I still can't get over protective trait

[krikav]

Oracle can only be used reliable on CoL and MC.
If you stray toward CS or vassalage, you will have big problems pulling it off on higher difficulties.
Can be done in certain circumstances.
Marble/Ind I find irrelevant, the crux is to get the pre-reqs in time.
Getting both monarchy and writing in time for feudalism is a challenge, even if you have gold in your capital.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oracle can only be used reliable on CoL and MC.
If you stray toward CS or vassalage, you will have big problems pulling it off on higher difficulties.
Can be done in certain circumstances.
Marble/Ind I find irrelevant, the crux is to get the pre-reqs in time.
Getting both monarchy and writing in time for feudalism is a challenge, even if you have gold in your capital.

On immortal and deity, and possibly (haven't timed it recently enough to recall) emperor, the oracle is never "reliable". You might consider the cost of going there worth the risk, but assuming you'll get it is like assuming you'll win that 80% odds battle...no guarantees.

I've seen it go before 2000 BC on immortal. You'd struggle to get it that quickly even with a commerce start and teching right to priesthood with a lot of leaders. On deity the game can make it go literally before you can possibly get it if it feels like doing so. I dislike wonders that are crapshoots inherently, because there are usually ways to set up a strong empire w/o gambling heavily.

Stonhenge, GLH, Mids, Oracle, Gwall, ToA -----> NONE of these are reliable on immortal or deity. No fooling oneself otherwise. Each time one builds them on those difficulties, they are gambling that an AI won't clock an unusually fast time.

 

[bhavv]

^^ Unless you start on a plains hill with Stone and have some Plains cows and hills on top in your BFC, then you should be able to build any one of the early wonders, and even Glib on top

I used to say the same thing but then I tried it myself and found that building GLH, Great Wall OR the Mids is possible up to Deity with the right start and lots of map regeneration, but the Oracle isnt because the AI techs to Priesthood far too quicker than the player can, and the same goes for the Collosus (a waste of time on Immortal+ anyway).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

with the right start and lots of map regeneration

Sigh. We're not talking about a wonder being reliable if you have to roll 10 starts just to have a strong (but still not guaranteed, I've seen mids go before 2000 BC on immortal) chance to land them.

If you pick your one wonder, and the AI has the right stuff and does it also, you lose that wonder and are very behind. If you build a city in a spot, build a unit, build a non-world wonder etc you have those things guaranteed.

Sometimes starts are sufficiently bad and a rush isn't feasible, so one tries to salvage with wonders, but at that point you're taking a calculated risk to get out of a bad position. It's still a risk...just the least risky choice in this case. Usually, it's more risky than building worker/settler/military.

 

[vranasm]

I slightly disagree with your list TMIT on 1 point. That point is obviously Mids and to lesser extent GLH.

For Mids you have very good warning with GW and if you have stone that it's pretty reliable to build it.
GLH can't be quickened by marble nor stone, only good modifier is Ind so if you're ind starting on coast, it's very reliable thing to get and I think even without Ind (well I remember now some particular LHC game where I lost out on GLH at 1400 BC, but AZ got it like 900 BC in his video, just to picture how random these things can get).

Other wonders are more like gambits (even if as SGOTM proved, Oracle can be delayed for a long time if a team knows what is happening in the game, at least on Emperor)

 

[bhavv]

If you have Stone you can reliably pull off the Mids on Deity, Kossin has shown this in a playthrough she did with a BC Liberalism completion.

The GLH is always possible because it doesnt gain any bonus from Marble or Stone, to build this reliably on Immortal+ you can only train a single Settler prior to starting on it, but I manage to build it on Immortal with 2, sometimes even 3 settlers before it if I have lots of forests to chop.

Great wall is always reliable with stone too if you tech masonry and build it ASAP, its only the Oracle that is never reliable.

 

[Jabarto]

Of course, pre-patch 3.19 where failaxis introduced a bug in overflow, protective was probably closing in on a top trait if you took advantage of the wall whip + chop gold overflow. Arguably, that was "too strong" although nobody really provided a clear basis for that assumption. It's not like failaxis tested it. If you want to use the "seems cheap" or "immersion breaking" excuses, then why do vassal states, AI resolution logic, and quite a few other esoteric and immersion breaking features/rules survive that patch untouched? No, some people whined to failaxis and just like the idiots who decided that shotguns were too strong in mw3 with the extended mags "glitch" (ridiculous that a weapon is outclassed at the only range it is effective. That nerf is like nerfing ironclads in civ IV), they knee-jerk nerfed protective. Yeah. Read that again and iron it into your mind: failaxis nerfed the protective trait, which was regarded by most as being weakest, and didn't give it any compensating buffs .

Pre 3.19, protective WAS actually useful and good though. Often very much so.

Protective isn't about making money. It was never supposed to be about making money. It definitely wasn't supposed to be about making money by exploiting a mechanic that wasn't at all obvious to anyone not actively searching for it.

It really boggles my mind that you think this is a reasonable argument. I mean, the reasonable assumption here is, "Firaxis didn't intend overflow to be used that way, so they changed it". Saying, "a bunch of people with a vendetta againt Protective petitioned Firaxis to to nerf it by closing a loophole that most people don't even know about" is straight-up conspiracy theorist stuff.

 

[Iranon]

"Firaxis didn't intend overflow to be used that way, so they changed it".

"Not intended" is different from "needs to be corrected".
Unchecked, this attitude leads to streamlining all life out of games - its pervasiveness is a disease.

And if (regrettably) you take this road... why the warty mechanics that slap both logic and intuition in the face with a big floppy hagfish? If designers can't come up with something clean and elegant, they should roll with unintended consequences unless they demonstrably hurt the game.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

I think it was most likely a band-aid patch made without regard for game balance, highly reminiscent of the decision to replace espionage points with culture in custom games. Both changes had unintended consequences that were instantly noticable to players, even as they escaped any developer testing or follow-up.

IMO the takeaway from TMIT's spirited explanation should be this: that changes made without proper care can have destructive repurcussions on other game systems; and that such game altering changes lie outside the scope of simple game tweaks or patches.

 

[Jabarto]

"Not intended" is different from "needs to be corrected".
Unchecked, this attitude leads to streamlining all life out of games - its pervasiveness is a disease.

And if (regrettably) you take this road... why the warty mechanics that slap both logic and intuition in the face with a big floppy hagfish? If designers can't come up with something clean and elegant, they should roll with unintended consequences unless they demonstrably hurt the game.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite get your point. What does streamlining have to do with anything? And what "warty mechanics" are you referring to? If you mean the "bug" that TMIT mentioned, well, he's not exactly wrong that the solution wasn't a good one. But the idea that you can rake in gold by chopping/whipping a bunch of walls is about as illogical and unintuitive as you can get (so much so that I didn't even know it was a thing until very recently, even though I play Protective leaders all the time and always have).

I think it was most likely a band-aid patch made without regard for game balance, highly reminiscent of the decision to replace espionage points with culture in custom games. Both changes had unintended consequences that were instantly noticable to players, even as they escaped any developer testing or follow-up.

I agree, and the espionage example is a really good one.

IMO the takeaway from TMIT's spirited explanation should be this: that changes made without proper care can have destructive repurcussions on other game systems; and that such game altering changes lie outside the scope of simple game tweaks or patches.

This is perfectly reasonable, but this thread is about the Protective trait, and the context of his entire post was the relation of that change to the usefulness of Protective. If he was simply cautioning against reckless game changes, there are both better ways and better places to do it.

 

[Mylene]

Don't judge what you did not experience yourself
I've lost GLH before turn ~45, Oracle ~40 and Pyras ~50 on Deity.
...and there is nothing you can do. Important here is risk/reward calculations, wheter needed stuffs for the wonders will hurt you too much if you fail, or judging if surrounding lands are worth settling quick instead.

 

[Iranon]

I'd be surprised if Firaxis understood their mechanics themselves, most notably the combat system. Is it intentional that War Chariots beat Immortals against archers most of the time, and that City Raider is often weaker than Combat for its only purpose until the instant your units can no longer get it naturally?

The civilian parts are full of quirks too. Diplomacy, spawnbusting, failure gold, GPP generation, upkeep, maintenance, trade... unless they geek out big time, most players will have misconceptions about many aspects of the game for years. At the same time, most mechanics are predictable enough that veterans can abuse the quirks once they get past the obtuseness.
That's what I meant by warty mechanics: If Firaxis went for transparency and elegance, they failed. If they wanted to obfuscate and favour intuition over straight optimisation, they didn't go far enough (iirc, they considered a randomised tech tree... that's the sort of thing that might work for this).
Their approach only makes sense if they expect players to embrace the little oddities. If they feel the need to streamline them away with a hacksaw, they screwed up early on.

Removing overflow gold makes the game less consistent (failure cash still works in a very similar way) and elegant (you now need to micromanage to avoid losing output entirely. Firaxis had gone to great lengths to avoid this) for no real gain.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Removing overflow gold

It will just make players reload more often, IMO.

 

[vranasm]

It will just make players reload more often, IMO.

they already removed overflow gold in 3.19 patch... unless you play with BULL (or buffy) which fixes this.
I don't see players reloading more often thanks to this bug.

 

[SamSniped]

I hate protective because the ONE Civ whose seemingly pointless UU would be perfect with a PRO trait leader (French Musketeer) doesn't have a leader with PRO.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

they already removed overflow gold in 3.19 patch... unless you play with BULL (or buffy) which fixes this.
I don't see players reloading more often thanks to this bug.

I meant the wonder compensation gold. Did the 3.19 remove it? Because I never play vanilla BTS, only RDCM/LoR/K-mod.
Assume you are 1 turn from the SoL, after putting 20 turns of your best production city's hammers into it. And somebody completes it. Seriously, will this not piss you off, because you aren't going to get anything in return. IMO, most players will reload and whip/rush/assign more hammers and let it starve/build some workshops.

 

[vranasm]

I meant the wonder compensation gold. Did the 3.19 remove it? Because I never play vanilla BTS, only RDCM/LoR/K-mod.
Assume you are 1 turn from the SoL, after putting 20 turns of your best production city's hammers into it. And somebody completes it. Seriously, will this not piss you off, because you aren't going to get anything in return. IMO, most players will reload and whip/rush/assign more hammers and let it starve/build some workshops.

nah fail gold from wonders is still in... I thought you talked about the overflow hammers above build cost which should be converted into gold and was nerfed due to the prot stone -> walls trick. Aka nerfed in the sense that instead of fix they just bugged it ;-)

 

[bhavv]

Don't judge what you did not experience yourself
I've lost GLH before turn ~45, Oracle ~40 and Pyras ~50 on Deity.
...and there is nothing you can do. Important here is risk/reward calculations, wheter needed stuffs for the wonders will hurt you too much if you fail, or judging if surrounding lands are worth settling quick instead.

And thats just coming from you.

In that very game I was discussing, I started off saying that building the Mids is not a reliable strategy on Deity.

YOU were the first person to reply to that and tell me that you can build the Mids reliably on Deity without a problem, and you were who I was actually listening to. It seems that you cant even make up your mind on the advice you post.

If only I could find that thread again. Heres a video of that game I made though - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_bVrv2378&feature=related

Also I've never once lost the GLH on Immortal+. Unless I'm not actually building it at all, I'm yet to see that happen even with random AIs. There were two other Deity forum games I remember playing too with Joao and Hannibal, on both of which there was no problem with getting the GLH built. Maybe if you tried playing a different strategy other than spamming units all the time, you would be more appreciative of different tactics.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And thats just coming from you.

In that very game I was discussing, I started off saying that building the Mids is not a reliable strategy on Deity.

YOU were the first person to reply to that and tell me that you can build the Mids reliably on Deity without a problem, and you were who I was actually listening to. It seems that you cant even make up your mind on the advice you post.

If only I could find that thread again. Heres a video of that game I made though - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_bVrv2378&feature=related

Also I've never once lost the GLH on Immortal+. Unless I'm not actually building it at all, I'm yet to see that happen even with random AIs. There were two other Deity forum games I remember playing too with Joao and Hannibal, on both of which there was no problem with getting the GLH built. Maybe if you tried playing a different strategy other than spamming units all the time, you would be more appreciative of different tactics.

I've played a lot of games. I've seen times for all of these wonders that I can't make, and neither could you, obsolete, or even Rusten/Usun. If the game wants the AI to get them early, they get them early.

I've seen GLH go before 1800 BC on immortal. If you built a settler, you lost it. If aren't IND, you lost it. Hell, even if you ARE ind, depending on the start, you lost it. "reliable if on coast" my foot. Sorry, but that's flat out wrong. If you say "probable" I will accept that. Most of the time you will get it if you build it by 1500 BC on immortal. Not always though.

Same thing with mids. Vranasm can say whatever he wants about the gwall tip, but i've seen the pyramids completed by the AI before the great wall...so pardon me for not believing this "gwall finish date" tip.

If you have Stone you can reliably pull off the Mids on Deity, Kossin has shown this in a playthrough she did with a BC Liberalism completion.

Wrong. 100% wrong. Kossin showed some luck in getting pyramids. While mids were pretty likely in that game, they were NOT guaranteed. I've seen the AI get them before humans can possibly get them, Kossin included.

Are they worth pursuing with the proper resource? Sure. Are they reliable? NO. Claiming that you can *always* get any 1 of these wonders if you so choose is misleading and wrong. Beginners reading it will get a very wrong idea about the reality of high difficulties if they see that. Players trying to make a jump will have a marginally wrong picture of the relative tradeoffs of wonder pursuit (IE a wrong notion about risk when weighted against reward). You can make any claim you want, but I have witnessed games that literally prove you're wrong to claim any of these wonders as "always attainable" or "reliable". Use "probable" and stay there please .

I'd be surprised if Firaxis understood their mechanics themselves, most notably the combat system. Is it intentional that War Chariots beat Immortals against archers most of the time, and that City Raider is often weaker than Combat for its only purpose until the instant your units can no longer get it naturally?

Was it intentional that the same units with the same bonuses on the same terrain get different odds while attacking vs defending ? I'm virtually certain they don't know what they're doing.

If you mean the "bug" that TMIT mentioned, well, he's not exactly wrong that the solution wasn't a good one. But the idea that you can rake in gold by chopping/whipping a bunch of walls is about as illogical and unintuitive as you can get (so much so that I didn't even know it was a thing until very recently, even though I play Protective leaders all the time and always have).

If you're going to use "counterintuitive", "gamey", or "illogical" as a defense for removing a feature, then that line of reasoning forces the one making it to condemn failaxis for a laundry list of things many times longer, ranging from vassal states to worst enemy logic to speed scaling to barb galley spawn rates. Speaking of logic, there is no logical consistency in patch priority over the last few civ IV patches, and while civ V's have more consistency implications are...sobering .

This is perfectly reasonable, but this thread is about the Protective trait, and the context of his entire post was the relation of that change to the usefulness of Protective. If he was simply cautioning against reckless game changes, there are both better ways and better places to do it.

Changing overflow was a strict nerf to the protective trait. That is on-topic. So is the fact that they gave protective absolutely nothing to offset that. In essence the balance result was that protective got nerfed to hell despite already not being great. Considering that this thread is about how protective is a bad trait, I fail to see how that doesn't fit.

 

[bhavv]

The game I spoke about was the video I linked to, settling on a plains hill with a stone makes a lot of wonders possible, both mids + hanging gardens were easy on that map in multiple playthroughs.

Its definitely not 100% possible, but the likelihood of building the mids or great wall is very high if you get to settle on a stone plains hill. It didnt require any degree of luck, it worked for me multiple times as that was my very first Deity game and I played it several times for practice.

Im currently playing a game as Catherine on Immortal difficulty with a large rex map. For a test I didnt bother with trying for the GLH because I wanted to see how many settlers + libraries I could pump out ASAP. By 650 BC I had 11 cities built, healthy science, and the AI hadnt yet built either the Mids or GLH, but Stonehenge, Oracle, Great Wall and Temple of Artemis were all taken very fast.

I've simply never seen the AI prioritize GLH or Mids, so I think the liklihood of building either one is very high, and nowhere near as low as the other ancient wonders. The number of times the AI does go for either of those really must be incredibly low. I've also never seen the Great Wall built by the AI before Stonehenge, and I can definitely build the Great Wall on all difficulties before the AI has Stonehenge if I get to settle on stone. In my current game, the same Civ built both the stonehenge and great wall in its capital, which is a very normal occurance.

It seems to me that The AI builds wonders in this order of priority - Stonehenge > Great Wall > Oracle > Temple of Artemis > GLH > Mids. If any of the previous ones arent built yet, the AI will try to build those first.

All I mostly do in Civ 4 is play the early land grab game continuously on new maps as I get bored into the mid and late game stages. I've never encountered any difficulty with getting the GLH, nor the Mids with stone on Immortal difficulty. Any case where they do get built before I can has to be rarer than 1 in 100. Also in every Deity game I've tried (not as many, but I'm trying more and more Deity games now), I can still reliably build the GLH before the AI, even after one or two settlers.