drewisfat
King
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 885
This forum has a proud tradition of pointlessly fighting over the relative value of traits and to my knowledge it's been over a year since the last brawl. We're long overdue. Let's get this over with 
First off some caveats. Difficulty level, map script, and your ultimate goal is going to drastically affect your rankings. AGG is top tier for warrior rushes if the AI doesn't start with archery. ORG might be the best trait on Huge maps, etc. So to clearly define the criteria I use for this list I'm going to assume:
Deity, Standard, Normal, Fractal, Medium Seas, NH/NE, temperate climate, no additional settings, with the goal of highest win %.
A - FIN, IND, PHI
B - CHA
C - CRE, IMP, SPI, EXP
D - AGG
F - PRO, ORG
Tier lists can be misleading in exaggerating the difference between traits based on an arbitrary cutoff, so let's go with a more precise scoring.
FIN 100/100: Helps every game. While PHI/IND can outperform FIN, you need a plan with both of them. FIN is braindead and always helps. Every FIN leader is above average.
IND 93/100: I believe this is the strongest trait on *average* but what's holding it back is the win-more nature of failgold. While you should be able to maintain a dominant position, as the old expression goes: Sh*ka Happens. If you do fall behind on the tech game unlocking wonders, it's hard to catch back up. Still National Wonders can be failgolded at your discretion and I'm of the opinion that half priced forges is the biggest single building hammer save in the game. Some of this depends on your philosophy of using forges. The argument goes forges aren't really worth it in pre-lib attacks, so you're not truly saving half the hammers if the forge wasn't worth building at full price. The thing is though, with any of the big 3 traits you should be trying for a lib breakout not an early war, if at all possible. The forges will then augment failgold even further, and with a little commerce you can unlock them really early with Oracle -> MC. I always look for opportunities to go TGW, mids, or GLH, but Oracle -> MC is my fallback plan unless Izzy's in the game.
PHI 90/100: Where PHI really shines is unlike FIN/IND, you can totally do a cuirassier breakout with ~4 cities by utilizing your extra great people on a pair of merchants to upgrade HAs. This solves your hammer deficit. It also solves the need for iron, which isn't guaranteed at 4 cities, since you'd only need to trade for iron for 1 turn with upgrading. All you really need to do is lock down horses and you're good to go. Other strong play with PHI involves an early academy. Maybe the easiest way to snag your first deity win outside of OP UUs is to shop around for a HoF start with a PHI leader and rush an academy. This is very much a win-more mechanic though. With PHI and a strong capital I don't really need more help. Beyond those methods, you really need a plan to get strong value out of PHI. Can work nicely with TGW or the mids to get spies/engineers in a reasonable time, but you have to base your whole strategy around this. I do TGW often enough to know the spies come in quick enough without PHI, and if you're going for the engineer from the mids, you'd have to limit how many other specialists you can run at the beginning, somewhat defeating the point of mids which is early rep. Many good players will also give the answer "math bulb", and I've never understood that. Feel free to explain it to me. From my way of thinking, a math bulb is settling for 1/3 potential bulb value and there's the inherent issue that math immediately follows writing, so you're not even beelining construction, you're sandbagging with 1-2 other techs while you wait for the GS. And if you're not doing a construction rush, why not just trade for math like a dozen turns later?
CHA 82/100: Why does CHA have its own tier? Simple: that happyhap. CHA might be often unnecessary but it helps in the worst case scenario that you're stuck with size 4 cities until HR. Whipping is very important, but it's prohibitive when you're capped at size 4. With CHA I know I can whip out the gate. With everything else it's map dependent. The promotion cost reduction isn't game changing per se, but it's a real nice diversification in benefit and I think promotion maximization is underrated.
CRE: 74/100: Yes, the nooby trait is still quite good. You can find maps where your food fits neatly in your first ring and it's unnecessary but I can find a lot more maps where that's not the case. And sometimes even if you can put food in your first ring, you could improve your overall city position by putting it in your second ring instead - simply not an option with other traits. CRE also gives subtle advantages you might not think about. More culture = more fogbust. It's map dependent whether CRE or AGG is the best trait for dealing with barbs early. Boxing an AI out early can relieve a lot of the pressure for early settlers. Flipping cities is possible (actually maybe even MORE possible) on deity if the AI makes the foolish choice of settling near your capital. If you've got a barb city tucked away in the back instead of building an army just plant an adjacent city and let the culture do its thing. With +2 culture and half priced libraries culture fights in your border cities will go your way without additional investment.
IMP: 71/100: The traditional thinking is I'm only building a few settlers and I only need 1 supermedic so this is a dud. Nothing could be further from the truth. Comparing it directly to EXP, settlers are more expensive and the modifier you get is +50% instead of +25%. I reject all guidelines of the flavor "you should build workers to settlers in a 2:1 or a 1.5:1 ratio". Nonsense. My average ratio is much lower than that, and ultimately this is completely map/trait dependent. Pure coastal cities literally require no worker turns. Let's dive into exactly when these hammer bonuses come into play since everyone's a fan of snowballs. If there's AI competition for city spots my settler to worker ratio is going to spike early on. It might not be as efficient, but I'd rather secure those cities inefficiently than lose them. This change in philosophy was big for me in personally breaking the reloading habit. Getting just a single extra city before you go to war can have a marked effect on the game's difficulty, especially if you don't have a good setup for early war. Also, you can improve diplo with dangerous neighbors faster and more effectively with a gift city than with tech gifts. Another opportunity most people fail to take advantage of is settler-first starts. I think settler-first with IMP is the right move maybe 1/4 of the time, and this disproportionately helps the hardest, slowest starts so I value it quite highly. Lastly, and it deserves a thread all on its own, GGs are better than people realize. Settling them in cities is always a mistake and even supermedics are often a lazy mistake. Even with horse armies (where GGs are weakest) the first GG should probably go to maximizing promotions. Put in the logistical forethought and shoot for bringing 10 promotions to the front in an instant. I'll even choose my attackers based on getting enough units to 8-9 xp. Getting your first GG in 1-2 battles instead of 2-4 battles can have a significant effect on your breakout war which is the most pivotal moment of any game. It's also much more comfortable to delay grabbing a supermedic when you can rely on another GG not being far off.
SPI: 70/100: This has creeped up a little in my personal rankings due to recent game experiences. In a normal game this might only save me ~5 anarchy turns. But in a tricky map where you have multiple dangerous neighbors with different religions, this can be an absolute godsend letting you manipulate religion/civics with whoever starts plotting so you can beg truce.
EXP: 69/100: I expect popular opinion is this is too low so I won't be arguing EXP's strengths but rather its weaknesses. EXP is a win-more trait. With the right map this trait can accelerate your start more than any other. The issue is getting that right map. It's actually incredibly rare that we get the full "3 turns" value from a faster worker at the open. This requires that you're not settling on a bonus hammer already and that there's a 3h tile in your first ring, OR that we can settle a bonus hammer t1 and have at least a 2h tile in the first ring, AND that your worker isn't destined to idle. It's more common to get NO value from EXP on the first worker than it is to get the full 3 turns. This trait shines with already good starts/techs. This trait also shines where you have plenty of forests for a double worker opening. 1-pop whip granaries are great.... if you have happiness. This trait just screams win-more while having only marginal benefit in tough starts. I have no doubt that it's better than SPI and IMP at least 2/3 of the time, but it's all about what can go wrong, not what can go right.
AGG: 42/100: Spectacular drop from EXP. AGG's number one benefit is barb safety and eliminating the need for early archery. With a little land, move out warriors aggressively to fogbust trusting that their odds are good enough to defend against archers from forests. If there's too much land, rush out that half priced barracks and give your warriors cover and you should be able to fogbust most maps before spearmen. If you do have to defend against spears, 2 agg warriors in a city does well enough. Efficiently dealing with barbs means this trait is actually helping your economy in the opening more than any other traits. Beyond that though it doesn't do much. Devs were clearly thinking more about axe rushing on the medium difficulty levels. If you're using siege though, a free combat promotion to your non-siege barely matters. Still it does synergize with some UUs making them actually viable: mainly samurai and berserkers with spies but to a lesser extent musketeers, phalanxes, impi and gallics. However, unless you're playing with unrestricted leaders, AGG has a hidden downside - all but 2 AGG leaders start with Hunting. In a void, Hunting is fine. I'd argue it's comparable to agriculture because scout > warrior and it's a prereq to archery, which you generally need before pottery. With AGG though both of these benefits disappear. Scout is roughly equal with a combat 1 warrior, and we shouldn't need archery unless the threat is AI not barbs and we don't have copper.
PRO: 33/100: Your question might be how did PRO escape single digits. First, the obvious, PRO can theoretically save a lost game, especially if you're sloppy and need to cold whip a wall. Early DoWs are some of the hardest games to tackle and PRO does help here, especially because we don't need to worry about strategics. Sure, you can defend with regular archers, but you'll have to build more upfront and replace them more often. PRO will save you some upkeep and some hammers in some of the toughest games. If you get DoWed say turn 70-90 PRO archers can more reliably work their way up the drill promotion line and then be able to defend against catapults without further investment. Even if there's no DoW, PRO gives me confidence in knowing I can get a last second defense set, so I'm able to play much more efficiently next to Shaka and don't feel the need to react until I actually see the fist. I've heard it argued that if you defend with archers the AI will pillage your land, so you need an active defense. That's true.... in KMOD. In BTS there's huge overlap between the aggressiveness of an AI and their unit courage. In other words, the leaders who are likely to attack you are for the most part the same ones who like to zombie into your cities. If rampant pillaging is a problem in your games, you're probably wildly overdefending your border town. Against barbs it's not nearly as useful as AGG because your fogbusting archers are more expensive and still vulnerable. It can defend improvements, but only if they're on hills. In some situations you can trust a single PRO archer to hold down against a barb while with a normal archer you'd want a second unit, as losing a city = game over. I've had great success combining PRO archers with HAs, whipping the HA, overflowing into the archer. The ultimate idea is the HAs ignore the enemy stack and go for undefended cities trusting that PRO archers and PRO walls can stall the enemy attack long enough for a favorable city exchange and in the end the war goes much faster. Once I get GGs I can give archers/longbows morale to move with the HA stack. Another benefit PRO provides is synergistically working with an espionage game. Since most people never do this, I'm not shocked by the attitude of the "PRO is by far the worst" crowd. The synergy comes from super cheap walls/castles and from Nationhood as drafted units still keep their guaranteed 2 promos. For this reason stone, while always a great resource to start off with, can really salvage the PRO trait through TGW, by turbocharging the EE and potentially even farming GGs early if it comes to war. My favored gameplan with Qin Shi is actually to build TGW and then DoW (worker steal ideally) a neighbor with high unit courage to farm xp for super Choks.
ORG: 30/100: The main bonus from ORG imo is the half priced factories, which really sets the tone for this trait - hot garbage. The fundamental issue with ORG is that less civic maintenance and half price courthouses are negligible until you're already big. It does nothing in helping you get big, and when you're big the game should already be decided. The only leader I see who frequently benefits from ORG is Julius who can get to a lot of cities through praets early. Otherwise it's a win-more trait. Seriously, in your standard 6 city -> lib breakout your savings will start at 0 GPT and top out at like 3 GPT. That's what I expect to save with PRO by skimping on defense and at least I get those couple pennies early. BuT dReW wHaT aBoUt LiGhThOuSeS? Even in pure seafood towns 60h granaries are usually better than 60h lighthouses so this is not saving you the full 30h early you think it is. Granaries + lighthouses is overkill until you raise the happy cap, and sometimes overkill for a good bit of time after that. I'm a big fan of the GLH and lighthouse is a prereq, but again this is not a true 30h save, because going from a 2 to a 1 pop whip hurts the efficiency of whipping overflow from the lighthouse into the GLH. I'd rather have IMP to really explode once I get the GLH or AGG to cover the barbs which are usually a real danger when going for a competitive GLH time. The only map type I see this trait increasing win% is when you're alone on an island with a psychopath. I tend to attack them rather than wait for them to attack me with no plot warning. Post-war you'd have a lot of cities but still be in a rough spot due to the high cost of killing a psycho and the lack of trade routes. It's worth noting though that PRO also helps in this situation with the "give peace a chance" approach and "bleed them dry" as a fallback.
First off some caveats. Difficulty level, map script, and your ultimate goal is going to drastically affect your rankings. AGG is top tier for warrior rushes if the AI doesn't start with archery. ORG might be the best trait on Huge maps, etc. So to clearly define the criteria I use for this list I'm going to assume:
Deity, Standard, Normal, Fractal, Medium Seas, NH/NE, temperate climate, no additional settings, with the goal of highest win %.
A - FIN, IND, PHI
B - CHA
C - CRE, IMP, SPI, EXP
D - AGG
F - PRO, ORG
Tier lists can be misleading in exaggerating the difference between traits based on an arbitrary cutoff, so let's go with a more precise scoring.
FIN 100/100: Helps every game. While PHI/IND can outperform FIN, you need a plan with both of them. FIN is braindead and always helps. Every FIN leader is above average.
IND 93/100: I believe this is the strongest trait on *average* but what's holding it back is the win-more nature of failgold. While you should be able to maintain a dominant position, as the old expression goes: Sh*ka Happens. If you do fall behind on the tech game unlocking wonders, it's hard to catch back up. Still National Wonders can be failgolded at your discretion and I'm of the opinion that half priced forges is the biggest single building hammer save in the game. Some of this depends on your philosophy of using forges. The argument goes forges aren't really worth it in pre-lib attacks, so you're not truly saving half the hammers if the forge wasn't worth building at full price. The thing is though, with any of the big 3 traits you should be trying for a lib breakout not an early war, if at all possible. The forges will then augment failgold even further, and with a little commerce you can unlock them really early with Oracle -> MC. I always look for opportunities to go TGW, mids, or GLH, but Oracle -> MC is my fallback plan unless Izzy's in the game.
PHI 90/100: Where PHI really shines is unlike FIN/IND, you can totally do a cuirassier breakout with ~4 cities by utilizing your extra great people on a pair of merchants to upgrade HAs. This solves your hammer deficit. It also solves the need for iron, which isn't guaranteed at 4 cities, since you'd only need to trade for iron for 1 turn with upgrading. All you really need to do is lock down horses and you're good to go. Other strong play with PHI involves an early academy. Maybe the easiest way to snag your first deity win outside of OP UUs is to shop around for a HoF start with a PHI leader and rush an academy. This is very much a win-more mechanic though. With PHI and a strong capital I don't really need more help. Beyond those methods, you really need a plan to get strong value out of PHI. Can work nicely with TGW or the mids to get spies/engineers in a reasonable time, but you have to base your whole strategy around this. I do TGW often enough to know the spies come in quick enough without PHI, and if you're going for the engineer from the mids, you'd have to limit how many other specialists you can run at the beginning, somewhat defeating the point of mids which is early rep. Many good players will also give the answer "math bulb", and I've never understood that. Feel free to explain it to me. From my way of thinking, a math bulb is settling for 1/3 potential bulb value and there's the inherent issue that math immediately follows writing, so you're not even beelining construction, you're sandbagging with 1-2 other techs while you wait for the GS. And if you're not doing a construction rush, why not just trade for math like a dozen turns later?
CHA 82/100: Why does CHA have its own tier? Simple: that happyhap. CHA might be often unnecessary but it helps in the worst case scenario that you're stuck with size 4 cities until HR. Whipping is very important, but it's prohibitive when you're capped at size 4. With CHA I know I can whip out the gate. With everything else it's map dependent. The promotion cost reduction isn't game changing per se, but it's a real nice diversification in benefit and I think promotion maximization is underrated.
CRE: 74/100: Yes, the nooby trait is still quite good. You can find maps where your food fits neatly in your first ring and it's unnecessary but I can find a lot more maps where that's not the case. And sometimes even if you can put food in your first ring, you could improve your overall city position by putting it in your second ring instead - simply not an option with other traits. CRE also gives subtle advantages you might not think about. More culture = more fogbust. It's map dependent whether CRE or AGG is the best trait for dealing with barbs early. Boxing an AI out early can relieve a lot of the pressure for early settlers. Flipping cities is possible (actually maybe even MORE possible) on deity if the AI makes the foolish choice of settling near your capital. If you've got a barb city tucked away in the back instead of building an army just plant an adjacent city and let the culture do its thing. With +2 culture and half priced libraries culture fights in your border cities will go your way without additional investment.
IMP: 71/100: The traditional thinking is I'm only building a few settlers and I only need 1 supermedic so this is a dud. Nothing could be further from the truth. Comparing it directly to EXP, settlers are more expensive and the modifier you get is +50% instead of +25%. I reject all guidelines of the flavor "you should build workers to settlers in a 2:1 or a 1.5:1 ratio". Nonsense. My average ratio is much lower than that, and ultimately this is completely map/trait dependent. Pure coastal cities literally require no worker turns. Let's dive into exactly when these hammer bonuses come into play since everyone's a fan of snowballs. If there's AI competition for city spots my settler to worker ratio is going to spike early on. It might not be as efficient, but I'd rather secure those cities inefficiently than lose them. This change in philosophy was big for me in personally breaking the reloading habit. Getting just a single extra city before you go to war can have a marked effect on the game's difficulty, especially if you don't have a good setup for early war. Also, you can improve diplo with dangerous neighbors faster and more effectively with a gift city than with tech gifts. Another opportunity most people fail to take advantage of is settler-first starts. I think settler-first with IMP is the right move maybe 1/4 of the time, and this disproportionately helps the hardest, slowest starts so I value it quite highly. Lastly, and it deserves a thread all on its own, GGs are better than people realize. Settling them in cities is always a mistake and even supermedics are often a lazy mistake. Even with horse armies (where GGs are weakest) the first GG should probably go to maximizing promotions. Put in the logistical forethought and shoot for bringing 10 promotions to the front in an instant. I'll even choose my attackers based on getting enough units to 8-9 xp. Getting your first GG in 1-2 battles instead of 2-4 battles can have a significant effect on your breakout war which is the most pivotal moment of any game. It's also much more comfortable to delay grabbing a supermedic when you can rely on another GG not being far off.
SPI: 70/100: This has creeped up a little in my personal rankings due to recent game experiences. In a normal game this might only save me ~5 anarchy turns. But in a tricky map where you have multiple dangerous neighbors with different religions, this can be an absolute godsend letting you manipulate religion/civics with whoever starts plotting so you can beg truce.
EXP: 69/100: I expect popular opinion is this is too low so I won't be arguing EXP's strengths but rather its weaknesses. EXP is a win-more trait. With the right map this trait can accelerate your start more than any other. The issue is getting that right map. It's actually incredibly rare that we get the full "3 turns" value from a faster worker at the open. This requires that you're not settling on a bonus hammer already and that there's a 3h tile in your first ring, OR that we can settle a bonus hammer t1 and have at least a 2h tile in the first ring, AND that your worker isn't destined to idle. It's more common to get NO value from EXP on the first worker than it is to get the full 3 turns. This trait shines with already good starts/techs. This trait also shines where you have plenty of forests for a double worker opening. 1-pop whip granaries are great.... if you have happiness. This trait just screams win-more while having only marginal benefit in tough starts. I have no doubt that it's better than SPI and IMP at least 2/3 of the time, but it's all about what can go wrong, not what can go right.
AGG: 42/100: Spectacular drop from EXP. AGG's number one benefit is barb safety and eliminating the need for early archery. With a little land, move out warriors aggressively to fogbust trusting that their odds are good enough to defend against archers from forests. If there's too much land, rush out that half priced barracks and give your warriors cover and you should be able to fogbust most maps before spearmen. If you do have to defend against spears, 2 agg warriors in a city does well enough. Efficiently dealing with barbs means this trait is actually helping your economy in the opening more than any other traits. Beyond that though it doesn't do much. Devs were clearly thinking more about axe rushing on the medium difficulty levels. If you're using siege though, a free combat promotion to your non-siege barely matters. Still it does synergize with some UUs making them actually viable: mainly samurai and berserkers with spies but to a lesser extent musketeers, phalanxes, impi and gallics. However, unless you're playing with unrestricted leaders, AGG has a hidden downside - all but 2 AGG leaders start with Hunting. In a void, Hunting is fine. I'd argue it's comparable to agriculture because scout > warrior and it's a prereq to archery, which you generally need before pottery. With AGG though both of these benefits disappear. Scout is roughly equal with a combat 1 warrior, and we shouldn't need archery unless the threat is AI not barbs and we don't have copper.
PRO: 33/100: Your question might be how did PRO escape single digits. First, the obvious, PRO can theoretically save a lost game, especially if you're sloppy and need to cold whip a wall. Early DoWs are some of the hardest games to tackle and PRO does help here, especially because we don't need to worry about strategics. Sure, you can defend with regular archers, but you'll have to build more upfront and replace them more often. PRO will save you some upkeep and some hammers in some of the toughest games. If you get DoWed say turn 70-90 PRO archers can more reliably work their way up the drill promotion line and then be able to defend against catapults without further investment. Even if there's no DoW, PRO gives me confidence in knowing I can get a last second defense set, so I'm able to play much more efficiently next to Shaka and don't feel the need to react until I actually see the fist. I've heard it argued that if you defend with archers the AI will pillage your land, so you need an active defense. That's true.... in KMOD. In BTS there's huge overlap between the aggressiveness of an AI and their unit courage. In other words, the leaders who are likely to attack you are for the most part the same ones who like to zombie into your cities. If rampant pillaging is a problem in your games, you're probably wildly overdefending your border town. Against barbs it's not nearly as useful as AGG because your fogbusting archers are more expensive and still vulnerable. It can defend improvements, but only if they're on hills. In some situations you can trust a single PRO archer to hold down against a barb while with a normal archer you'd want a second unit, as losing a city = game over. I've had great success combining PRO archers with HAs, whipping the HA, overflowing into the archer. The ultimate idea is the HAs ignore the enemy stack and go for undefended cities trusting that PRO archers and PRO walls can stall the enemy attack long enough for a favorable city exchange and in the end the war goes much faster. Once I get GGs I can give archers/longbows morale to move with the HA stack. Another benefit PRO provides is synergistically working with an espionage game. Since most people never do this, I'm not shocked by the attitude of the "PRO is by far the worst" crowd. The synergy comes from super cheap walls/castles and from Nationhood as drafted units still keep their guaranteed 2 promos. For this reason stone, while always a great resource to start off with, can really salvage the PRO trait through TGW, by turbocharging the EE and potentially even farming GGs early if it comes to war. My favored gameplan with Qin Shi is actually to build TGW and then DoW (worker steal ideally) a neighbor with high unit courage to farm xp for super Choks.
ORG: 30/100: The main bonus from ORG imo is the half priced factories, which really sets the tone for this trait - hot garbage. The fundamental issue with ORG is that less civic maintenance and half price courthouses are negligible until you're already big. It does nothing in helping you get big, and when you're big the game should already be decided. The only leader I see who frequently benefits from ORG is Julius who can get to a lot of cities through praets early. Otherwise it's a win-more trait. Seriously, in your standard 6 city -> lib breakout your savings will start at 0 GPT and top out at like 3 GPT. That's what I expect to save with PRO by skimping on defense and at least I get those couple pennies early. BuT dReW wHaT aBoUt LiGhThOuSeS? Even in pure seafood towns 60h granaries are usually better than 60h lighthouses so this is not saving you the full 30h early you think it is. Granaries + lighthouses is overkill until you raise the happy cap, and sometimes overkill for a good bit of time after that. I'm a big fan of the GLH and lighthouse is a prereq, but again this is not a true 30h save, because going from a 2 to a 1 pop whip hurts the efficiency of whipping overflow from the lighthouse into the GLH. I'd rather have IMP to really explode once I get the GLH or AGG to cover the barbs which are usually a real danger when going for a competitive GLH time. The only map type I see this trait increasing win% is when you're alone on an island with a psychopath. I tend to attack them rather than wait for them to attack me with no plot warning. Post-war you'd have a lot of cities but still be in a rough spot due to the high cost of killing a psycho and the lack of trade routes. It's worth noting though that PRO also helps in this situation with the "give peace a chance" approach and "bleed them dry" as a fallback.
) very limited experience from Settler to Emperor levels:
. Actually I value economical traits highly. Willem and Darius are among my favourite leaders as well 
. Personal preference may be very subjective - for example we all know Huayna Capac is the strongest leader, however he's not necessarily everyone's favourite. Some players prefer Pacal or Sury over Capac, others might like Gandhi or Washington a little more.
I try to write well to make up for being a bad talker.
