The Imperialistic Trait, Underrated?

[johnny_rico]

Suliman: A Very big plus

Why do you consider suleiman a very big plus? Phi/Imp Janissary/Hammam; I don't know his starting techs.

I haven't played with this leader before but I don't see how you're putting him at the top of the stack for benefitting from the imperialistic trait. Just curious. thanks.

 

[madscientist]

Why do you consider suleiman a very big plus? Phi/Imp Janissary/Hammam; I don't know his starting techs.

I haven't played with this leader before but I don't see how you're putting him at the top of the stack for benefitting from the imperialistic trait. Just curious. thanks.

My experience is that he can expand fairly quickly, while targeting the pyramids for a SE, not worrying much about the slider. The Jan's start with those benefits and a few settled GGs by that point can turn into a very stronge early gunpowder force. I know it may not seam like much but I was able to do very well with him using the early expansion.

 

[Iranon]

If you are Imperialistic: when settled on a plains hill and being able to build a Settler in 15 or Worker in 12 turns... what do you build first? What do you build if you have Fishing and access to seafood?

If you do build a Settler before a worker... does this also apply to Joao?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I don't mind it, but it needs something else. Either some double speed buildings or something more creative. I heard someone suggest a golden age when your civ wipes out another, and that's very interesting. Perhaps extra happiness or something from vassals? I just think another plus to it would make it much more desirable.

 

[Winth]

As I said, it's awesome in multiplayer.

Suleiman is a good Imp leader. As Financial supports your economy, so can Philosophical, although it's trickier. And you can rely on spamming Great Merchants, cheaper in Philosophical.

And you can rex cheaper with it.

 

[johnny_rico]

My experience is that he can expand fairly quickly, while targeting the pyramids for a SE, not worrying much about the slider. The Jan's start with those benefits and a few settled GGs by that point can turn into a very stronge early gunpowder force. I know it may not seam like much but I was able to do very well with him using the early expansion.

I can see that, unless you wind up warring with a protective leader. Trying to take cities with only janissaries against CG2 or CG3 longbows seems like an uphill battle. Seems to me, you'd want to beeline gunpowder using the Great People you generate to help get you there faster. But I doubt you could have engineering also in a timely manner (Great Engineer to bulb perhaps), and the trebs would be needed against protective longbows.

Anyway, that's an unlikely scenario so I can see where this has its strengths. Janissaries also have access to guerilla and woodsman promotions further enhancing their versatility.

Conceptually, it's just a little foreign to me because I typically go for more of a hybrid economy when playing imperialistic leaders (Victoria is the exception). I usually find I need cash to afford the REX. With Suleiman, it is probably conceivable to use merchants for cash and a shot at a Great Merchant. A trading caravan would solve the financial woes of expanding.

Overall, I like the imperialistic. It is not financial or philosophical which I consider to be the two most easy to abuse traits. The rest sit in the same barrel for me and I not dissuaded from any leader triat. I find them all useful, its usually just a matter of being willing to try something different.

 

[Rusten]

They say that a picture can say more than a thousand words. Allow me to show an example of what I was saying in the opening post to those who might've misunderstood somehow. Just repeating that I do not think this is one of the absolute top traits either, but it's still good! It has a more passive effect, which means that you don't notice the benefit unless you put your mind to it.

Example below:

Spoiler :

ETA 2 forest chop:

turn after - chopped:

turn after:

2nd chop:

This gives us a total of 88 (out of 100) hammers using only 2 turns of growth. Note that the settler only requires one more turn to be complete using normal production. I have made 2 archers (3rd one at 23/25) so far in the game and grown to 4 having my settler complete in about 40 turns and the next ones will be fast too. The result could've been even better if I had started with bronze or a hill without a forest on it (or plains cattle etc etc..). I just used what the map generator gave me at the first attempt. To compare it with a non-imperialistic leader I calculated that we would have 60/100 hammers with the same chops and we would need another 4 turns (without growth) to complete the settler and that just wouldn't be worth the two forests. There's a grassland river with cattle, bronze and gold to the south-east next to Charlemagne and I want to get there before he does. Remember that this is turn ~40. Those 28 hammers extra are huge and being able to get that super-city safely will benefit me for milleniums to come.

If you still think the trait is worthless or totally sucks then so be it. I've done my best to convince you and this thread wasn't for you in the first place. The goal was to make some people curious who have just heard that Imperialistic is bad and never got around to using it - there are ways! Also keep in mind that this start was far from ideal as I don't want 20 forests at all, but rather stuff to improve. You could get an even better earlier boost than what I've shown.

 

[kniteowl]

I am missing someone, just do not recall who.

How could you forget Cyrus? I'd figure he'd be the most obvious Imp leader.

I personally think Imp is an... ok trait... I try to leverage it like any other trait but still there are better traits out there to use then Imp.

 

[Rusten]

A further tip would be to "pre-chop" your forests until they're timed at 1 while working on your workers/archers at size 5. That would allow you to pump out those settlers at a rate of only 1-2 turns for each.

 

[futurehermit]

I'm having a great game as Cathy currently. I started out by boxing in with a couple settlers then rushing the Arabs. After taking them out I gunned for col/currency. Once that was in place, I boxed in with a couple settlers then rushed the Mayans. After taking them out, I rexed the rest of my land. Ended up with about 20 cities pre-1500AD normal. Then I focused on my economy, liberalism, and gunning for cossacks. I just finished taking out the Greeks who had a huge empire. I'm sub 1800AD needing only a bit more land for a domination win. I'm currently sending out yet more settlers to claim the remaining islands while shipping my cossacks over to the weakest overseas opponent.

The GG bonus was kind of "meh" this game. I have an uber capital now (had a production capital) pumping out highly-promoted units, but the game is already in the bag.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Justinian proved really effective for me.
Spiritual is a good trait and Cataphracts are a decent UU (although the abundance of ivory on the map was annoying) but the best thing about him is his UB. I fought a lengthy war against the Germans thanks to understimating the amount of units I needed but the Hippodrome dealt with WW very effectively.

 

[kivanc]

They say that a picture can say more than a thousand words. Allow me to show an example of what I was saying in the opening post to those who might've misunderstood somehow. Just repeating that I do not think this is one of the absolute top traits either, but it's still good! It has a more passive effect, which means that you don't notice the benefit unless you put your mind to it.

Example below:

Spoiler :

ETA 2 forest chop:

turn after - chopped:

turn after:

2nd chop:

Spoiler :

sorry. i'm aware, the thread and this post is old but i want to be sure about one thing. actually i didn't observe it myself and will try it at home.

well, not stopping city growth and turning to settler/worker production back again just when i see that my workers have 2 more turns to finish chopping is a method i also do sometimes. but when i need the settler/worker urgently sure, i will let the city stop growing.

this is a good method for sure. but by this way, you are skipping the 1.5hammers settler advantage of imp trait, are you not? or am i wrong? let me go into detail.

settler, marathon :300 hammers
let's say a non-imp leader with capital pop 1 builds the settler in 60 turns.
an imp leader will finish it in 40 turns with the same conditions. (number change acc to hammer/food variations)

that 1.5 hammers advantage should be only when you are doing the production right? i mean, the total hammers are still 300.
you told that imp gets +50% more hammers from chopping while building settler. is this true?
if this is true, you are right. but if it is still 60 (90 after math), then the ahmmer/settler advantage of imp goes away.
can you please clarify?
by the way, your attachments in this post are off.

 

[azzaman333]

The key to IMP is that you get strategic resources before your rivals.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

my .02 - is good on deity; on immortal imho it's already meh. And only on some deity; on an isolated start it's again useless. I mean, on immortal, with experience(I still take it over deity, much more room for various approaches), you should reach what you want without much fuss.

regarding the above question - if at pop. 1 as non imperialistic you work a, dunno, 3 food non farmed corn; your produce towards the settler 3(corn) + 1(base city hammer) = 4/turn.

as imperialistic ideally you want a forested plain hill - at pop. 1, you produce towards the settler 3(hammer) + 1(base city hammer) = 4(hammer) * 1.5(imp.) = 6/turn

without a forested plain hill, at pop. 1 you'd work either a plain forest or a grassland forested hill and you'll produce 2(hammer) + 1(food) + 1(base city hammer) = 3(hammer) * 1.5(imp) + 1(food - no bonus) = 5.5/turn.

 

[kivanc]

my .02 - is good on deity; on immortal imho it's already meh. And only on some deity; on an isolated start it's again useless. I mean, on immortal, with experience(I still take it over deity, much more room for various approaches), you should reach what you want without much fuss.

regarding the above question - if at pop. 1 as non imperialistic you work a, dunno, 3 food non farmed corn; your produce towards the settler 3(corn) + 1(base city hammer) = 4/turn.

as imperialistic ideally you want a forested plain hill - at pop. 1, you produce towards the settler 3(hammer) + 1(base city hammer) = 4(hammer) * 1.5(imp.) = 6/turn

without a forested plain hill, at pop. 1 you'd work either a plain forest or a grassland forested hill and you'll produce 2(hammer) + 1(food) + 1(base city hammer) = 3(hammer) * 1.5(imp) + 1(food - no bonus) = 5.5/turn.

there is a misunderstanding, i think. i didn't ask how many turns it will take, i asked if Rusten's good method was skipping the prod advantage of settler or not. that is also a method i apply.

METHOD: instead of stopping growth while building settlers/workers, you train a unit for example and let the city continue growing. you just wait until you see you workers have 2 more turn to finish chopping, that turn you change back to settler/worker so when you hit enter, 60 more hammers are there. That means you are adding that 60 hammers to settlert/worker production without building it any turn. then you continue tarining unit, and let the city continue growing. with this method you can build a settler by pure-chopping and only stopping growth for 300/60)=5 turns and the settler will be ready in 9*5=45 turns. My calculations are for marathon before math

now, this is a strange but good method. you can apply this method by half chopping and half manual- building. so you start with training a unit until city gets to 2 and then continue with finishing the settler and chop at the same time. then continue with the unit again etc.

but my argument is that, with this method, you will not be using the hammer adv of imp trait. or am i wrong?
Rusten told that, after chopping you get 90 hammers instead of 60 with an IMP leader but I doubt about that. What's the reality? we all know numner of hammers for settler produ is still 300 hammers and surplus food is not multiplied by 1.5

 

[mboettcher]

Most traits are on pretty equal footing in my Opinion. Its all about civ synergy. How well can you leverage those traits to be productive, powerful force with the uniqueness of your civ and the strategy your going to employ.

let's compare to philosophical. With Phil trait you get 100% bonus to GPP but that only really gets you 50% in your NE city and as little as 33% with pacifism (add parth and its now a whopping 28.6%). And these are points NOT GP which means your probably only getting like 15% more GP (though you do pop 1 or 2 really early ones due to lack of NE etc and low cost).

With the 100% Imperialistic you can pop 75% or so more Generals (increasing costs again). And if you think a plethora of generals aren't useful for when you have your UU or are building military momentum on your continent then you just can't use them well.

You can settle them and produce really high xp units, found an academy and have an early weapons factory (with higher xp). You can also get a super medic with as much as
40% a turn heal.

You can even go a fun route for my part. This worked better in 3.15 before the combat line was taken from artillery (why?). You can make a blitzkreiging superstack of doom. Get a warlord medic, some artillery and several warlord heavy infantry. Give em leadership, March(very importante), CRIII, Combat VI, Guerilla 3, woodsman III and tactics and watever else (antiarchery on one usually helps). Your stack can take cities continuously without casulties. This way you can farm 200+ xp invincible units for late game wars. How do you avoid losing them? keep the stack supplied with artillery and suicide troops in the event of difficult cities. SOften the defenses and mop up. I know not the best strat, but the most fun.

 

[Quotey]

Noone's mentioned what I do in every IMP thread. You can 2 pop whip a settler after a turn of production.

 

[silverbullet]

Rusten - your screenshots are missing from your example, at least I can't see them.

What do you think about whipping the capital's worker and applying the overflow to a settler? If timed correctly you can whip the worker at 29/60 (2 pop whip from a size 4 capital), and get 30+ hammers of overflow. Build a settler next turn and they become 45 hammers. Switch to army on the following turn, and complete the queued settler with chopping.
I think this is useful on starts with a lot of great food tiles and not a lot of production.
When I start with fresh water corn and pigs I would improve those tiles before any mine, but with IMP I don't get the bonus for these tiles unless whipping.

 

[kivanc]

Noone's mentioned what I do in every IMP thread. You can 2 pop whip a settler after a turn of production.

well, this is the same case about my question to Rusten, but he now seems away.

he tells that chopping brings more for an IMP leader than any otehr while building settler.

and you also tell that cheap settlers with IMP will cost less pop while whipping. i don't know much about whipping mechanics.

i didn't notice about the analysis of whipping and chopping but most guys talk as if an organzied leader will need less pop to whip for a courthouse, similar situtation.

so is that, double/50% advantage while building effect whipping/chopping as well. i assume, you say yes.

when i mosueover to hammer numbers, i see 4*1.5=6, so 50turns instead of 75 for example. and i thought that difference only counts for the turns you are building the settler unit. but i didn't notice if chopping will bring me 60 hammers or 90.

 

[Quotey]

Chopping or whipping will give you (epic speed) 45 hammers (after maths).

Since ALL hammers are multiplied by the bonuses, chopping 1 forest into a couthouse will give you 90 hammers.

Whipping 2 pop after a single turn of production into a courthouse will give you 180 hammers, exactly enough to complete the courthouse.

So chopping will give you 45x1.5 = 62 hammers towards a settler.Epic speed sucks like that.