Mod for balanced leader traits

[noto]

So I was just thinking last night about making a mod with better leader traits. I didn't come up with new traits, I just wanted to actually balance the existing ones and make them better (in other words, do the job Firaxis should have done). Every trait is equally useful for the AI. For example, imp and prot are not the strongest traits, but having the HRE next door is a pain in the A$$. All civs are fun to play against, but not all of them are fun to play, mainly due to the fact that traits like protective suck for the human player. So this is what I came up with:

Aggressive: leave as is
Industrious: leave as is
Financial: leave as is
Philosophical: leave as is

Imperialistic: cheaper settlers and reduced civic costs (like organized), and no cheap buildings for balanced. Thus, the imperialist trait would be exactly that - the ability to build and maintain a bigger empire.

Charismatic: faster GG production and XP bonus (no happy bonus) - the second warmonger's trait, plain and simple.

Expansive: +2 health, +1 happy in all cities, +1 happy for monument and broadcast tower, +1 more health with hospital. (the expansive trait would then be geared towards having bigger cities, maybe cheap buildings, I don't know, would have to be balanced).

Spiritual: no anarchy, cheap temples, cathedrals, and missionairies. (yes, cheap religious buildings and missionaries means you can build up your religious infrastructure AND spread religion easier...it's spiritual...duh)

Protective: ah...what to do about this trait? Simple. Make a new promotion. Call it "homeland defence". Effect: +20% strength in attack AND defence when fighting within cultural borders. The protective trait means that all melee, archery, and gunpowder units start with homeland defence promotion. Why 20%? Well...it has to be better than 10%...15 still seems too weak (considering aggressive combat bonus is 10%) but 25% seems too strong. I think 20 is just right.

Creative: This trait is already pretty good...but it doesn't allow you to actually take cities with culture, which is what I think it should do. So, maybe only +1 culture at the start, but then +10-15% culture to all cities as well.

Feedback?

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Creative, IMO, is the best trait in the game. It frees you up from having to think about culture with every city you found after the first.


Maybe something to make industrious useful at higher levels, where the AI will beat you to every wonder anyway.

 

[noto]

the AI gets no bonus to wonder production on any level.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

But it will tech faster, and expand faster, which leaves more spare hammers lying around to spam wonders.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Cool ideas overall, though Imperialistic sounds too OP for city spamming - particularily coupled with your new Expansionistic o.O

A simple enough change for Spiritual would be cheaper Cathedrals - a no brainer imo, though I think cheap missionaries would be OP

You have a very intriguing idea for protective - I rather like it
Fighting boost within cultural boundaries - very clever.

Creative is OK as is but maybe it could say make universities give plus 6 culture or something dunno... random idea but it would make them more useful! Imo they are an expensive building that you mostly just need to get Oxford.

 

[noto]

Well the actual numbers can always vary, but what do you think of the core ideas? If the IMP trait sounds too powerful, you can nerf it a little. Example, 30% boost to settle production instead of 50% or 30% reduction in civic costs instead of 50%. Thank you for compliment on the protective idea. I think the homeland defence promotion would be great as it would allow a civ to "protect" its land with a substantial combat bonus but this bonus would be useless in a war of aggression. This would help the civ not only defend cities but also prevent pillaging, and as such would be useful to human players in both SP and MP. Yeah, I thought of making the creative trait give a cultural boost to other buildings as well, such as the theatre, etc.
Why do you think cheap missionaries is OP? the spiritual trait is almost useless for the first half of the game - when religions are being spread. I don't think cheap missionaries would make a huge difference...to be honest, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Well from what I gather Spiritual is one of the games most powerful traits if used properly, though I agree that it's not necessarily that fun in the early game. Still, fast building temples can be a surprisingly potent benefit - particularily if your cities have multiple religions.
Imo cheap missionaries would be OP because in the right situations you would be able to reap a huge gold reward very quickly in the early game. Couple this with a potent late game civic swapping advantage and it seems a bit strong. One idea would be to allow the building of missionaries w/o monasteries a la Organized Religion, or maybe just tie your idea for fast building missionaries into an additional boost from using Organized Religion if you are feeling adventurous

Is your IMP trait intended to be a sort of replacement for the Organized trait? Organized seems like a really cobbled together trait anyway, so maybe I'm in favor of it. Perhaps nerf the civic cost reduction to 30% and throw in fast building courthouses?

 

[MyOtherName]

Creative: This trait is already pretty good...but it doesn't allow you to actually take cities with culture, which is what I think it should do. So, maybe only +1 culture at the start, but then +10-15% culture to all cities as well.

Creative is good, but does it really need to be nerfed like that? Losing 5 turns (normal speed) on every city you build during the initial expansion phase is pretty harsh.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Rather than see the weaker traits improved I'd rather see the stronger traits weakened, especially Financial which is massively OP and should only give a bonus to Gold rather than Commerce in general

 

[Ammar]

Creative is good, but does it really need to be nerfed like that? Losing 5 turns (normal speed) on every city you build during the initial expansion phase is pretty harsh.

If that would be that harsh how could a non-creative civ manage? But really, it's not as if the city does do nothing at all during those 5 turns. You can use that time constructively.

@topic : IMO traits are fine like they are.

 

[MyOtherName]

If that would be that harsh how could a non-creative civ manage?

By exploiting its traits to play catch-up.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Erm I wouldn't start nerfing traits Amazon... eventually we'll end up with them removed all together and that would make for a bland experience imo

 

[noto]

I don't know if financial is OP. You have to remember that there are HUGE gaps between the military techs in Civ, so that a tech lead doesn't necessarily mean you'll have access to better units. Therefore, if you're playing Korea and I'm playing Japan, sure, you might be 5 techs ahead of me, but we're still using the same units and my units will crush yours.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Cool ideas overall, though Imperialistic sounds too OP for city spamming - particularily coupled with your new Expansionistic o.O

JOAO!!!

A simple enough change for Spiritual would be cheaper Cathedrals - a no brainer imo, though I think cheap missionaries would be OP

Actually i don't think it's that OP.

How about this for Spiritual:

No Anarchy
Cheaper Cathedrals, Temples (and maybe missionary's) (i excluded monastary)
Spreads State religion faster? (like a weaker Shrine effect)

You have a very intriguing idea for protective - I rather like it
Fighting boost within cultural boundaries - very clever.

Agreed.

Creative is OK as is but maybe it could say make universities give plus 6 culture or something dunno... random idea but it would make them more useful! Imo they are an expensive building that you mostly just need to get Oxford.

And your just ignoring the 25% research?

Creative: This trait is already pretty good...but it doesn't allow you to actually take cities with culture, which is what I think it should do. So, maybe only +1 culture at the start, but then +10-15% culture to all cities as well.

nah doesn't seem right.

Any other ideas?

Creative could also mean Creative on the battlefield, not just creative in making buildings and stuff.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Certainly the 25% research boost is nice, but the university is what 200 hammers (far more reasonable under philosophical)? Seems so expensive to me :O

(... obviously I build them anyway )

 

[AmazonQueen]

Erm I wouldn't start nerfing traits Amazon... eventually we'll end up with them removed all together and that would make for a bland experience imo

Civ II certainly wasn't bland
In general I think the traits are pretty well-balanced with the exception of Financial which is OP. Since it affects commerce rather than gold, Financial Civs aren't just the richest, they tend to be the fastest techers too. Check any list of best leaders, Financial Leaders tend to be disproportionately prominant.

 

[noto]

@amazon: nah, I really don't think financial is OP. You have to utilize your trait, no matter what it is. Under Hr, for example, an expansionist civ in the middle ages could have a city with 2 more pop in it than the financial civ. So, let's say 11 pop instead of 9. 9x5=45, 11x4=44. If all the tiles were towns the expansionist civ would have about an equal research rate. Of course, not all the tiles would be towns, the pop might be different, etc, but I'm just using this as a simple example. Or an industrialist civ might have built the TOA and the GLH...meaning it would be teching faster than the financial civ for teh first half of the game. The imperialist civ would have a city or two more than the financial civ and would pop a GG faster in a war, and in an early war one GG can be enought to turn the tide of battle, if you use him to drop 20 XP on a stack. I could go on.... however, I really do think protective is not balanced. The only way I find it useful is when drafting gunpowder units. Drafted units benefit less from the charismatic and imperialist traits and more from aggressive and protective. So...if you're churchill drafting redcoats, the protective trait helps a little....but it's too situational.

 

[Ammar]

@amazon: nah, I really don't think financial is OP. You have to utilize your trait, no matter what it is. Under Hr, for example, an expansionist civ in the middle ages could have a city with 2 more pop in it than the financial civ.

It's +2 health, isn't? That would probably be only 1 pop more.
But I agree with you, financial is probably only seen as OP because basically everyone can utilize it.

 

[marc66]

Protective: ah...what to do about this trait? Simple. Make a new promotion. Call it "homeland defence". Effect: +20% strength in attack AND defence when fighting within cultural borders.

I think it would be too strong in the beginning of the game - the civ with that trait will be almost immune to quick rush. Maybe the "homeland defense" promotion will become better during the game, after discovering some techs?

BTW Original traits are good, but some changes can make them even better.

 

[noto]

Well given that protective is absolutely useless for anything else, why not let make rushing the Civ int he beginning of the game very difficult. I mean, what else is it for?