Protective Underestimated

[kristopherb]

To get me back into civ i've restarted playing as a random english leader Victoria as compared to Churchill. So i start on a continent a little over crowded to my opinion i'm trying to expand but its full of protective civs and its damn hard to do so. so imust conclude that protective is awesome at a equal level.

 

[Refar]

Protective plays to the AI's strength, so yes beeing sqeezed between Sitting Bull, Wang Kon and Gilgamehs is no fun. It's still a trait i would rather not want myself in the most of the games...

 

[Sian]

if you are builder then Protective means that you can live with a slightly less developed defense ... i lived though a barb rush because of it while trying to choprush GW

 

[AfterShafter]

Eh, protective is my favorite of the military traits. I think most people underrate it, but they argue that it terrible so vehemently, I'm just inclined to let them think that and go on rocking the boat with it.

 

[Diamondeye]

Eh, protective is my favorite of the military traits. I think most people underrate it, but they argue that it terrible so vehemently, I'm just inclined to let them think that and go on rocking the boat with it.

Yeah, exactly. It is actually a quite nice trait. I rate it higher than Ind, Phi or Exp, atleast. Mid-tier.

 

[hossam]

protective works really well with nationhood since you draft soldiers with citygarrison1 and drill 1

 

[digitCruncher]

I like protective, as I can't seem to ever get a domination victory.

I just like getting a sizable empire, and protecting it.

Im not a builder, but I do often have major production problems in my cities (I over-rate high-food cities, and have one or two major production cities out of 10, so although I have a high amount of commerce, I can't use my technological lead to be very useful (although I sometimes get 1 or 2 cities in each war...

Protective means I can safely reduce my defences and keep the offensive going longer.

 

[AfterShafter]

Yeah, exactly. It is actually a quite nice trait. I rate it higher than Ind, Phi or Exp, atleast. Mid-tier.

Aye... So easy to get those incredibly tough to crack defenders, with hardly having to do any work. Just pop a few civics and you have CG III units coming out of a city. Need more offensively capable units? Boom - drill III units just as easily. It takes so little effort, and allows for extremely powerful, and reasonably versatile resourceless units. I loves it!

 

[Diamondeye]

I rate almost all traits higher than Ind. However, if you want to run a full SE, then Phi is so important. Its probably the most situational of all the traits. Exp really shines on higher levels where you only start with 3 or 4 health, in which case it makes a massive difference, and so does the increase whipping output due to cheaper granaries.

I play at noble, goin to try prince soon, and I can't play SE, so I don't.

 

[AfterShafter]

Exp really shines on higher levels where you only start with 3 or 4 health, in which case it makes a massive difference, and so does the increase whipping output due to cheaper granaries.

You know, come to think about it, that's probably why I always get in arguments over whether expansive sucks or not... I love it, but I'm usually playing on emperor, and am tryin a *bit* of immortal now, and even a few flood plains will stifle a city into low size when I'm playing. I rate it quite highly... Expansive and protective are my two favorite secondary traits.

 

[oPlaiD]

The only thing I like protective for is getting Drill I on my Cho-ko-nu's!

 

[MrCynical]

Protective is good in the AI hands because it is a trait for someone who is not trying to win - merely to survive. It's not much use for a human who's trying to get to victory. How often do your cities actually come under direct attack? The AI will simply wander round them and rip up your improvements to the point where you have no chance of winning if you just sit in citie hoping they'll throw stuff at city garrison units. I find it to be very rare that I see a direct attack on one of my cities, enough that I don't rate city garrison or walls as worth much at all. Castles have too short a life time in most games for any impact there. Drill is worth having, but doesn't appear on the most useful units, and isn't enough to get this trait out of the bottom tier.

 

[AfterShafter]

Protective is good in the AI hands because it is a trait for someone who is not trying to win - merely to survive. It's not much use for a human who's trying to get to victory. How often do your cities actually come under direct attack? The AI will simply wander round them and rip up your improvements to the point where you have no chance of winning if you just sit in citie hoping they'll throw stuff at city garrison units. I find it to be very rare that I see a direct attack on one of my cities, enough that I don't rate city garrison or walls as worth much at all. Castles have too short a life time in most games for any impact there. Drill is worth having, but doesn't appear on the most useful units, and isn't enough to get this trait out of the bottom tier.

I don't know... I play protective frequently on huge maps and reasonably high difficulties, and my cities get hit all the time. I win a lot of major battles at chokepoints, or by carefully baiting the AI's into hitting certain cities (IE - leave a stack of CG archers one turn away from the city, and move them in at the last minute before an attack - the victory sounds are so sweet!)

Anyways, the first step to winning is surviving. Protective makes that *way* easier, along with several other vital fuctions

 

[hossam]

Protective is good in the AI hands because it is a trait for someone who is not trying to win - merely to survive. It's not much use for a human who's trying to get to victory. How often do your cities actually come under direct attack? The AI will simply wander round them and rip up your improvements to the point where you have no chance of winning if you just sit in citie hoping they'll throw stuff at city garrison units. I find it to be very rare that I see a direct attack on one of my cities, enough that I don't rate city garrison or walls as worth much at all. Castles have too short a life time in most games for any impact there. Drill is worth having, but doesn't appear on the most useful units, and isn't enough to get this trait out of the bottom tier.

its really good for surprise attacks, especially with nation hood or slavery because your producing, cg1 and drill 1 defenders right of the bat.

 

[AfterShafter]

Also, here's something to try... Keep gads of those super archers/infantry/whatever around your Civ loaded into your cities, and on the side, build a few knights or cavalry or whatever is the hit and run unit of your era. Keep them around until the enemy invades, and if you find yourself in a position where your opponent goes into pillage mode, your unassailable cities provide nice refuges for your knights/whatever to do hit and runs on the pillaging forces. I've whittled many an attack force down to nothing like this, and ended up with some ridiculously upgraded knights by the time all was said and done.

Those protective longbowmen/riflemen/infantry make your cities that much more secure, meaning you have to devote fewer resources to keep them safe. That's not a bad deal.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I think the big pluses of protective is:

1) having a significantly stronger defense with as many or perhaps even fewer archers
2) walls can be built preemptively at little hammer cost or whipped easily in response to an approaching stack
3) barracks can be skipped since you still get two free promotions without them
3a) drafting, same basic idea, half of normal XP doesn't matter so much when free promotions are involved
4) you can promote down the Drill line without having to waste a promotion on Drill I

Still think it's a bottom-tier trait though.

 

[DrJambo]

Like Imperialistic, Protective plays to the strengths of the AI.

With the bonuses the AI gets towards maintenance, Imperialistic allows the AI to spam settlers giving such a civ an enormous advantage in the beginning of the game. Protective makes an AI much harder to conquer, thus making the process of expansion all the more costly for the human as it has to deal with the WW associated with units dying abroad.

 

[Il Corvo Bianco]

How often do your cities actually come under direct attack? The AI will simply wander round them and rip up your improvements to the point where you have no chance of winning if you just sit in citie hoping they'll throw stuff at city garrison units.

Almost always. AI seems really better in BtS than in Vanilla, 'cause it doesn't waste time pillaging relatively useless thing: it usual pillages iron/copper/oil/insert other attack-defence resource here, then go straight to the city. And in a city, having drill and CG it's an enemy slaughterhouse.

 

[pi-r8]

Almost always. AI seems really better in BtS than in Vanilla, 'cause it doesn't waste time pillaging relatively useless thing: it usual pillages iron/copper/oil/insert other attack-defence resource here, then go straight to the city. And in a city, having drill and CG it's an enemy slaughterhouse.

You do see the contradiction here, right? If the AI is better, it should be smart enough to know when it's better off pillaging your entire countryside, rather than wasting it's forces in a hopeless attack on your city walls. And yeah, nothing is more annoying than sitting there with city garrison 3 defenders watching helplessly as all your towns get pillaged.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Re: Expansive's relative merit on higher difficulties: It's the same. Health and happy caps don't change with difficulty anymore. They did in Vanilla and Warlords, but BtS took that out.

Re: Protective, and whether or not enemies bypass it by pillaging: That depends on the AI leader, doesn't it? I could swear one of our XML geeks found out that likelihood to pillage is a variable part of the AI personalities, just like how much they care about religion, how much they like to trade, how much they like to declare war, and so on.