Rating the traits: an analysis

[Kid R]

Also the traits don't come on their own but with another one. As we all know PHI (apparently mid-tier) and IND (apparently low-mid-tier) together become so strong the combo isn't even allowed in the game.

Maybe that's a special case though - I can't think of any other pairs like that.

 

[Iranon]

A few comments about why some traits may be rated all over the place:

Creative has little long-term potential or straight economic benefits, but simplifies the early game considerably... reducing the potential for crippling misplays on low and giving important breathing room on high levels.
Voting should be expected all over the place because it depends heavily on what people want from a trait. I dislike it myself, but I can't make a convincing argument for its flat-out inferiority to other time-saving traits.

Spiritual requires active leveraging... if you aren't prepare to micromanage it doesn't save that much time and is mostly useful for diplomacy. If you are prepared to micromanage heavily , it's still difficult to asses.
For example, do you prefer to synchronise your whipping cycles and change from Slavery/Organised Religion to Caste System/Pacifism in regular intervals... or do you stagger them and shuffle food tiles around, staying in Slavery at all times?

Philosophical... hmm. When used to emulate other economic traits by settling the extras for constant gains, it's weaker than the other economic powerhouses unless the empire is tiny. However, the option to go for powerful short-term benefits is useful for people who know when to push hard for what... so some variation is to be expected. I'm surprised at considerable variation, but I am surprised it was repeatedly ranked worst. In my opinion it's only truly poor when you neglect GP more than you should with or without the trait.

Industrious is, naturally, very playstyle-dependent. I also think both arguments for scaling with difficulty have merit. It's good when you can spam wonders anyway without making undue concessions, great if you need it to do so, mediocre if you can't spam wonders and the most likely application is failure cash. For me it peaks on Immortal.

*

I find it quite interesting that ORG got the top spot over FIN... I've always liked the trait very much, but being equal to FIN used to be dismissed by most on the forum as preposterous. I wonder why the attitude has changed so much - discussions and hard data, a change in preferred playstyles, the average level of play increasing (ORG is only in full effect from Emperor upwards)?

 

[NihilZero]

I agree with Iranon completely, these are the traits that vary most widely in 1) mileage each incividual player can get from them, and 2) perceived mileage that can be got from them.

When I play with CRE, I love it. Its usefulness is one of the most immediately obvious. However, I think it is generally overrated because of this. And while fast libraries are great, this is a trait that fades. Honestly, I'd rather chariot rush somebody and steal Stonehenge than have CRE, because then I basically get a poor man's CRE on top of my other two traits.

SPI is one of my favourites but most of its benefits are only there for people who want to work at it. Civic micromanagement requires imagination, forward thinking, and time. The biggest knock on SPI, however, is that the Christo Redentor, while very late, actually outdoes it quite spectacularly. Cheap temples can be interesting if you can pick up a religious wonder or two.

IND doesn't get nearly enough love. Cheap forges means everything else you build after comes sooner - nice snowballing effect. IND discounts every national wonder. It gives you a fighting chance of picking up world wonders, and world wonders have a way of snowballing too - if you can get a couple of good ones, it gets easier to pick up some more, and before you know it you are running away with the game and spewing out GP without even trying.

PHI is not a trait I am very good at using, but seeing what some high-level players can do with GP has sold me on this trait. It's a game changer when you know what you're doing.

The most controversial ranking is clearly EXP, however. It's a little utilitarian and unglamorous, which is probably why people overlook it. Granaries, health, and workers? Not very sexy. But granaries and workers are the cornerstone of your empire.

 

[madscientist]

I think as players have increased in level, well most have, certain trait sbecome even more beneficial.

ORG and EXP clearly are better at higher levels as well as PRO (still weak though).

CRE is more preferred because at higher levels the early game is much more important.

FIN is great at all levels so there is no overt improvement at higher levels, it's merely great.

IND is weaker at higher levels because wonder spamming is not all that easy (but doable) plus most agree hammers are better used for more important things at higher levels. Thus you are left with forges and national wonders as bonus, a drop from easier levels.

CHA is great at war-mongering at any era but that extra happiness early on is important at higher levels until monarchy.

AGG is a warring trait regardless of difficulty/

IMP is probably the trait that has the greatest range, it reallt sucks at lower levels but fast settlers at higher levels is a game breaker especially at Immortal and Diety.

SPI is an experience type trait regardless of level, however it's taken a good hit in usefullness since BTS came out with the Golden Age change.

PHI was suppossed to be more usefull at higher levels (or so I read) but honestly I never really found it that much more helpful. Probably my own play style.

 

[MarcoPollo]

Hmm - I don't think SD works that way: it's tells you more about smear than skew, doesn't it?

And I want to amend my earlier comment - given that it is a case of GIGO, there's really no reason to assume that doing the calculations in a different way would produce results that are "better" in any real sense.

Obviously your understanding of Game Theory is quite impressive. But, I question the way in which you snub other well known methods of comparison. There is nothing wrong with someone volunteering their time to do an overall analysis. But calling it GIGO (and perhaps it technically is) is insulting to those who put in input.

The work done is appreciated and understood by me. So thanks mr orange.

 

[kamex]

I think it really depends what victory your going for overall:

Conquest/domination: aggressive/protective/organised/imperialistic/charismatic (in no particular order)

Cultural: Creative/ philosophical / industrious / protective /expansive

Diplo: Spiritual/ Protective

Financial works with anything

 

[Infantry#14]

I think it really depends what victory your going for overall:

Conquest/domination: aggressive/protective/organised/imperialistic/charismatic (in no particular order)

Cultural: Creative/ philosophical / industrious / protective /expansive

Diplo: Spiritual/ Protective

Financial works with anything

Spiritual is also good for cultural. 100% for temples means you can build catedrals earlier.

I used to think Financial is the best for riverside start. Those extra commerces are explosive in the beginning, which translate well into the midgame. At higher diff, Organized becomes very good, because it usually means the overall maintenance is reduced by 1/4 than otherwise for modest size empire. In addition, cheap build for some very important buildings. Creative is very good in high diff, because it allows me to grab land and choke more efficiently.

Traits that I dont rank highly are aggressive, protective, imperalistic and industrious. Above these traits are spirtual and expansive and charistmatic. Philosophical is a wild card here. Usually they are good in normal games, but in cultural games, I tend to get alot of scientists earlier and later get very few gp.

 

[Merovinge]

I really appreciate this post. My first civ game ever was with Darius and I loved the Org/Fin setup, funny to see my gut instinct is very similar to seasoned vets.

Despite the numerous "flaws" in the stats, I think their results are pretty solid and a cool little side project.

 

[bhavv]

I would have listed Charismatic a lot higher, plus if combined with the stonehenge (not too hard to do if you get forests near your start), it is just as good as ORG + FIN.

(I actually find that Hannibal with the stonehenge > Darius or Willem)

 

[cicero spqr]

I suppose a certain trait's value would depend on your play style and your game situation. If your civ is on a penninsula with a one tile wide isthmus connecting you to the mainland, protective could come in handy for blocking that tile and keeping the rest of your civ safe as long as you hold that chokepoint

 

[itg]

I think it really depends what victory your going for overall:

Conquest/domination: aggressive/protective/organised/imperialistic/charismatic (in no particular order)

Cultural: Creative/ philosophical / industrious / protective /expansive

Diplo: Spiritual/ Protective

Financial works with anything

Neither creative nor expansive are especially good culture victory traits. With creative, The +2 might save you like four turns over the course of the game (I'm sure someone else can do the math for me), and the cheap buildings are nice enough, but there are much bigger benefits to a culture game in other traits. Both creative and expansive give you a strong opening, but that's much more important for a game where you need to grab enough land to raise an army and keep up in tech than one where you can get by by settling six cities and using diplo to stay out of trouble.

 

[Iranon]

I'm not sure where Spiritual shines most. It certainly has its applications for Diplomatic and Cultural victories... but I feel I get the biggest mileage out of it in military games.
On high levels, the diplomatic benefits are great since a war ally is incredibly useful... and it's more solid economically than usual because onewants to switch between peace and war civics repeatedly.

*

Off a tangent: That's one of the reasons I dislike the military traits so much - I wouldn't even prefer them to SPI/ORG in a game where conquest and domination were the only victory conditions.
The traits themselves are not enough to let me go to town without a military tech advantage, and they aren't packaged with UUs in a way that allows them to shine.

Aggressive Praetorians or Protective Skirmishers would be sufficiently awesome, but we don't have that without unrestricted leaders.
Churchill's Redcoats come so late that we may prefer one of the queens for a Renaissance bloodbath - they simply get there faster. Cho-Ko-Nu are fine units and benefit from Protective... but good enough to be spectacular? Of the Chinese leaders I prefer Qin because CKN make an Oracle/Metal Casting slingshot more attractive... but he doesn't measure up well to Augustus. Praetorians don't require one to jump through hoops to get them early and imo remain more consistently useful than Cho-Ko-Nu, even without a combat trait.

Samurai are the only case of a powerful UU being boosted by Aggressive... but there are a lot of problems there as well: Stricter resource requirements, weakest economy of all leaders, double-boosted Musketmen being more than useful enough during part of their lifespan and, for the AI, a crippling unwillingness to trade.

I wonder whether part this is deliberate in order to make it less likely that a human player will have to face an unstoppable military juggernaut.

 

[NihilZero]

Indeed, a tech advantage beats promotions pretty much every time. I've become a little obsessed with Toku lately, maybe because I feel if I can win with him, that's almost like winning without traits. Playing a lot of games with Toku certainly changes your perspective on the game, and you realise how much easier life is with anything that gets you a tech edge.

In Toku's defence, he can actually fight quite happily at tech parity, and sometimes at a tech disadvantage (I recently won a treb-samurai-musket war against a Sury with grenadiers). But would you choose to have to do this if you didn't have to? While thrice promoted rifles pwn vanilla rifles, life is so much simpler when you can pit rifles against longbows, infantry against muskets, or blitzkrieg a civ with no air defence.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not sure where Spiritual shines most. It certainly has its applications for Diplomatic and Cultural victories... but I feel I get the biggest mileage out of it in military games.
On high levels, the diplomatic benefits are great since a war ally is incredibly useful... and it's more solid economically than usual because onewants to switch between peace and war civics repeatedly.

*

Off a tangent: That's one of the reasons I dislike the military traits so much - I wouldn't even prefer them to SPI/ORG in a game where conquest and domination were the only victory conditions.
The traits themselves are not enough to let me go to town without a military tech advantage, and they aren't packaged with UUs in a way that allows them to shine.

Aggressive Praetorians or Protective Skirmishers would be sufficiently awesome, but we don't have that without unrestricted leaders.
Churchill's Redcoats come so late that we may prefer one of the queens for a Renaissance bloodbath - they simply get there faster. Cho-Ko-Nu are fine units and benefit from Protective... but good enough to be spectacular? Of the Chinese leaders I prefer Qin because CKN make an Oracle/Metal Casting slingshot more attractive... but he doesn't measure up well to Augustus. Praetorians don't require one to jump through hoops to get them early and imo remain more consistently useful than Cho-Ko-Nu, even without a combat trait.

Samurai are the only case of a powerful UU being boosted by Aggressive... but there are a lot of problems there as well: Stricter resource requirements, weakest economy of all leaders, double-boosted Musketmen being more than useful enough during part of their lifespan and, for the AI, a crippling unwillingness to trade.

I wonder whether part this is deliberate in order to make it less likely that a human player will have to face an unstoppable military juggernaut.

I'd not be so quick to dismiss a promo advantage, since it can give a very respectable odds-lead at parity:

1. AGG melee, as well as AGG or PRO gunpowder, gets access to formation instantly. When knights or cavalry threaten to flank your siege, this is not insignificant at all.

2. The combat promo on maces in addition to CR II gives them a considerable boost vs longbows. CR II strips a longbow defense 45%, but with just 33% defense bonus left over after the longbow is still higher odds! If the mace has 8.8 str though (combat I in addition to CR II), the longbow needs an additional 13% (46%) defenses to hit break even. The first strike won't overcome that variance as easily, and without fortification you actually beat the 45% from CG III, not that such actually happens :/. This can also give the maces a nice lift after even minimal collateral, and combat I CR III is quite scary and if you're running max XP civics not far off.

3. Combat II knights will tend to fall very easily now

4. You are nigh-untouchable in the field at tech parity

The synergy for military traits is to pump their XP even more, so that they can easily reach 10 xp. Combat IV or III + a counter promotion, CR III, or drill IV are all setups that give a stock unit a considerable lift vs same-tech opposition. Combat II pinch rifles for example fight at 16.8 str and strip 25% defense from the only defenders you'd care about at parity. Only a rifle with CG II AND fortification bonuses or better will have winning odds vs you, and only at full health.

Having amphibious at 5 xp is a cute trick too.

IMO the AI bonuses help make this harder to use, but vassalage/theo troops are still good enough to abuse the AI below deity with AGG or PRO (gunpowder +). Cho Ko Nus are an interesting option if AI can be blocked from knights/cuirassers, because they are generally devastating vs non-mounted with minimal siege help. They're no prat, but still usable to good results.

Would I take them over better traits? No. However, they do have material benefit in war games and allow easier execution of a different style of war, which is fun as a changeup.