Preferred Leader Traits!

[Lord Parkin]

Pick up to four traits that you'd most prefer to see for our leader.

Obviously there is a lot more to a leader than just their traits - unique units, unique buildings, and even starting techs are all important as well - but traits are still quite a big factor in the game. And besides, let's face it, polls are fun to do.

So, go ahead and vote for what your personal most preferred traits are for our leader. Feel free to comment after you vote on why you voted that way.

Let's see how the votes stack up.

(EDIT: The poll is actually attached this time. )

 

[Lord Parkin]

Breakdown of my vote:

Financial - because it's the most generally useful trait in the game

Industrious - because as long as stone and marble aren't plentiful, it's exceptionally powerful; for instance it gives us a very good shot at important early wonders like the Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, and Great Library, especially if no other teams are Industrious (in the last game no-one was Industrious)

Charismatic - because bonus happiness is always useful, doubly so if the map maker doesn't place happiness resources in abundance around our start (which is pretty much a given); also, the cheaper promotions are very useful and are applied to every unit type in the game

Organized - because while the economic bonus isn't as good as Financial's, the cheaper buildings are some of the most useful ones in the game (Lighthouse, Courthouse, Factory)

 

[azzaman333]

CHA - Free happiness, cheap promos are of some use.

EXP - Fast Granaries and Harbours, cheaper workers.

SPI - Unrestricted civic changes

CRE - Cheap Libraries, and instant border expansions. Allows much more flexibility for settling cities, and monuments are unneeded saving 30 in every city. Also forces other civs to settle further away from our cities. Useful no matter the situation.

 

[hell_hound]

Cha- See above
Cre- See above
Org- See above
Fin- See above

 

[fed1943]

Finantial - the king of commerce of water,hard to be wrong with.

Philisophical - give it food, it shall give you everything.

Spiritual - to change freely, and a lot, Civics and Religions.

Creative - an easier play, just put the cities where you want; and libraries.

 

[AlphaShard]

Fin: We need all the Commerce we can get
Phil: More GP points is always a good thing
Imp: Help get out settlers quicker
Cre: Help in the early part of establishing our territory. Nothing can expand Culture borders like Cre can. Even with Monuments you have to whip to get them out quicker. By then the Cre leader city has already expanded to it's full BFC.

 

[azzaman333]

lol, no votes for AGG or PRO (not at all surprising)

 

[Lord Parkin]

Yep. And Creative is doing as well as Financial at the moment, which is interesting. Expansive only has one vote, which I'm surprised by, as it's a pretty decent trait.

 

[AlphaShard]

Which means we may end up using Williem

 

[Allan79]

Financial, Imperialistic, Creative and Organized. Those are the traits I usually go for incl philosophy.

 

[caveman1917]

Civ A:
1. Philosophical. This lends itself more to a SE.
Advantages: It's probably unlikely this game is still undecided by the post-emancipation era, and given that we can expect a lot of warfare going on it would keep us relatively safe from our economy being pillaged.
Disadvantage would be the micromanaging involved.

2. Charismatic. Extra happiness for synergy in SE. Cheap unit upgrades are also very nice.

Civ B:
1. Industrious. So it can build the wonders for Civ A, giving us effectively an Ind-Phi combo. Also it would be very important to get the Pyramids in this strategy.

2. Imperialistic. Just so we could get the Romans as Civ B and their lovely praetorians Otherwise probably take creative as 2nd trait. Org or even Agg might do too though.


If early contact is a given (and i suppose it is), we might perhaps expect a more pangeae-type of map, which would undermine Fin a bit.

Spiritual may look like a good idea at first sight. However, since in this setting we have two civs which we can specialize towards different aspects, we may not need to change civics that much after all.

 

[DaveShack]

FIN, obvious especially if tech trading is off
CRE, allows better city placement knowing borders will expand quickly
CHA, higher happy cap means higher population. Population wins
IMP, fast settlers, faster growth, higher population - population wins

 

[Lord Parkin]

Spiritual may look like a good idea at first sight. However, since in this setting we have two civs which we can specialize towards different aspects, we may not need to change civics that much after all.

We can also just start a Golden Age to change civics without Anarchy.

 

[caveman1917]

We can also just start a Golden Age to change civics without Anarchy.

True. So that's maybe a better argument for philosophical over spiritual. Since you can gift GP for golden ages (civics changes) but not the spiritual trait which would be limited to one civ.

 

[pindicator]

Financial - no explanation needed
Expansive - my 2nd fav economic trait
Charismatic - Tolstoy's favorite trait, it's good in War & Peace
Creative/Spiritual/Organized/Industrious - these all are about even but I marked Creative in the poll due to cheap libraries + free border pops. Really, when it gets down to this level it's more about strategy -- do we plan on pursuing wonders (IND) or are we playing a torroidal map with HRE (ORG) or do we plan on swapping civics a lot or playing a religion based strategy (SPI)?


I wouldn't be against going for other traits if we had a clear strategy with it. For example, with 2 civs it seems like IMP & EXP gain a bit -- the ability to create cheap workers & settlers and gift them across civs would be a boon.

 

[azzaman333]

Civ A:
1. Philosophical. This lends itself more to a SE.
Advantages: It's probably unlikely this game is still undecided by the post-emancipation era, and given that we can expect a lot of warfare going on it would keep us relatively safe from our economy being pillaged.
Disadvantage would be the micromanaging involved.

Philo is much weaker without AIs to abuse diplomatically (without the 'Mids at least).

Civ B:
1. Industrious. So it can build the wonders for Civ A, giving us effectively an Ind-Phi combo. Also it would be very important to get the Pyramids in this strategy.

I don't really rate Ind-Phi as a great combo anyway. It's not Fin/Org.

If early contact is a given (and i suppose it is), we might perhaps expect a more pangeae-type of map, which would undermine Fin a bit.

It still wouldn't stop it from being the most powerful trait. If it's two civs, one has to be financial or its game over for us from the start.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I don't really rate Ind-Phi as a great combo anyway. It's not Fin/Org.

Moreover you can only have one trait or the other at any one time (depending on which civ has control of the city). So while you're building the wonders you're not Philosophical, and once you gift the city it can no longer build wonders as fast. Not to mention I think when gifting a city its GP counter resets to 0, so this is not a good thing to do regularly.

 

[DaveShack]

Not to mention I think when gifting a city its GP counter resets to 0, so this is not a good thing to do regularly.

That sounds like a good thing to test directly.

 

[Lord Parkin]

That sounds like a good thing to test directly.

Yeah, I'd be interested to see the result. I'll try it later on, if no-one gets to it before then. But my assumption is that they'll be reset, because food, production and culture are all reset to 0 upon a city gift (this I've confirmed in the past) - the exception being if you already owned that city in the past and had some culture produced in it, then it gets restored to that level. Doesn't seem like much of an extension to assume GP counts will be reset too. But it's worth testing just to be sure.

 

[BLubmuz]

I voted:
Financial
Organized
Philo
Industrious

Some of you already well explained those traits.

Much will depend by the double civ/unrestricted leaders setup.
supposed we have both,
i suggest Darius and Ramesses.
The first can provide strong research, while the second can provide wonders, mainly SH, which will make almost useless the Creative trait and possibly the Parthenon, same for the Philo trait.

Civs:
Rome, for the great early UU and the UB (a market with +25% GP points)
Other great UUs are:
Phalanx (Greece, axe)
Cataphract (Byzantium, Knight)
Immortals (Persia, Chariot)
Samurai (Japan, Mace)
Berserker (Vikings, Mace)
Vulture (Sumeria, Axe)
Later UUs are not so useful.

Unfortunately, only few of them pair with really interesting UBs, thus the candidate 2nd Civ can be:
Byzantium - if we focus on a mid game war
Viking - if we need fast ships
Sumeria - if we prefer good UB and another early UU.

I'll add more (and think more) after seen some comment.