The best trait.

[Monkeyfinger]

Expansive's worker bonus is now only 25%, and like always it only affects the hammer part of the production. It's crap.

I definitely agree with you about the health being worth more in BtS though.

 

[keshik22]

Imperialistic can be useful if you chop build your early settlers in your capital. Even then it's not that useful. But yeah, hard to beat financial.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

My tiers

1. Fin , Cre , Org , Phi
2. Chm, Agg , Exp, Ind
3. Spi , Imp , Pro

 

[azzaman333]

<snip>

Imperialistic, though, has always been the most difficult trait for me to utilize. I guess I'm just not an Imp player.

Expansive's worker bonus is now only 25%, and like always it only affects the hammer part of the production. It's crap.

I definitely agree with you about the health being worth more in BtS though.

Imperialistic can be useful if you chop build your early settlers in your capital. Even then it's not that useful. But yeah, hard to beat financial.

Whipping and chopping out settlers with IMP (and workers with EXP) is how you use these bonuses effectively.

 

[hossam]

whats so great about financial? it seems kinda limited to me

 

[GT_OKEZ]

whats so great about financial? it seems kinda limited to me

Easy answer . If your by a coast , say you settle right on a coast and have like 6 coastal tiles accessable to you . Each of them have 3 instead of 2 commerce . Thats one extra commerce point for the 6 tiles which totals up to 6 extra commerce which is a money bag and a coin . Its like having your own free gold mine along with 6 perfectly good coast tiles which would boost anyone's economy . Add colossus to this , well , I don't think I need to explain further .

Oasis puts out more gold on top of the nice regular bonus .
If you build a cottage on a river tile , thats a THREE COMMERCE COTTAGE which is just crazy for a little cottage you can whip out right away .

Inevidably your faster than most at teching with the commerce bonus . YOu can convert commerce to beakers - gold which lets you sustain a large army .


Old Financial had a 1/2 price bank which many thought was too poweful on top of the extra 1 for 2 commerce . So they downgraded Financial to make it more fair but still many people complain its ' too powerful.' In many instances they could be right , especially if your a financial guru with your style of play .

 

[mboettcher]

For me any combo of IMperialistic, charismatic, finacial, industrious, philosophical will do. Just as long as there is some synergy.

Charismatic can really enhance imperialistic with twice as many warlords needing 25% less experience and extra happiness, shorter wars and fewer causulties (great general stacks go down hard and can really take cities easily/quickly)to reduce war weariness and you got yourself a beast of a military.

see what I mean by the synergy?

 

[Diamondeye]

I voted financial, although Cha or Spi are also good traits.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

Charismatic i feel is awesome for any strategy, especially if someone turns on you you can still have city defense 3 dudes in cities on the border.

i think that industrious/financial is second best, as they can be great assets.

however, i like Churchill, as you can quickly get city defense 2 archers out to stop a rush relatively easily

 

[CHEESE!]

I vote Charismatic, free happiness+promotions.

Second is aggressive, pretty strong military.

So i LOVE Boudi.

Tho i dont like her UU much...


BUT THE ULTIMATE HAPPINESS+MILITARY COMBO!!

Agg/cha, with Heriditary rule or Police state (i prefer Heriditary)

+1 per military
+1 per city.
+ Combat I promotion
+ faster promotions

I dont like the Imperialistic trait, as i usually settle down with 5 or so cities and develop em, with military. GG bonus is good, but there are better traits.

 

[Antilogic]

Whipping and chopping out settlers with IMP (and workers with EXP) is how you use these bonuses effectively.

I'm not saying I don't know how to utilize it, I'm just saying that I tend to get fewer opportunities to utilize it and I don't feel I'm playing the trait to its maximum potential. See what I mean?

 

[azzaman333]

I'm not saying I don't know how to utilize it, I'm just saying that I tend to get fewer opportunities to utilize it and I don't feel I'm playing the trait to its maximum potential. See what I mean?

Yeah, IMP really needs a boost after settler spam, at the very least cheap jails and some other cheap building. However, it's still not as useless as Protective.

 

[Roxlimn]

None. They're all differently useful and one or another can be right for a particular playstyle. I favor Financial and Industrious myself, but I also appreciate the uses of virtually all the traits, even supposedly useless ones like Protective.


Financial is dramatic in its power when you start near Rivers, and particularly Rivers with Floodplains. Cottages in these areas immediately translate to a 50% greater tech rate compared to non-Financial Civs, which usually snowballs into all kinds of benefits later on. Financial on Seafood tiles offer the same benefit.


Industrious is dramatic when you utilize the GP-Wonder feeback loop. Make Religious Wonders to boost GPP production, feed your Great Prophets back into the production loop to make more Wonders. Even on its own, it's fairly impressive when you gun for high-production Wonders. A 2 turn premium on the Stonehenge isn't that big a deal. An 8 turn premium on the Pyramids is.


Imperialistic is a bit of a hit or miss. It's best when you Settler-spam, obviously, but the skills necessary to pull off a sucessful REX in Civ IV are much more complicated than in earlier iterations. You can easily REX yourself to bankruptcy in this game. Having said that, Imperialistic is godly with the right combination. Imperialistic/Organized for the massive REX spam, and Imperialistic/Creative for the early Land Hog strategy are easily the most easily abused combinations.


The voting trend on the thread currently seems consistent with a Noble/Prince mindset. At those skill levels, Financial, Industrious, and Charismatic are a cinch to abuse.

 

[Diamondeye]

I tend to agree with above poster, that no trait is the absolutely best...

My tiers

1. Fin , Cre , Org , Phi
2. Chm, Agg , Exp, Ind
3. Spi , Imp , Pro

My tiers depends alot... I tend only to wonderwhore unconciously, and is always punished for it, so I find Ind and Phi sinking lower and lower in my opinion... A shot at my tiers would be:

1. Fin, Chm, Imp, Org
2. Cre, Agg, Exp, Spi, Pro
3. Ind, Phi


Financial is a very good trait in most games. Especially because I'm a loser at SE. Charismatic is awesome for the happiness, and the XP bonus for units are awesome aswell.

Imperialistic, quite frankly, should maybe belong in 2nd tier. But the bonus on settlers is awesome in some games. Rather alot of games.

Organized is a very passive bonus, and is very hard to feel unless you're not playing with in, in which case you really wish you'd been Org. Maybe belonging on tier 2 aswell.

Creative is good for early borders and cultural defense. It has lots of cheap buildings for happiness midgame.

Aggressive is a rather plain war trait. It is perfectly possible to wage war without it, and I tend to steer clear of it. I don't wage war enough in enough of my games for this trait to reach top tier.

Expansive is annoying. Its biggest strength is midgame, and cheap granaries and workers early on. Not a gamebreaker.

Spiritual is handy. It's not a gamebreaker. It's the diplomats trait, and I tend to choose it if I want a "smooth" game, because anarchy is just so annoying, watching your entire economy halt!

Protective can be good, mostly lategame. Do I have to draw attention to Churchill's Redcoats? These guys are massive. A barracks, two war civics, and Pentagon = Drill IV CGI riflemunsters out of the gate.

Industrious is... A rather overrated thread, imho. The best thing about it is really early game where it actually means the difference between getting a wonder and not getting it, and for the forges.

Philosophical is a very niche trait. It is good for SE, which I suck at. Hence lowest tier.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Philosophical is a very niche trait. It is good for SE, which I suck at. Hence lowest tier.

In my opinion, philosophical is part of what makes running specialists outside of a SE useful. It's one of my favorite traits, and I tend to abstain from SE.

 

[Diamondeye]

In my opinion, philosophical is part of what makes running specialists outside of a SE useful. It's one of my favorite traits, and I tend to abstain from SE.

Since I usually generate around 5 great persons, or a little more, a game, Phi would maybe raise that to 7-9... Compare the effect of 3 extra greatpersons to the effect of any other trait and you will find it the loser. Even concerning Ind or Pro.

 

[Roxlimn]

To be fair, Philosophical is highly situational and needs a good amount of food resources or fresh water to be run well. It's biggest use is to generate a ton of Specialists to power Science through in Representation, for use in the GP-Wonder feedback, or for a string of lightbulbing for the Liberalism beeline.

Arguably, if you don't get Writing and a good food surplus going on early enough, the trait becomes strictly mediocre.

Diamondeye:

Since I usually generate around 5 great persons, or a little more, a game, Phi would maybe raise that to 7-9... Compare the effect of 3 extra greatpersons to the effect of any other trait and you will find it the loser. Even concerning Ind or Pro.

Evidently, you haven't used the trait to settle a string of Great Scientists in the late BCs and early ADs. I've been able to outtech all the AIs on a Prince game at 0% Science and Representation.

 

[Diamondeye]

Arguably, if you don't get Writing and a good food surplus going on early enough, the trait becomes strictly mediocre.

...Strictly useless, that is.

 

[Lord Martin]

I am very surprised to find the lack of debate over the power of Spiritualism, especially when combined with Aggresion. Yes, every one play their best at his/her own style of play, thus traits reflects their best methods of prectice. Yet Spiritualism holds the economy to a devoted one that is much easier to manage given their strong belief, with aggresion to wipe your neighbors clean. Not forgeting to mention the culture development influenced by Spiritualism that will help those newly acquired cities to be part of your own. The power of religion is one that to be missed! A bit like a shadow dictatorship if you'd like, but with a eye for economic development and global political superiority.

The most obvious drawback though... the emergence of other religions holding combined military powers as strong or better than yours.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Creative is my favorite trait, with Philosophical, Financial, Charismatic, and Protective being close seconds.