lighthouses.

Philosophical

• Effects - Great People birth rate increased 100 percent.
• Double Production Speed - university.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Use your great people wisely. Many people seem to misread this, it doesn't boost your population growth, it increases your chances of getting great people, which are a critical aspect of the game. Know where and how your great people can be used for maximum effect.

Spiritual

• Effects - No anarchy.
• Double Production Speed - temple.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Switch civics often. Very often. This trait is not as powerful as it was in Civ 3 because anarchy only lasts one turn in Civ 4. The same rule applies, though: to get the most out of this trait, change your government around more often. If you're about to produce a military unit, switch to a civic that will give that unit extra XP at creation (theocracy, vassalage). If you need to rush a city improvement, switch to a civic that allows you to do so (slavery, universal suffrage). If you get into a war, switch to police state. A principle advantage of the Spiritual trait is the starting tech you get, which virtually guarantees that you will found a religion early in the game, provided you research the right techs.

 

[ritterpa]

For organized, I would add that you may be able to get 4th and 5th cities earlier since your overall maintenance costs will be down. If you're making much profit early on, it means you don't have enough cities--and if you don't have enough cities early on you'll be making profit. The organized trait may provide that extra financial savings that allows a quicker 4th-5th-6th city.

 

[Yao777]

For creative I would add that you can also build your cities a little further apart than normal because of the immediate growth. Also you can grab key resources early because your borders will grow so much more quickly than anyone else.

 

[Abacus]

Great guide!

Some more - I don't really know if these are good tips, but they've worked for me in single player emperor/immortal:

Financial - As someone pointed out to me, build lighthouses in coastal cities and enjoy the 2 food/3 commerce.

Organized - play on archipelgo maps to benefit from discount lighthouses.

Philosophical - Beeline for metal casting and build forges early, then assign an engineer to generate great engineers (the first one only takes 17 turns once your engineer is working). Then get iron working and you have a good chance of nabbing the Pyramids with a GE, generating even more GEs to build more wonders, and getting copper/iron to defend them. When using this strategy, don't waste time actually BUILDING a wonder, just add the wonder to the queue for one turn when the GE is ready to rush it; the city will continue where it left off.

 

[Underseer]

For organized, I would add that you may be able to get 4th and 5th cities earlier since your overall maintenance costs will be down. If you're making much profit early on, it means you don't have enough cities--and if you don't have enough cities early on you'll be making profit. The organized trait may provide that extra financial savings that allows a quicker 4th-5th-6th city.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the money you save from government costs isn't all that much. I do not believe the Organized trait applies to city upkeep costs, just the civics costs.

 

[ritterpa]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the money you save from government costs isn't all that much. I do not believe the Organized trait applies to city upkeep costs, just the civics costs.

You are right, but the cost of a 3rd-4th-5th city is quite low as well. So if you save even 2-3 gold in civics it can realistically make the difference between being able to expand and having to wait for a few cities to increase pop to work more commerce before you can expand. Granted, the cost is low, but every turn that you can expand earlier at that point in the game has a power-function type of effect on future growth.

 

[Heroes]

You are right, but the cost of a 3rd-4th-5th city is quite low as well. So if you save even 2-3 gold in civics it can realistically make the difference between being able to expand and having to wait for a few cities to increase pop to work more commerce before you can expand. Granted, the cost is low, but every turn that you can expand earlier at that point in the game has a power-function type of effect on future growth.

No, people won't stop expansion when seeing a red budget, they will just drop science ratio.

 

[Underseer]

Pardon my self-bump.

 

[Legionary37]

I have to say, after playing through several of the leaders, that Spiritual is IMO, the weakest trait. 1 turn of Anarchy is essentially worthless compared to the others, which provide at the least, cumulative benefits.

 

[MSTK]

I wish there were 9 turns of anarchy like in Civ III. Then people would value it more

 

[ritterpa]

No, people won't stop expansion when seeing a red budget, they will just drop science ratio.

I won't take my science rate all the way down to 0 to expand. But if you say that's what people will do...

 

[weimingshi]

Everytime I see people talk about financial leader, they always think of build cottage early. This is simply WRONG.

I played with Qin for 3 games now industrious/financial, on a custom huge earth map, emperor difficulty, 18 civs. It is not beneficial at all to build cottages early. There is couple reasons for that. You have to realize that only build the cottage is not enough, if you don't have a citizen allocated to work on it, it will never grow.

First, at beginning you have limited population size, allocating your citizens is crucial. Naturally you would want to work resource tiles first, after that the priority is either on population growth or hammer output, which means you got allocate citizen to work on farms and mines. early in game commerce is simply not your priority. Its far more important to get your pop size up and pump out some worker, settler and warrior fast. The +1 gold( +2 if you build along river) simply does not help you pump stuff out fast. A slow expansion at start means you run the risk of getting cut off by AI and have no room to expand later.

Second, at beginning you only have at best a few workers, so deciding what to build is important, if you build a cottage that means your farm or mine will have to wait for another 6 turns before its get built.

Thirdly, villages and towns only become powerful when u got printing press and universal suffrage, those 2 you will get only at industrial age. even if you manage to build pyramid (which I always do). I would only switch to universal suffrage somewhere in late middle age. Before this towns is only marginally good. but you have to work the tile for 70 turns just to get there. The cost is more than the gain.

But cottages aside, financial trait does give you a significant leg up on research even at beginning, cause alot those resource tiles will give you +1 commerce, if they happen to be on riverside, you get the bonus become +3 gold. and all the coast tiles will give you +3 gold too. Hence, early on your research boost come from those tiles, not cottages. I usually start build cottages around middle age, when I got enough pop in city to work them, and when you get emancipation civic, your newly built cottages will turn into towns alot sooner than you expect.

And the +1 commerce bonus applies to your watermill and windmill too, cause those improvement give you +2 commerce too, not just cottages. I personally like more balanced cities, so i plant watermill on every tile i could, the left overs i build cottages.

 

[MarcAntiny]

Spiritual

• Effects - No anarchy.
• Double Production Speed - temple.
• To Get the Most Out of this Trait - Switch civics often. Very often. This trait is not as powerful as it was in Civ 3 because anarchy only lasts one turn in Civ 4. The same rule applies, though: to get the most out of this trait, change your government around more often. If you're about to produce a military unit, switch to a civic that will give that unit extra XP at creation (theocracy, vassalage). If you need to rush a city improvement, switch to a civic that allows you to do so (slavery, universal suffrage). If you get into a war, switch to police state.

YOU should really add the fact that with this trait you start with mysticism which allows early religion founding that can add to your cash flow throughout the game. With Spiritual it's very easy to get one or two religions... often 3 if you want them... At least on noble. Higher levels this will obviously be tougher.

 

[Wlauzon]

Everytime I see people talk about financial leader, they always think of build cottage early. This is simply WRONG......
..............
And the +1 commerce bonus applies to your watermill and windmill too, cause those improvement give you +2 commerce too, not just cottages. I personally like more balanced cities, so i plant watermill on every tile i could, the left overs i build cottages.

Interesting.. some good info there. The hardest thing for me has been to get out of the "CIV3" mode. I just assumed without really looking at it that it would be best to start building cottages as early as possible, but now I see why my game really starts to fall apart usually around 1300 AD.

I spent too much time in slow growth and not enough settlers early in the game, so almost every time I end up losing the "land grab" that has to be done early in the game.

I should have gotten a clue when I played a couple of totally random games just to test out a barbarian theory, and even though I was trying to AVOID growing (that is, by not playing like I usually do), I ended up with 4 large cities by 800 BC... But I figured that was just a fluke so did not pay much attention to it.

 

[anton_z1]

But cottages aside, financial trait does give you a significant leg up on research even at beginning, cause alot those resource tiles will give you +1 commerce, if they happen to be on riverside, you get the bonus become +3 gold. and all the coast tiles will give you +3 gold too. Hence, early on your research boost come from those tiles, not cottages. I usually start build cottages around middle age, when I got enough pop in city to work them, and when you get emancipation civic, your newly built cottages will turn into towns alot sooner than you expect.
QUOTE]

I think for this reason Financial is a little bit overpowerful. Coastal cities with banks are completly insane. I play the game with 90% science.

Also Qin is probably the most powerful leader in the game. Fast forge + Banks transform any early city in a gash maker