Improving Protective Trait

[pandamancer]

How about PRO giving you +100% on internal trade routes? Toku's behaviour will be a lot more sensible and Mercantilism a bit more competitive.

edit: AKA what @monkeybone said

Yes, that would be possible... In my version, I just want the commerce gained from trade route be earlier. So the advantage can be felt later in the game.

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So far, the opinions of the people are (starting to think this should be a poll):
a) Protective trait is good enough already - for those who think it is a builder trait, tell me how to leverage it on an isolated start? if it is a war trait (like aggressive), I guess the choking suggestion mentioned previously makes a fine point on that. But I still feel iffy about the effectiveness of that in some degree.
b) Faster espionage building - decent because by the time you get to build these buildings (assuming you are going for espionage), more or less you have met 1 or 2 AIs. in case you are in isolated start, Astronomy is just a few techs away
c) Wall/Castle happiness - pretty good. Although I prefer the wall happiness
d) Trade routes - someone mentioned that the GLH will break the game... Or, what if you implement the idea of @monkeybone? Is it still overpowered?
e) Bonuses when fighting on friendly territory - interesting in the sense that it closely resembles the Unique Ability of the Americans in Civ5! Is it possible to mod that in civ4?
f) Faster forts?

It seems like everyone got lots of good/better ideas. Keep them coming!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't understand the claims that PRO is an effective MP trait. PRO isn't going to break a choke normally, and it's going to struggle against forks. It's a minor deterrent to attack in that killing a PRO civ will be more costly, but that can be accomplished with AGG or playing a civ like Mali or Babylon also.

The most sensible buff to protective would be espionage related. Allow walls to give +2 or open a spy slot or something just for protective.

Before BTS 3.19, protective was among the strongest traits and became obscene with stone. Walls where chopped and whipped, and since overflow is capped, the remainder was converted to (at the +200% rate with stone + PRO), allowing potentially thousands of gold from chopping forests and whipping walls. Doing so allowed one to trade a few forests for essentially the kind of you'd get from a great merchant mission. Considering it still had the boost to archery and gunpowder, it was quite solid with that trick. Unfortunately, in 3.19 firaxis bugged overflow completely (rather than removing the 200% multiplier, they broke overflow entirely, admitted it, then never fixed it) and thus PRO was pushed back down to irrelevance.

With some espionage benefit, however, PRO would be very powerful as EP is quite strong. Happiness from walls would be strong too of course.

 

[babar]

I don't like the idea of an espionage buff, especially a spy slot. The AI's excessive focus on espionage is already bad for itself, and annoying for the player. I guess I just find espionage to be poorly implemented and would rather its impact was minimized.

I prefer the idea that any buff to PRO should offer something positive for players, because right now it tends to be only negative, whether the AI has it or the human.

It's a minor buff, and something economic would be better, but I was thinking giving ships Drill I might be appropriate, since historically the PRO civs often had good navies. But then it doesn't fit some of the PRO leaders very well...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

would be reasonable thematically and unique as a trait benefit however. Just because the AI is shoddy with it doesn't mean it would be an imbalanced trait. Maybe human players would bother to use counter espionage missions in SP sometimes .

Simply making the AI focus on stealing techs or destroying strategic resources (at war or plotting war only) would mitigate a good portion of its weakness...certainly with just those tweaks its stealing wouldn't be any worse than its current tech selection priority.

PRO isn't "negative" for players whatsoever. It just doesn't provide much benefit in a typical game. Inexpensive walls/castles and better archery/gunpowder doesn't actively hurt one's victory chances, however.

PRO really needs something on par with the utility it had with overflow to make it viable against other traits in the general sense. Allowing drill II to unlock amphibious and other special promos like AGG would help and should be implemented, but fundamentally PRO needs *something* useful to the development of an empire on a more consistent basis. Heck, even a large bump to internal trade routes might do the trick and actually make merc more usable, but something.

Espionage is not to be underestimated btw. It's extremely powerful. If a PRO empire had 6 cities and grabbed walls early it could potentially have enough to spy revolt down city defense in the early game for example, or steal 1-2 good techs. That would give it something reasonable to utilize.

 

[Kid R]

Feels like we have been discussing protective boosts for years And nothing's ever going to happen anyway.

But this trade route talk is nonsense - that would suit an economic trait. It's got to be in keeping with the trait name.

Walls offer protection. Castles offer protection. Archers offer protection. Where else in the game is protection mentioned? I'll tell you where. The city citizens cry "We demand military protection" that's where. Protective cities should not suffer unhappiness if they have no garrison. And/or get +2 happy per garrison unit in HR.

Or something. I probably suggested this before. Maybe even in this same thread

 

[rah]

What offers imperialism?

 

[babar]

@TMIT, I meant PRO was negative for the player in the sense that rolling PRO means you didn't get a much better trait. Of course it's better than nothing. Regarding Drill, I really don't understand the decision to restrict its available promotions, considering it's already usually worse than Combat.

Internal trade routes makes sense, except that it would encourage PRO to be a super fast expansion trait.

How about a free defensive unit with every new settler or city?

 

[MilesBeyond]

What about a diplo boost? Say, +3 points across the board, "We respect your mighty fortifications" or something like that. This would give the trait stronger as it would be easier to maintain Pleased or even Friendly relations, thereby avoiding war with most AI civs, without making the trait any better in MP, where it's already far more viable than it is in SP IMHO

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No SP only or MP only benefits!

 

[Drakarska]

What about a diplo boost? Say, +3 points across the board, "We respect your mighty fortifications" or something like that. This would give the trait stronger as it would be easier to maintain Pleased or even Friendly relations, thereby avoiding war with most AI civs, without making the trait any better in MP, where it's already far more viable than it is in SP IMHO

I don't really see this as a diplo bennie. AGG civs are still going to DOW you if they have a military advantage, it may just take a bit longer. Especially since there are quite a few civs that will DOW at pleased. Additionally, the bennie should be across the board IMO, not just for SP or MP only.

No SP only or MP only benefits!

Agreed.




I do like the internal trade concept though, it has some interesting possibilities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Internal trade is not MP only; it has strengths in isolation, while at war, with mercantalism, and if everyone decides not to trade with you because you're doing well.

 

[rah]

+1 trade route for every city. Since you can better PROTECT trade caravans.

 

[pandamancer]

Feels like we have been discussing protective boosts for years And nothing's ever going to happen anyway.

But this trade route talk is nonsense - that would suit an economic trait. It's got to be in keeping with the trait name.

I don't get it why people like to take the trait buff associated with the trait name "literally". It is like why not give faster settler production for expansive trait so that they can "expand" faster? Or faster courthouses on Imperialistic trait so that they can manage their big "empire"? I think we need to look at the root of the problem.

You see protective trait as of the moment is like a "passive war trait" that cannot be utilized effectively. If you push through giving "protective" buff, that problem is still there. Instead, what we need is an "economic" buff or "tactical buff" that can be exploited.

Walls offer protection. Castles offer protection. Archers offer protection. Where else in the game is protection mentioned? I'll tell you where. The city citizens cry "We demand military protection" that's where. Protective cities should not suffer unhappiness if they have no garrison. And/or get +2 happy per garrison unit in HR.

Or something. I probably suggested this before. Maybe even in this same thread

I don't agree with +2 happy per garrison unit. It feels too powerful and will make cities grow too big by medieval period.

 

[babar]

This has been suggested before, but instead of a passive internal trade route, how about a similar buff applied to Walls? (I find passive buffs boring). It could be to Walls generally, or just PRO Walls. If possible, I wonder if a multiplier to base internal trade routes (like Custom Houses) would be better than a simple extra trade route, since it would encourage a "protective" style vertical development over an un-protective REX.

 

[Rusty Edge]

What if Protective civs started with Mercantilism?

That would give a boost while still adopting a protective psychology.

 

[pandamancer]

What if Protective civs started with Mercantilism?

That would give a boost while still adopting a protective psychology.

That does not sound like a good idea because:
a) Mercantilism is a medium upkeep civic as opposed to decentralization
b) In early stages, you don't have buildings so that means you don't have specialist slot yet
c) A free "citizen specialist" does provide one gold (Note: not raw commerce). But once you reached currency or the GLH built. You will find out that you are in worse position than originally in decentralization because you are losing raw commerce from trade route.

In short, this will give protective trait a handicap instead of a buff.

 

[Willem]

How about PRO giving you +100% on internal trade routes? Toku's behaviour will be a lot more sensible and Mercantilism a bit more competitive.

Except that there's no way to differentiate between internal and external trade routes, at least not without fiddling with the CvGameCoreDLL file. One thing that can be done with Protective is to give them a bonus similar to what you get with the Great Wall. That's an increased chance of a Great General appearing when combat occurs inside your cultural borders. There's already that option in the Traits.xml file, but it's currently not being used.

 

[pandamancer]

Except that there's no way to differentiate between internal and external trade routes, at least not without fiddling with the CvGameCoreDLL file. One thing that can be done with Protective is to give them a bonus similar to what you get with the Great Wall. That's an increased chance of a Great General appearing when combat occurs inside your cultural borders. There's already that option in the Traits.xml file, but it's currently not being used.

Since I never checked the code for trade routes, maybe you are right that you need to fiddle with CvGameCoreDLL file. But technicalities aside, I think changing the internal trade route should not be hard in this case.

In Algorithmic terms (at least how I visualize it if implemented), it is like increasing the base trade route (AKA internal trade route) by 100% if protective and then decrease the foreign trade route modifier by 100% if protective.

 

[Ghpstage]

Since I never checked the code for trade routes, maybe you are right that you need to fiddle with CvGameCoreDLL file. But technicalities aside, I think changing the internal trade route should not be hard in this case.

In Algorithmic terms (at least how I visualize it if implemented), it is like increasing the base trade route (AKA internal trade route) by 100% if protective and then decrease the foreign trade route modifier by 100% if protective.

You could get something workable like that, but the foreign trade modifier builds up to 150% during peace. Plus, it would seem silly to allow situations where domestic routes between tiny cities were all worth more than foreign ones, and in many cases, even without wars it would mean that Opening Borders for foreign routes wouldn't earn you any more commerce......

It would also be an extremey powerful boost for the early game, even bordering on zomgwtfbroken on isolated or semi isolated starts. At the very least it would make GLH a much higher priority for Pro leaders

 

[Willem]

But technicalities aside, I think changing the internal trade route should not be hard in this case.

Well if you happen to have an understanding of C++, have a go at it. But there's no way that your idea will work without using the SDK, if even then. Personally I don't see the point. Increased local trade routes is an economic thing, and doesn't really fit in with Protective IMO. Something like I suggested earlier, or maybe a +1 happiness for having Walls, would be far more appropriate.