Protective Trait-- Underrated?
- Thread starter PreLynMax
- Start date
SnowlyWhite
Emperor
speed affects protective a whole lot... it's from the same category of arguments that marathon is easier.
The ai chance to dow on someone is let's say around 1%/turn(let's say, obviously varies a ton depending on personality); if you play 300 turns, it's x chance to declare, if you play 3 times more turns keep in mind it's 3 times higher chance to be declared. Also, after you're declared once, then the declarations keep cascading, since you lose various bonuses(you lose minimum 3 - 2 from ob, 1 from years of peace, plus eventually extras like mutual military struggle and alike).
also, you'll probably get 3 times more requests on marathon for you to reject, contributing to souring relations with some ais to annoyed/furious. The % of games I manage to play with perfectly safe diplo environment are under 10%, while if you look on the boards, the % of games with safe diplo environment on normal are over 50%. Plus the # of turns in which your only medieval units are lbows(if you avoid machinery to directly bulb liberalism) is so long - over 100 - that any help those lbows get is great. 100 turns fighting at tech disparity is plenty of room for 2-3 wars.
But even on marathon pro. is the crappiest trait of the lot. If you have the energy and the material(forests - if you start in a flood plain/desert/jungle area, tough luck) to micro the chopping overflow from wals, it might beat agg. and that's about it. And even then, without stone, the overflow gold is on par with overflow from granary with expansive and overflow from racks with agg.
Beside the crap discount on buildings(walls and a the building that lasts the lowest ammount of turns in the game - castle - no matter how you put it, even monument has a longer life span, plus castle is placed on such a crappy position at engineering) combined with the crappy promo(it's crappier then combat, at least at level 1-3, further more it has a direct counter loved by the ai - mounted units ignore fs) combined with the way the ai attacks - siege 1st, so no matter what, if you didn't flank it's siege, you'll lose to his sod(or you already had enough units to beat him even in the open) make it hands down the crappiest trait in game. Which again, it's ok, as mathematically there'll always be a "crappiest trait".
Buildings providing happiness is controlled by the file CIV4BuildingInfos.xml, in your Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\Buildings directory. I wouldn't recommend editing the file in this location as it is your only copy of the original; instead copy it to your CustomAssets\XML\Buildings directory (which will need to be created if it doesn't already exist) and it will be treated by the game as the preferred version when loading.
Look for the line <HappinessTraits/> under the building of choice in the .xml file, and turn it into say:
<HappinessTraits>
<HappinessTrait>
<HappinessTraitType>TRAIT_PROTECTIVE</HappinessTraitType>
<iHappinessTrait>1</iHappinessTrait>
</HappinessTrait>
</HappinessTraits>
This will provide +1
for protective leaders on the building of choice. Remember that unique version of buildings are listed separately and you'd have to modify each one - in the case of putting happiness on walls with protective, you'll also have to put it on "dun"s otherwise if you played Celtia with a protective leader this bonus wouldn't be recognised.If you have trouble PM me.
fugazi
King
I prefer a solid +10% strength over Drill 1. I prefer Combat 2 over Drill 2.
Melee units let me take enemy cities and when they have more strength, they'll do so more easily.Yeah . . . melee units. Whoopee!
While we all go for the nationhood-rifling-drafting combo, there's a game before all of that and on monarch and above you cannot wait for that most of the time. I can see why people like protective, but I rather just have any of the other traits instead. Most of the time
There's a difference though in specialists and archers/walls/castles. One is key to keeping up and surpassing the AI in tech at high levels and the other means you aren't playing right as the AI runs and pillages through you lands.
Why do people keep repeating this? Enemy pillaging is not a weakness for PRO players. PRO leaders can build counter units and they can move outside their cities to attack pillagers. It's like you are suggesting that a player who lacks any ability in basic war tactics and who happened to pick a PRO leader, lakcs those bacic skills because of the PRO trait. There is no logic in that connection.
A strong city defense with very few units might encourage an enemy to instead go for pillaging, but then that's an advantage for the PRO leader, because picking off pillagers (if you do it smartly) is much easier than trying to take out a well constructed SoD. The walls and castles are not prisons, trapping units inside them.
Wait til you see the PRO player put a Combat 1 axe on that hill ("What? PRO leaders can build melee units? When did this happen?!"). Why any leader would let a single axe come in and pillage their only source of a happiness resource, especially one that can be defended on a hill, baffles me.
Liquidated
Goofed Up on Cough Syrup!
Amen.
Protective trait is akin to Organized in my mind. Just as Organized is completely worthless if you never go past Noble difficulty, protective loses it's utility if all you do is play Large cont or Pangea maps with balanced resources.
Try playing an ice age map where you have no copper anywhere and toku to the north 6 tiles and wang to the west 14 tiles. Tell me then that your fast walls and cg2 fs1 archers are worthless.
No trait in CIV4 is worthless when played in its proper context. If all one does is roll the same map types with the same food rich settings and perfect metal placement, you are only seeing a small portion of what CIV4 offers.
Cheers!
-Liq
Bandobras Took
Emperor
Bumping your power graph with having to pay unit upkeep is dubious? That's normally what I'm aiming for with protective leaders and walls. Good and efficient are relative, anyway. Playing at any difficulty above Settler is hardly efficient, since you're denying yourself bonuses you could have. People are repeatedly saying Protective is weak because it can't do what Aggressive can or Charismatic.
So what?
It also can't do what Industrious can, nor can it do what Financial can. If it were used exactly the same way in exactly the same situations as a different trait, then there wouldn't have been much point in adding it in the first place, would there?
I understand the strength of Spiritual just as I understand the strength of Protective. Most people on this thread seem to be separating one piece of Protective off from the rest and demonstrating how that's inferior to some other trait, instead of taking Protective as a whole (e.g. Drill is worse than Combat if you aren't using Siege to take cities, therefore Protective sucks).
I certainly understand people saying that the play style of Protective doesn't suit them. What I don't understand is people saying Protective is weak because they feel the game should have been named Sim Axeman instead of Civ IV.
Look at some of the synergies available to the protective leaders.
Sitting bull with his UB. Bring a gajillion siege units cuz you will need everyone.
Mao and Qin with Chokonus. Drill3 collateral damage monsters with just a rax and a civic/GG
Saladin. The best leader to have pre gunpowder if you draw a bad start and have no metal or horses. Or just copper. Or copper no iron. Or iron but no horses. If you have iron and horses then Pro loses it's luster with him.
Churchill. Uber Redcoats.
Charlemagne. A couple cover x-bows to deal to protect your landshects from shock maces and x-bows. Without having to use a exp civic to get them.
Tokogawa and the gunpowder units of dooooooom.
Wang. Well, he kinda sucks. His UU can beat up on the enemy SOD a little bit to where the extra CG promo might save you....but the least synergy of the lot.
Sitting bull with his UB. Bring a gajillion siege units cuz you will need everyone.
Mao and Qin with Chokonus. Drill3 collateral damage monsters with just a rax and a civic/GG
Saladin. The best leader to have pre gunpowder if you draw a bad start and have no metal or horses. Or just copper. Or copper no iron. Or iron but no horses. If you have iron and horses then Pro loses it's luster with him.
Churchill. Uber Redcoats.
Charlemagne. A couple cover x-bows to deal to protect your landshects from shock maces and x-bows. Without having to use a exp civic to get them.
Tokogawa and the gunpowder units of dooooooom.
Wang. Well, he kinda sucks. His UU can beat up on the enemy SOD a little bit to where the extra CG promo might save you....but the least synergy of the lot.
more like a military academy. But the AI also gets this as well. And if there are leaders with high military unit spam coding, that is just bad juju.
What happens when you're on the bad side of that? You will realise just how loooooong that time frame can be.
That is usually as the game has progressed and the player compensates for the AI bonuses with superior decision making abilities. People often mistake the gunpowder era as the period when Protective really shines. I disagree. At that stage of the game it is all about siege units and collateral damage. By the time the cannons have finished with you, you would need CG50 to survive with your shredded little troops. It is in the early game when the human playing on a level that challenges his/her abilities really benefits from Protective. Playing from a tech inferiority at times when a cheap wall/castle might save a city. Or that extra CG promo on your defenders means you might have 1 or two left when the smoke clears.2. Some people gain and hold tech leads on deity. I'm not one of them, but they'd have a hard time moving up
And a lot of maps are diplomatic nightmares. On standard size you usually only have 2-3 ai on your landmass. Just keep one or two happy and attack the third. Try a huge map. You usually have 5-6 ai on your landmass. pretty much whoever you attack has friends that you take a diplohit from. Everyone is constantly demanding you quit trading with someone. Which diplohit do you want? the one for continued trading or the one from stopping trading. With that many AI, wars are dogpiles and ally vs ally. You get a 3 on 3 ai war and I guarentee within 2 turns you get 6 requests to join the war. Do you join? Or do you get a diplohit with 6 different Ai? And if you join...you better hope you pick the right side.
It's the niche things that ad up. A little here and a little there. Other traits are something of a one trick pony. They do one thing extremely well with a couple discounted buildings. Pro, expansive, imp and some of the other so called "lesser traits" do things that work well when combined with other strategies.
The only place where Protective really gives a civ an advantage is in passive city defense (CGI/DI Archer and Gunpowder units with cheap Walls and Castles). The DI promo is very insignificant outside of defending cities where the units having it won't often have a modified strength advantages and the extra trade route and espionage bonus provided by Castles is very shortlived.
It is most certainly the weakest trait in the game. Note that I'm NOT saying that it has no uses or synergy with any leader, just that I think it's the weakest trait overall.
It is most certainly the weakest trait in the game. Note that I'm NOT saying that it has no uses or synergy with any leader, just that I think it's the weakest trait overall.
Consider this. In my current game as Churchill, as soon as I took Feudalism (which was pretty quickly), I started building longbows in my military pump, and I switched to Vassalage.
I built 3 longbows - they each came out with 5xp. I sent them off to capture a barb city that was defended by 2 archers. I promoted two of the longbows to Drill III and sent them both in to attack. Odds were 83% for each. They take the city, and they both earned 3xp. Having 8xp, both those longbows can now take the next promotion - Drill IV!
So at such an early stage of the game, I already have 2 longbows at Drill IV, each having fought only one battle. Granted, I am using Churchill - he gets Drill IV at 8xp instead of 10xp like other PRO leaders, but still... If I were using another PRO leader I would only need to send those 8xp longbows into another battle at 99.9% odds to get the next 2xp for Drill IV. (Ok technically it's closer to 99.86% but I felt that rounding was fairly acceptable there
)
Meanwhile, I have 3 cities bordering a growing enemy. I can now send those 2 longbows over to the area, and sit them behind those walls I built. I now have almost nothing to fear on that front.
Of course, I'm still building a variety of units in case war breaks out and the enemy starts pillaging. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to quickly gain promotions with Drill, and with a unit as unlikely as a longbow.
I built 3 longbows - they each came out with 5xp. I sent them off to capture a barb city that was defended by 2 archers. I promoted two of the longbows to Drill III and sent them both in to attack. Odds were 83% for each. They take the city, and they both earned 3xp. Having 8xp, both those longbows can now take the next promotion - Drill IV!
So at such an early stage of the game, I already have 2 longbows at Drill IV, each having fought only one battle. Granted, I am using Churchill - he gets Drill IV at 8xp instead of 10xp like other PRO leaders, but still... If I were using another PRO leader I would only need to send those 8xp longbows into another battle at 99.9% odds to get the next 2xp for Drill IV. (Ok technically it's closer to 99.86% but I felt that rounding was fairly acceptable there
)Meanwhile, I have 3 cities bordering a growing enemy. I can now send those 2 longbows over to the area, and sit them behind those walls I built. I now have almost nothing to fear on that front.
Of course, I'm still building a variety of units in case war breaks out and the enemy starts pillaging. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to quickly gain promotions with Drill, and with a unit as unlikely as a longbow.
Drill I by itself is crap, you are right about that but you miss the point. D1 gives you a headstart getting to Drill IV. Like in my previous post, one battle and I was at Drill IV. In a way, PRO makes the drill line worth its salt. Non-PRO leaders are at a huge disadvantage with the drill line because they need to reach 17xp for Drill IV.
Also, when you consider the strength of AGG you don't usually consider Combat I by itself but the promotions it unlocks. So with PRO you should consider D1 based on what it unlocks. Any PRO civ with a barracks and at least one other source of xp (Theocracy, Vassalage, a MI etc.) can spit out D3 archery and gunpowder units that will fight 1, 2, or rarely 3 battles at good odds to reach Drill IV.
In order to be good, a trait has to either:
1) Offer enough of an advantage that it's worth changing your playstyle/strategy to benefit from it. PHI, FIN, and IND are good examples.
2) Help you do things you otherwise would, or reduce/eliminate costs you would otherwise face. ORG is a great example, as are EXP and IMP. Everyone pays civic costs and builds workers and settlers.
Obviously the categories aren't rigid (if I switch civics more often with SPI than I would have without, which category is that?), but it provides a framework for thinking about traits.
The thing about PRO is, "being attacked in your cities" is not generally a good strategy, and it doesn't become a good strategy just because you're PRO. You're still better off confronting his SOD with your SOD and winning the collateral damage fight. So PRO is not a type (1) trait; how much of (2) does it provide? Sometimes you will have to defend a city, either recently captured or one of your own, and then it does help you do better what you would do anyway. And it opens up shock for Xbows and pinch for gunpowder troops. So the incidental benefits are non-zero. But at least in my mind, they're significantly less than what any other trait has to offer.
The best thing about a Protective leader is his other trait.
1) Offer enough of an advantage that it's worth changing your playstyle/strategy to benefit from it. PHI, FIN, and IND are good examples.
2) Help you do things you otherwise would, or reduce/eliminate costs you would otherwise face. ORG is a great example, as are EXP and IMP. Everyone pays civic costs and builds workers and settlers.
Obviously the categories aren't rigid (if I switch civics more often with SPI than I would have without, which category is that?), but it provides a framework for thinking about traits.
The thing about PRO is, "being attacked in your cities" is not generally a good strategy, and it doesn't become a good strategy just because you're PRO. You're still better off confronting his SOD with your SOD and winning the collateral damage fight. So PRO is not a type (1) trait; how much of (2) does it provide? Sometimes you will have to defend a city, either recently captured or one of your own, and then it does help you do better what you would do anyway. And it opens up shock for Xbows and pinch for gunpowder troops. So the incidental benefits are non-zero. But at least in my mind, they're significantly less than what any other trait has to offer.
The best thing about a Protective leader is his other trait.
lilnev, if a player is never attacked in his cities it is likely that player is playing below his difficulty.
Also, "being attacked in your cities" is not a strategy that anyone uses. The simple fact is, you will be attacked sometimes. That doesn't make it strategy. It's not like PRO leaders plan or beg to be attacked.
From your categorisation, I think PRO fits in (1). There are a number of ways you can adjust your strategy as a PRO leader... I'll list a few.
-PRO is the only trait that turns drill units into useful units, good enough that they can be used in attacking roles. They earn xp very fast, making them earn GG points like an IMP leader's units would. When you attach a GG to a Drill IV unit and use it for attacking, it racks up xp so fast it's not even funny. The GG Drill IV unit can reguarly take 6xp from 96% odds, and these go towards the next GG. In fact, the 96% for 6xp is a full health unit. When you attack injured units, you actually earn even more xp for the same odds. That's why you should use Drill IV troops as attackers after your siege units, when attacking a city.
-PRO leaders that draft units have a big advantage in that they get the two free promotions plus 1 or 2 more depending on how much xp is available from the city. If they also opt for the espionage economy (more detail below), then Nationhood is the perfect civic to stay in anyway. Using a Globe Theatre city to draft units (particularly riflemen) extremely rapidly is a very strong tactic for any leader, and it is made so much more powerful as a PRO leader.
-PRO leaders can make much greater use of forts than leaders of any other trait, because CG promotions work in forts. Preparing to take out an enemy's SoD is much easier if you can do it from very easily defendable terrain before they get to your city.
-Considering that most players don't build walls or castles, PRO encourages them to do so. Whether walls and particularly castles will benefit you will depend on how much you're willing to change the standard strategies you would normally use for other leaders, and the difficulty level. If playing an espionage economy, for example, which is arguably the most efficient economy after the initial expansion part of the game, halving the time to build castles (even further if you have stone) boosts your econ quickly. The fact the economics tech obsoletes the castle just means you should wait before getting it - if you're not willing to do that it just means you're refusing to take advantage of the PRO trait and the espionage economy. As a PRO leader, you're probably much better off heading for rifling asap anyway, rather than fiddling around with economics.
Also, "being attacked in your cities" is not a strategy that anyone uses. The simple fact is, you will be attacked sometimes. That doesn't make it strategy. It's not like PRO leaders plan or beg to be attacked.
From your categorisation, I think PRO fits in (1). There are a number of ways you can adjust your strategy as a PRO leader... I'll list a few.
-PRO is the only trait that turns drill units into useful units, good enough that they can be used in attacking roles. They earn xp very fast, making them earn GG points like an IMP leader's units would. When you attach a GG to a Drill IV unit and use it for attacking, it racks up xp so fast it's not even funny. The GG Drill IV unit can reguarly take 6xp from 96% odds, and these go towards the next GG. In fact, the 96% for 6xp is a full health unit. When you attack injured units, you actually earn even more xp for the same odds. That's why you should use Drill IV troops as attackers after your siege units, when attacking a city.
-PRO leaders that draft units have a big advantage in that they get the two free promotions plus 1 or 2 more depending on how much xp is available from the city. If they also opt for the espionage economy (more detail below), then Nationhood is the perfect civic to stay in anyway. Using a Globe Theatre city to draft units (particularly riflemen) extremely rapidly is a very strong tactic for any leader, and it is made so much more powerful as a PRO leader.
-PRO leaders can make much greater use of forts than leaders of any other trait, because CG promotions work in forts. Preparing to take out an enemy's SoD is much easier if you can do it from very easily defendable terrain before they get to your city.
-Considering that most players don't build walls or castles, PRO encourages them to do so. Whether walls and particularly castles will benefit you will depend on how much you're willing to change the standard strategies you would normally use for other leaders, and the difficulty level. If playing an espionage economy, for example, which is arguably the most efficient economy after the initial expansion part of the game, halving the time to build castles (even further if you have stone) boosts your econ quickly. The fact the economics tech obsoletes the castle just means you should wait before getting it - if you're not willing to do that it just means you're refusing to take advantage of the PRO trait and the espionage economy. As a PRO leader, you're probably much better off heading for rifling asap anyway, rather than fiddling around with economics.
This doesn't work for me, at least on the levels I play. The AI DoW mechanics regarding power work binary, which means you have to be over their decleration threshold for power to matter, for the warmongers this can be considerable more than their power.
In the first stage of the game where my power is low compared to the AI, the walls won't help me.
Single advantages / disadvantages are more easily compared to each other than complex things like traits as a whole.
I agree that this method is not perfect and that some traits are very hard to compare. Because of this, people often compare similar traits to get relative answers.
My main point, if there is one, is that traits (and civs) in civ are not equally strog/versatile, the logic consequence is that there are stronger and weaker traits and pro is one of the later. This is not a bad thing, can be a good handicap for the human player.
Strange; I find that PRO becomes a lot better on Deity.
Making a competitor waste their production bonuses in a mass suicide against your defenses simply isn't worth the trouble on lower levels; on Deity I don't mind softening up my opponents that way.
If I can't solve the situation with diplomacy, I'd rather remain at war than have my opponent build up in peace to the point they can overwhelm me.
Warmongering diplomacy can create opportunities to take cities for cheap (AIs still rarely get the right mix of siege and cleanup troops... meaning their assaults often stall at a point where you can swoop in and take the prize, even with obsolete units). You usually don't get such help for defence though.
This is another high-level peculiarity - on lower levels my allies are useless and I'd rather do things myself.
In comparison with other military traits: Deity is more likely to see little (planned) war before the Renaissance because it might well be too costly or risky to be practical. PRO is a good insurance on the way to Rifles and a credible boost to your offense once you're there.
I still don't like it, but I mind it far less than I do on lower levels.
Making a competitor waste their production bonuses in a mass suicide against your defenses simply isn't worth the trouble on lower levels; on Deity I don't mind softening up my opponents that way.
If I can't solve the situation with diplomacy, I'd rather remain at war than have my opponent build up in peace to the point they can overwhelm me.
Warmongering diplomacy can create opportunities to take cities for cheap (AIs still rarely get the right mix of siege and cleanup troops... meaning their assaults often stall at a point where you can swoop in and take the prize, even with obsolete units). You usually don't get such help for defence though.
This is another high-level peculiarity - on lower levels my allies are useless and I'd rather do things myself.
In comparison with other military traits: Deity is more likely to see little (planned) war before the Renaissance because it might well be too costly or risky to be practical. PRO is a good insurance on the way to Rifles and a credible boost to your offense once you're there.
I still don't like it, but I mind it far less than I do on lower levels.
That is one way of looking at it. Another way is certain traits REQUIRE you to change the way you play to get the most out of them.
Everyone also builds garrison troops.
And why can't the Pro bashers get it through their heads that Protective leaders can do the same thing? Just because you have better garrison troops does NOT mean you are going to sit in your cities and hope the mean enemy SOD goes away. YES pro leaders can build counter stacks to deal with the enemy SOD. Why wouldn't they? What part of the Protective trait prevents them from doing so? They can probably do a better job than non-pro non Agg leaders because they spend fewer hammers on defensive troops and can devote more towards the anti-SOD stack. Three CG3D1 Longbows are as good as four CG2 Longbows. That being said, for every border city you want a strong garrison in, you save 50 hammers. A cat cost 50 hammers. If you have 5 border cities that is 5 extra cats. In the collateral damage fight you mention above, would you like to have an extra 5 cats to throw against the enemy SOD? I sure would. Yes indeed I most certainly would.
Try playing a larger map than standard. There are a lot more cities to take when you go to war. So you have a much larger garrison:assault troop ratio. That means a larger number of your troops benefit. On a huge map you can expect the enemy to have 10-12 cities by the time the peaceful rex phase is over and your borders collide. Once the enemy SOD has been engaged in the field I can hold new cities with just 2 Protective garrison troops as opposed to 3 for non protective. That means I need 10 fewer troops built. I pay 10 less gpt in unit costs. Or is it 20 once you leave your own borders? Gpt aside, 10 fewer garrison troops means 10 more siege units, assault troops or stack defenders.
Get stuck in the middle with 3-4 AI around you. Which border cities do you want to lose?
Not exactly. Axes simply rule their era with or without an axeman rush. Their counter, the chariot, destroys them on attack only. And if you have axes, you will also have spears.
Of the earliest military techs: archery, bronze working, and animal husbandry - archery is the most useless to research yourself. I typically trade once I have alphabet. BW and AH do critical things for your economy. Archery, while cheaper, does nothing for your economy, is out of the way, and cannot cost-effectively deal with barbarian pillagers. You might as well build two axes and one or two spears in each city and they can both deal with pillagers and defend the city. Chariots coming at you? Build spears. Axes and swords? Build axemen. Archers are cheap and can defend on cities or hills, but given metal, archers are not beneficial enough to warrant going out of your way to research archery.
It's about opportunity cost. If we're comparing protective to aggressive, then yes, actually. Aggressive will make it so you have barracks earlier, and can build shock axes immediately. This means fewer lost to other axes, immediate and effective stack defense once you start attacking, and more units early in the game when it's most critical. For mounted pillagers it also makes it so that getting formation spears costs half as much exp. This is especially necessary if you have war elephants to deal with but none of your own, and in having pikes that can deal with knights.
Your point must be that spiritual can be leveraged. How can walls be leveraged in a game-changing way? They increase your power rating but do nothing for your economy. That's not the case for free civic changes where you're making the most out of each civic you have access to.
I'm saying I care less about CG3 units than CR3 units, but with settled great generals I can produce both. Having faster access to CG3 units doesn't do me too much good since I need that city to be able to produce CR3 units anyway. And since I produce military units with a few specialized cities, the traits that give me faster access to military instructors work better. This is more an argument for charismatic and imperialistic being better than pro.
One reason it's faster is because you start out with warriors.
My initial warrior and the next few I build become my medics via woodsman and medic I later. Woodsman seems to be the best way to actually allow them to survive long enough to get to level 4. Combat I makes a huge difference in the survivability of these initial units because the animals are mostly the same base strength.
When I get woodsman 3 and medic 1 units, that yields +25% healing per turn, which is enough for me and allows me not to use great generals for medics, but rather settle them.
You can't do that with drill units, because most melee can't get drill, and archery units can't get woodsman.
Furthermore, combat I is a trait that makes your unit stronger than drill I does no matter how you compare them, and so it is more likely to survive when it does the attacking necessary to get further promos.
Giving up the liberalism race and the free great merchant is a big cost for keeping castles a little longer. I'd only consider it if running EE.
While a mixture is best, in general melee units are stronger and more versatile than other unit types of their time. Main exception being the war elephant. Stronger melee units are especially useful for upgrading to competent city raider gunpowder units. This makes it so you don't have to sac a lot of cannons or prioritize artillery later on.
I agree with you CivCorpse, Pro can be a good trait on the right map and diplomatic situation. It even allows you to manufacture that diplomatic situation and bleed the AI strength in endless wars. It can save many hammers on garrisons and cheap walls and that means you can defend far flung possessions very quickly (just 1 pop whip or 1 forest + 5 hammers). A Pro archery unit behind a wall is tough for the sporadic counterattacks the AI throws.
The bashers clearly have a mind set that won't let them appreciate the strengths of Pro. They want to play the game a particular way and aren't flexible enough in their thinking to see that Pro will let them leverage the trait in a different way.
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