Is Protective the worst trait in the game?

[happyturtle]

No need to put walls up in every city, but when you have a city near a belligerent neighbour that you aren't ready to take out yet, a wall is cheap enough even without PRO to throw up and get some extra defence. It also counts towards your "soldier" rating in the demographics screen, which the AI uses when it's deciding whether you're weak enough to pick off.

As for unrestricted leaders, I have three words: Churchill of Spain

Derp. No, I can't have Protective Redcoats and Citadels

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you want to abuse protective with a UU, use Mali.

 

[Quibblesome]

or possibly Churchill's redcoats? CHA + PRO makes for some mean (and draftable) rifles

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Churchill's redcoats are either first or 2nd behind toku's rifles. Depends how much you get to fight of the AI pre-rifling of their own.

Protective mali though? Insta cover, shock, etc on str 4 unit, and they stay good for a long, long time.

 

[plasmacannon]

Play the map, not the leader.

I didn't say Ignore the map.
I gave him positive examples of things he could do, that should he randomly get a leader with this trait.
I've played a game as Hannibal of Carthrage with No Horse, Copper or Iron resourse. I used LBs to attacks my neighbor and capture his iron.
One can do the same with PRO leaders.
One doesn't ignore common sense either.

Let's set up an example.
One starts a game with a PRO leader, AIs starting fairly close with early rush UUs and a high likelyhood to attack (Monty and Shaka, for example), and one's starting Traits are Hunting and Mysticism, like with HRE. So, we will use Charlemange.

Now, it will take AH, TW and to hook up a Horse to be able to build Chariots.
It will take M and BW and to hook up Copper to build Axemen.
It only takes Archery (just 1 tech) to start defending one's cities from an early rush. One can also fogbust with a unit that is more likely to survive barbs, especially on hills or in forest. HRE could then chop out settlers to rapidly expand to a desired location with a defender nearby.
Now, I know you are thinking, he doesn't have any food resourse. One could research fishing or Ag, depending on the map. Now, you are saying but Ag and Archery, that's two techs, I'd rather go for AH. I'd have to say, if the map provides you a wet Corn and a plains Cow, then one could skip the AH and go for A and start the plan as above.
Also, I have archer rushed a close opponent too. They tend to do better than a warrior rush and they will defend a city afterwards better too.

If, I randomally get Churchill of the Vikings with PRO/CHR and starting with Hunting&Fishing and I have mostly seafood resourses and have an early AI with a UU of Swordsman or later, I can rush them with some great Archers and capture their city.

Now, this doesn't happen all of the time, of course. It is a matter of playing the map AND the traits provided, depending on what the situation and your choesn victory condition are for each game.

The comment about not fighting when having an IMP trait, seems like you might be letting the AIs manipulate you into ignoring part of your assets.
Again, it depends on the map and settings. A very fast game speed with an IMP/FIN leader could just tech to redcoats and stomp then. To me, those tech to curissiers to win seem like boring games. Especially, when one can pillage a foe to slow down their research to use earlier units longer on Epic/marathon games to gain more GGs, utilizing the IMP trait to it's full potential.

If I start with DeGaulle, I will likely go for StoneHenge. If I start with Roosevelt, I will likely go for TGL. If I start with Greece, I will likely go for phalanxs. Yes, I play the map too, but I do not ignore my strengths. To start with an AGG leader and Copper in my BFC and not axerush, if the map permits it? That would seem like a wasted opportunity.

 

[Giant Wolfman]

Protective is an odd trait, in that it does very little to help along a solid position while it can bail you out of some bad ones. Prior to the gold overflow nerf it was arguably among the best traits in the game; one of firaxis/failaxis' greatest patch travesties was to bug overflow entirely and never fix it, leaving protective in shambles compared to 3.17 and earlier.

Could you explain this a bit more? I've seen you or others say this before but never quite understood what Firaxis's change was and what its ramifications were. Specifically, why was Protective so good that it was "among the best" prepatch? I very much share your view on it currently (it can help save you if you're in deep but not that useful if you're doing good/ok), so I'm curious about what was so different before.

 

[bhavv]

PRO is awesome for China and Native America, and also with Unrestricted leaders its even more awesome for Churchill of China, Mali, or Native America.

Heres a saved game as Churchill of Native America, 1000 BC with Stonehenge and Feudalism via Oracle, try out some Drill IV longbow fun.

- Theology bulb is also possible here to add some Theocracy on top (10 EXP Drill IV Longbows, 3 EXP away from another promotion).

Snip

I agree with everything you said, but too many people here are too stubborn, and think that everyone is going to get copper or horses on every map. I still need to try out HRE for some early Archery abuse.

 

[plasmacannon]

Yea. Churchill of Native America or Churchill of Spain or Churchill of the Celts and all good choices.
Anything you can do to speed up the construction of a building that you might not normally build, but want to this game, because it is the UB of the empire you are playing, and you want to maximize their advantages, is good.
The Celts quickly built Duns and PRO/CHR archers with Guerilla1 before barracks promotions make great hilled city defenders.
The fewer units I can leave in a city, means more for my stack attacking.

I should preface all of this with, it all depends on the map settings, and game speed, bla bla bla etc.
Though it should be obvious. When we randomally get a FIN leader we can tech faster than an AI. If we randomally get a combat leader, we resort to depriving the AI of it's villages for gold and to even out his tech lead advantage. About half of my games are 'Always War' so, I can pillage without war wariness. The peaceful "tech up and win first" games are too dull for me.

 

[Tlalynet]

Those free City Garrison I and Drill I promotions may give you a slight edge in battle should your AI/human opponent not have siege weapons. But if they do, then those promotions hardly make any difference. Your units are too badly damaged to have those promotions give you any good outcome.

CG is awesome in 'abuse the AI' situations where you can build a hill\Forrest\fort and have them suicide on you. Other than that it is pretty negligible.

Drill I on the other hand is better than Combat whenever you have str advantage such as Riffles vs longbows\muskets or Anything vs Anything weakened by siege or air support. Higher levels of drill gives collateral resistance too, so if you do wind up taking the wrong end of their catapults Drill line is much better than the combat line. The drill line also gets significantly better as you go down it Drill 4 at Level 4 is fantastic, as opposed to the Combat line which is a flat 10% each time.

Drill is the better promotion to get free in the post-gunpowder era. That highlights protective's problem. It shines later and isn't good for rushing (since it doesn't help melle\cavalry)

Back when Vanilla was the only game available I would quite often build Walls and Castles to stop the AI from blowing down my defenses quickly. But after watching a dozen experienced Civ IV players master the layout of the land and beat down the AI in sheer numbers, I quickly found that Walls and Castles aren't anything worth noting.

Castles can be great if you go engineering early. You can take a few turns at 100% EP to get the EP lead easily at that point, or just take advantage of the trade route, which can be nice on larger maps.

Walls+Castles also add to your str rating. That helps with many many things in dealing with the AI. They will be less likely to DoW you and more ready to bargain if you're winning a war. If you have stone+protective it's an extremely cheap way to bolster your strength.

They also help with defense, but that's kind of an afterthought and not really important.

Of course, there are a few exceptions. Having a few Longbowman with a City Garrison I and Drill I promotion isn't as bad as it sounds. Protective could make a difference if your city is situated on a hill along with Longbowmen who hold City Garrison III. You only needed to promote those units twice, because City Garrison I was given to you for free. I guess it doesn't hurt to throw in the Drill I promotion, especially considering that Longbowmen already have a first strike even without Drill promotions. But all in all, this is one of the few times where Protective really helped me out. Because a Longbowman was fortified in a city situated on a hill, who already had the two promotions, it was difficult for enemies to defeat him if they didn't have siege weapons. He held up on his own pretty nicely.

I'd probably go up the drill line first rather than CG if up against a large but not too smart stack. LB's base STR isn't good, and if they're already in a city on a hill they have over 100% STR boost already. Another 75% is effectively less than 35%. Drill IV (or even III) significantly increases their chances of not taking damage. Taking even a little damage snowballs pretty fast with this combat engine, drill gives more survivability.

Also Drill IV gives a total of 60% collateral resistance, so your Drill LB's (or whatever) can hold up even against a catapult (or stealth bomber or whatever) barrage.

I can't think of anything else where Protective is really anything beneficial. Walls and Castles, they sound good when your on the defensive right? Only that Walls (along with the Chichen Itza wonder) obsolete with Rifling, and Castles obsolete with Economies. If you held lets say, a ten city empire, and built Walls and Castles in every city, then you just wasted yourself a lot of time building something that is going to become obsolete fairly quickly.

Castles do obsolete too fast, that's for sure. But see above, they're effective for things other than straight defense.

Castles do however, give you a tiny amount of Espionage along with an additional trade route. But cmon, is that really worth noting?

In an EE castles are incredible. Even without an EE you can go 100% for a few turns to get the EE advantage and have less sabotage headaches. Getting enough EP's to steal a tech is also not a bad idea.

Protective is only good for Archery units and Gunpowder units. By the mid-late game, you're often going to either be building lots of other types of units, or go for a peaceful win strategy. That is when Protective really starts to become next to useless. When I was playing such leaders as Mao Zedong and Wang Kon, I often felt that I was really only playing with one trait, instead of the two traits you would normally have otherwise. Even Tokugawa, who is known for having three free promotions for his Gunpowder units, is kind of difficult to manage, only because Protective is such a weak trait.

Draft Rifles on Toku can pwn the world. Rifle wars arn't normal for you? Infantry\Marines\Paratroops arn't your WW era army backbone?

If you can somehow get infantry before an AI gets rifles you can go down the drill line and have them nigh invincible.


I like protective. But its trickier to use. You either need to be ahead of the AI's to use it right, or behind the AI's to need it. If you're on par with them its hard to make proper use of it.

 

[Jabarto]

Could you explain this a bit more? I've seen you or others say this before but never quite understood what Firaxis's change was and what its ramifications were. Specifically, why was Protective so good that it was "among the best" prepatch? I very much share your view on it currently (it can help save you if you're in deep but not that useful if you're doing good/ok), so I'm curious about what was so different before.

Going off memory, there was a issue where you could get massive amounts of gold from chopping/whipping walls, since protective made them so cheap there would be a huge overflow. When Firaxis heard about it, they completely did away with the overflow mechanic entirely, so it was probably a step too far. That's the sane person's account of it.

TMIT, on the other hand, has a very different and bafflingly absurd take on it. According to him, overflow as it worked then existed for the sole purpose of chop/whipping walls as a protective leader to cash in on the overflow, nevermind the fact that it wasn't at all obvious to anyone who wasn't actively searching for it, and is completely out of line with what protective is supposed to do. People said this was too powerful, at which point it was patched out of the game (bugged, as he calls it). Afterwards, some shadowy cabal of players with nothing better to do with their time started complaining about Protective being weak after the "nerf" that they "brought upon themselves", and TMIT has been indignant about the whole thing ever since.

Simply put, he thinks the whole thing is some sort of conspiracy theory with Firaxis and anti-protective fanatics, rather than an unintended consequence that was (over)corrected via patches. It's all very surreal, but what else would you expect from someone who uses the word "failaxis" unironically?

 

[vranasm]

^^^I don't think "play the map" is abstract at all. It's pretty much a golden rule among very good players. Basically the same as saying "play the hand that's dealt you". "Play the Map" considers resources, food, strategic resources, proximity to AI, number of AI, etc.etc.. Traits come far second to those considerations.

Hmm would not say it's so strict

First you can decide your game from T0 right at the point of choosing TYPE of map.
Civilization starting techs play pretty big role too.

And if I remember right we had there some SG going where we decided on gameplan T0 thanks to the author of map revealing removing all strategic resources.

As for protective...that could be fun for some abuse with some specific leaders (Qin is coming to mind immediately)

I utilized in the past protective for some LB/XBows rushes, I even utilized aggressive leaders, but Imperialistic otoh...

but yeah, protective is generally weak trait compared to other options (and even things like charismatic beat protective in it's function).

 

[Kallikrates]

I am new to Warlords and for now I like protective better than aggressive and charismatic probably better than both. The latter gives you faster promotions as you choose them (great synergy with Hannibals flanking UU), one extra happiness (in the beginning very nice, if you don't get religions).
protectives synergy with Cho-ko-nus is quite nice. walls and castles are often rather useless, because of pillaging, but with protective they are so cheap that it makes sense to put castles in trade cities (synergy with financial leaders)

 

[shakabrade]

I often forget which leader am I playing so I hover above that civilization symbol you have left of the minimap, usually only to check whether I am spiritual. All other traits don't matter much since I avoid creative and financial. Ok, if I start with Egypt, I will most definitely rush someone but that's why I avoid them too. I have played Tokugawa recently and since I waged cataphant war, guy was virtually without traits. Game still seemed normal (except part it was very hostile environment, but it had nothing to do with leader). So I guess I am a fan of ''play the map''. Creative and financial don't make me play much differently but only make games significantly easier. Same thing with starting techs: if you don't start with agriculture and hunting and have double pigs start, you'll tech agriculture/hunting ---> AH. It will delay everything else in the game since you didn't start with agri/hunting but that's the map you were given. So I guess, in normal games, you adapt to map more than you adapt map.

 

[bhavv]

Why avoid Cre and Fin? I suppose it can be good to play out other leaders and trait combos, but you can do that and still play Cre and Fin in other games.

Gilgamesh is Cre and Pro, and a powerciv in the early game with easy to abuse fast libraries (agro and wheel = best starting techs in the game) along with early courthouses, a decent rush unit, even if its slightly weaker against the unit it replaces, and Pro to fall back on as a crutch if you have no copper.

Though with unrestricted leaders again, any of Cathy, Zara, or Sury of Summeria are a lot better, but there your looking at the most OP Creative plus early game hammer saving available. Pro doesn't really help much with Summerias uniques, its just an extra crutch to rely on if you don't get any copper.

 

[shakabrade]

Don't know how to say that without sounding snobbish, but I guess I am a bit snobbish. I don't play Cre and Fin because I don't lose with those traits.

Creative is not a trait you abuse because it is some kind of strategy. It is passive trait which makes you skip monuments and allows you to grab fantastic city sites with resources in second ring without losing any time (and population if you whip) on building monument then accumulating enough culture for border pop. You can start city build with granary without fear of losing tiles to an AI. It also allows you to build cheap libraries and get those GSs out faster thus making that Academy and bulbs earlier (possibly faster rush, or faster Oxford later), it makes theatres and colosseums worthwhile, making Globe theatre really cheap. It all results in larger cities with astonishing bpt compared to other traits and you didn't do anything special to achieve that. And all you have to do is just play normal game. It is not active trait like Spiritual.

With financial, you never have to skip settling some cities because you can't afford them, you can pay higher maintenance resulting in larger rush army, you can get to those rush units faster because of better bpt, and can recover from rush fairly quickly. It is almost more powerful in peaceful games, and it is trait that is great for all victory conditions. It will make your rush date faster, your Space Ship faster, your cultural faster, your UN faster. And you don't have to do anything special about that.

Those traits spoil people too much and people become too dependant on them so they never actually learn this game. I don't do unrestricted leaders cause, obviously, I like winning under serious restrictions and am snobbish. My two cents...

 

[vranasm]

Don't know how to say that without sounding snobbish, but I guess I am a bit snobbish. I don't play Cre and Fin because I don't lose with those traits.

Creative is not a trait you abuse because it is some kind of strategy. It is passive trait which makes you skip monuments and allows you to grab fantastic city sites with resources in second ring without losing any time (and population if you whip) on building monument then accumulating enough culture for border pop. You can start city build with granary without fear of losing tiles to an AI. It also allows you to build cheap libraries and get those GSs out faster thus making that Academy and bulbs earlier (possibly faster rush, or faster Oxford later), it makes theatres and colosseums worthwhile, making Globe theatre really cheap. It all results in larger cities with astonishing bpt compared to other traits and you didn't do anything special to achieve that. And all you have to do is just play normal game. It is not active trait like Spiritual.

With financial, you never have to skip settling some cities because you can't afford them, you can pay higher maintenance resulting in larger rush army, you can get to those rush units faster because of better bpt, and can recover from rush fairly quickly. It is almost more powerful in peaceful games, and it is trait that is great for all victory conditions. It will make your rush date faster, your Space Ship faster, your cultural faster, your UN faster. And you don't have to do anything special about that.

Those traits spoil people too much and people become too dependant on them so they never actually learn this game. I don't do unrestricted leaders cause, obviously, I like winning under serious restrictions and am snobbish. My two cents...

you're snobbish, but that's ok because
a) you're excellent player not afraid of deity fails from tachy
b) you're completely right with every word

doesn't mean I won't play creative leaders from now on ;-), financial I abandoned long time ago...
btw you should show us some Willem of Dutch game for some extra cheese :-D

 

[shakabrade]

^^
Thanks vranasm

Willem van Oranje is my favorite leader which made me stagnate at civ for quite some time. Especially on Archipelago maps. I intend to play some HoF games in the future if I find some more time where I'll use all cheesy leaders and traits in my advantage but still with first try since I lack patience and time. I have recently played HoF deity game with Hatshepsut (totally overpowered leader). But you'll have to wait for the next HoF update to be able to see it.

 

[bhavv]

Basing any kind of strategy at T0 on a UU/UB is a invitation to a fail party.

I dont see how basing my strategy around dogs, holkans or skirmishers would be a fail strategy.

Basing any kind of strategy based on horses or copper is even worse. because from my experience you rarely get them.