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Trait Rankings

My first thought was "Not another one of these threads", but there is just so much good information on that first page, wow. Kudos to everyone for these contributions. I won't make another list which would be quite similar to the ones provided anyway. Let's just say, after reading everything, my valuation of CHA went up a little while I'll definitely question EXP much more in the future.

Regarding SPI, I think it's a wonderful trait, because it completely depends on what you're doing with it. I feel I can measure my civ progress from the beginning to now (which is being quite comfortable on Imm) by the degree I was able to use SPI.
In the very beginning my favorite leader was Hatshepsut, and not because of War Chariots which back then I didn't recognize as the game changer they are. I just loved CRE because it allowed easy city placement and SPI because I could freely try out all the civics and learn how and when to use them.
The next phase of my journey both of these traits felt almost obsolete for me. I thought, now that I know how to properly place cities and which civics are good at what point of the game, I can get more value from the other traits. The value of SPI seemed to be the sum of the minimum turns of anarchy saved for the most necessary civic switches.
Afterwards (where I am now) my regard of SPI rose again due to having learned how to do planned civic switches (mainly between caste and slavery, but also rep/police state, pacifism/organized religion etc.) and adjusting every city build to that plan. Plus being able to give in to demands for religion switches etc. is nice and otherwise not worth with the anarchy.
And the beautiful thing is, I know there is yet another level of using SPI which I haven't reached yet, but caught a glimpse when watching Seraiel's games back then. The ease of him planning ahead multiple religion and favorite civic switches to extract monopoly tech after monoply tech from a bunch of deity AIs on a large map was mind blowing. He bulbed some initial tech bargain and managed to leverage that into many times the beaker count.
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Where's my breakdown in understanding the math bulb though? What are you teching after writing? I could accept such a cheap bulb if it meant getting construction 422 beakers earlier, but it's not really because we have to wait around for the scientist to build and whatever we're teching in the meantime is worse than math would be sans bulb.
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As far as I've seen the PHI math bulb in action, it's not Construction but Horse Archer rushes. You cultivate the GS while teching Horseback riding and bulb math right on time to chop out the army. It is situational, but think something like Suleiman with pigs start going AH first and discovering horses nearby with a bunch of forests.
 
Where's my breakdown in understanding the math bulb though? What are you teching after writing? I could accept such a cheap bulb if it meant getting construction 422 beakers earlier, but it's not really because we have to wait around for the scientist to build and whatever we're teching in the meantime is worse than math would be sans bulb.
Masonry (with scientist beakers) and gathering gold for construction.
Can prolly afford another city, construction isn't cheap at that point so that usually works out fine.
Assuming we are at ~0 gold when writing comes in.
 
My personal opinion as a deity player

S - FIN
A - PHI SPI CRE EXP
B - IND CHA ORG
C - AGG IMP
D - PRO
This is closest to my ranking as well playing on Immortal/Normal most of the time. The only big difference is I'd probably put PHI alone in tier A as for me it's the 2nd best trait after Fin.

Like you, IMP I'm not as high on as some others. Also I presume since many of my games involve early aggression instead of rex, I get very little out of it in some games.

CHA I'd put a tier higher. Early happiness is a huge boon and the early promos are just icing on the cake.

PRO is last because games where I get anything out of it are very few and far between. Sure there are settings it can help on but in a standard game it has basically zero utility.

S - FIN
A - PHI
B - SPI CRE EXP CHA
C - IND ORG
D - AGG IMP
F - PRO
 
A - FIN, IND
B - SPI, PHI
C - EXP, IMP
D - CHA, ORG
E - AGG, PRO

I think most win/losses are are influenced by decisions made in the first 60 turns, so, I've bumped up ratings on a few traits based on the ability to adapt. Anything D tier and below doesn't help adapt to the map.

Industrious pushes the advantage of failgold. a granary-fueled whip into a wonder is the strongest map-agnostic economy play in the game.

Expansive - If you think of the game as starting when the first worker comes out, then default map settings means Expansive leaders may have a 5 turn head-start on the game. I trust micro to get me out of situations more than I trust traits. Obtaining granaries with 1 chop or a 2 --> 1 whip rather than a 4-2 whip is also a game change in terms of worker turns.

Spiritual: gathers traits through micro. You can whip and non-whip bonuses on the same turn. You can switch to caste for border expansion (CRE). You can get cheaper temples early (CHA). You can fake faster workers with serfdom, fake AGG units with theocracy, you can draft units in batches, etc etc.

Imperialistic: I think IMP busts the player out of bad starting spots. There have been games as Justinian where I go Settler first. The problem is unlike expansive, IMP must be combined with a financial trait. IMO Augustus Caesar is a highly underrated leader because you can expand like crazy without penalty, or collect the select wonder you need without too much opportunity cost. Beyond faster settlers, fighting early also spoofs the AGG trait via generals.
 
CHA is underrated so often :)
Even in AI Survivor (good reference cos it starts again today..) where AIs constantly fight, and Sulla often mentions how they lack happy in the beginning. Then he goes on how AI X has bad traits (including CHA of course..).

It's worth 2 happy in all cities (not all need the extra monument one, but good option)..now let's remind ourselves that Pyras give 3 in 5 cities. So CHA almost equals Rep. happy without needing a huge :hammers: wonder.

For units, let's say you can only use Barracks for 3xp in an early rush. Cleaning up an easy fight with CHA gives another promo at 4xp.
Each Cat surviving a fight can promote with CR2 or accuracy. Even for Axe rushes you can get valuable promos like cover or CR2 by picking off some easy barbs i.e. before attacking.
Really good (and fun) imo, there are not many traits i'd prefer over CHA in a ~3 city boxed in situation with no happy resources.
 
My favorite trait is creative. It helps a lot to pop borders to keep down barbarians and allows for more flexibility in city placement. As an immortal level player it makes the early game a little more forgiving.

Cheap libraries are also nice.
 
Ind: Everyone's raving about failgold, but I honestly don't see the point, and it starts to get less gamebreaking at around this part of the list.
To be honest though, when two top top players (drew and CPK) rate it very highly, it's very likely lesser players just don't utilize the trait very well. ;)
 
There are quite a few top players on the forum, many of whom have different (but equally effective) play styles so its not surprising that they won't always agree on best traits.
 
To be honest though, when two top top players (drew and CPK) rate it very highly, it's very likely lesser players just don't utilize the trait very well. ;)
@drewisfat . help me understand here: how exactly do you use failgold, and with what wonders? A lot of the early wonders seem to come at a time where it seems far more essential to put OF into settlers and workers and granaries, maybe libraries. They also may go before you even have a chance to failgold them, and/or may be off the sensible tech path...like Henge or Oracle. The midgame wonders, you have a bit more breathing room to failgold into, but the problem I see there is that they go at extremely erratic dates and might not for a long time if they're on a monopoly tech? Etc. if you are trying to hold onto CoL and/or philo, then Chicken Pizza and Angkor Wat may go extremely late, even moreso if people don't have stone, unless one of the AIs happens to self-tech it AND have a high wonder build prob. Also at that time you get the chance to build wealth. So yes, you can get somewhat "more" gold that way, but that gold comes extremely unpredictably and depends almost entirely if the AI cooperates, which is something that I personally don't want to build my strategy around? Also, in the midgame, money problems tend to be much lessened due to economy stabilization at, say, 7-10 cities, growing cottages, and building wealth and/or civil service. Some games I've teched largely all the way to lib on trading very old techs for gold. So, while failgold seems good, it has certain factors holding it back that seem to make it not as good as S or even A tier trait-worthy. Am I missing something here?
 
To be honest though, when two top top players (drew and CPK) rate it very highly, it's very likely lesser players just don't utilize the trait very well. ;)

Thanks for the call out, but I'll give source credit to: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-12#post-14463743

@Fish Man I recommend the above link. Edit: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-15#post-14490761

As an economy game, decisions come down to a tradeoff problem with growth vs expansion. Failgold, BUFFY overflow gold, spies, and strike economy are 4 separate ways to fuel expansion while circumventing the tradeoff problem. And when you get to 25+ cities, maintenance also plateaus.
 
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Thanks for the call out, but I'll give source credit to: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-12#post-14463743

@Fish Man I recommend the above link. Edit: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-15#post-14490761

As an economy game, decisions come down to a tradeoff problem with growth vs expansion. Failgold, BUFFY overflow gold, spies, and strike economy are 4 separate ways to fuel expansion while circumventing the tradeoff problem. And when you get to 25+ cities, maintenance also plateaus.

I've read the link and more or less understand the mechanics behind it. I just don't see how it's relevant on standard completely randomly-generated fractal deity games, where those strategies are often not viable in a timely manner (and some people, like me, don't play with BUFFY). If they were, Lain and Henrik and everyone else would be using them with every industrious leader in every game. The thread that you linked was for a map on marathon speed, with the most OP leader in the game, generated by running a terrain generator 24/7 over the course of several nights - definitely not representative of an average standard speed deity game. In a lot of cases, the choice is not between FINANCING expansion with failgold or regular commerce, but of outright getting the settler out in time. And by the time you do that, the wonder you want to failgold could be gone (or it could remain unbuilt for the next 1000 years, both of which obviously can hamper your strategy).

If we were making a tier list for fastest space with the most busted maps possible, that would be another discussion entirely, and one I'd be obviously happy to partake in as well - but deity true random and simply survival/winning-focused gameplay is much different.
 
An easy example for failgold is Moai..we don't need any special techs, and especially on fractal (in more or less isolated situations) have a lot of time.
Some city will eventually benefit from them but it's very rarely urgent..unlike let's say NE where delays mean less :gp:

Some of the strongest failgold possibilities are very early.
If we look at Pyras with stone, we could also put some :hammers: into TGW which easily funds techs like pottery & writing.
Pyras are also great for it, let's say the city building them pauses for something like a settler whip (with Pyras OF).
Another city could get chops into them meanwhile, each worth 50 :gold:.

I think failgold gets stronger on maps without much good early expansion.
If i can settle into 4 river valleys and 5 gold mines instead (extreme example), i prolly won't spend time on wonders.
 
Given that the discussion is about traits rather than failgold per se industrious is less valuable for failgold if you have the relevant resource for a wonder (2h=5g vs 2h=4g), there's still a benefit but its 20% not 50%.
 
Given that the discussion is about traits rather than failgold per se industrious is less valuable for failgold if you have the relevant resource for a wonder (2h=5g vs 2h=4g), there's still a benefit but its 20% not 50%.
Well it's 25%. Also, perhaps % isn't the best way to think about it. Think more in terms of how many :gold: it will net you in a time frame.
 
Sorry been way busier lately than I thought I would be. Post expansion but pre-breakout is where failgold comes the most into play, where otherwise your hammers are very low priority. Obviously which resource modifiers we have will affect what we failgold, aesthetics generally being ideal. Isolated play with IND varies the most. Generally you don't want to deviate much from straight astro but with IND usually you can justify some combination of CoL/calendar/aesth line/and MC depending what you have. Having plenty of trade partners might make it less important, though arguably true with every trait. It's still good to NOT trade with the AI when you don't need to. I think there's an attitude of trade whatever you can whenever you can with the AI. This is to get an impressive lib, cuir, civil service time, but what really matters is your window of these things over the AI and helping push the AI along narrows the other side of this window, it's just not as obviously quantifiable.

Streamers may have a bias against early wonders because of inconsistency in finishing them. Worth noting though that this is primarily Lain's bias, and while you can never 100% get an early wonder (seen some freaky stuffy with oracle and glh especially) when Lain does build them it's often 5-10 turns later than I would ever consider finishing them, and it allows the AI like a 15-30% to win before you which is unreasonable imo. Granted I will also try for wonders "late" with IND sometimes. A common move is something like pyramids where I'll half build them just for failgold, and if they haven't gone at the expected time then I'll start prechopping forests to try to burst it down at the end. TGW is another one that I've won a surprising number of times post T50 when it should be long gone. Sure it's a playstyle difference. At heart I'm a noob builder and I like IND because it rewards hammers/mines/infrastructure/buildings a lot more than it may otherwise do. If you're always maxing cottages and minimizing mines regardless of terrain and traits it's going to seem a lot worse. Some players are very formulaic trying to best mimic the meta with whatever leader and whatever map they draw. Partly to the fun of changing up the pace, I'm looking for excuses to deviate from the meta so I'm a lot more familiar with that and is why I rate leaders like Toku, Qin, even Justinian a couple tiers higher than most do.

I think the complaint about hammers sittling idle for an unpredictable number of turns is overstated

@Fippy ok good, I was assuming Masonry for the most part. My problem is twofold. First it's going to take 9 turns at a minimum running scientists to get that bulb. If we rush the library out, well there's a cost to that. Whipping likely to stop you from running both scientists immediately unless we were able to overgrow beforehand. Chopping uses your forests shortly before we could boost those forests with math and use them on units. In my experience I'm either paying a cost to rush the library, overstocking gold by a handful of turns, or some combination of. Lastly, self-teching masonry means we can't possibly trade for it. It's certainly not guaranteed that we can trade for it, often depending on when the mids go, but there's still a good chance we could by the time we finished math/stockpiling some gold. These things may seem small enough to write off, but they can bring the math bulb down from like 1/3 full bulb value to 1/4 or 1/5 and that's where it just feels awful to me. You could make the argument that it let's you expand a bit more and that efficiency be darned we need every advantage we can get for a successful construction rush as that's going to decide the game. To me though that sounds like an argument for using an early GA as much if not more than an early bulb.
 
IND comes with a good package for games of rare hard difficulty, i.e. deity surrounded by barbs which sometimes happens.
100 or 150 :hammers: does make a big difference for TGW.

Or isolation with decent food but no happy and little :commerce:, and most important: no stone.
Pyras are the prime wonder here, and IND gives at least a reasonable fighting chance for them if enuf forests are around. Bit more failgold if an AI steals them (usually for monarchy).

I agree with Drew on "streamers can be biased", there's little reason to record such maps for YT watchers.
And on most maps, once you have a certain comfort with deity "crazy but also very funny IND wonder moves" are not needed.
IND prolly cannot be rated "fairly" without some interest in let's call them special games, after all it doesn't help with playing standard expansion + cottages.
 
Sorry for double posting, I wasn't done. Apparently the cat submitted that while I was away....
To elaborate on idle hammers: first I'd say wonder times aren't THAT unpredictable. We have data on the average times for the main wonders on the forums and we have some insight into the specific game from when other wonders went and even demographic info as far as GLH goes (granted that's not a usual failgold target). Usually I'm having a cry when the wonders go early not late, so it's an unfamiliar attitude to me. If a wonder's going late you can stop dwelling on what you did 15 turns ago and focus on how any additional failgold has a very short expected payout. If a wonder is going late and my bank has dried up, that's when I'm making those tech trades for gold, not before unless there's an amazing deal. If we do wind up with more gold than we need due to a huge late failgold payout, don't be afraid to give more gold out than you usually would in tech trades, especially currency.
Mostly though I think the snowball effect is oversimplified. I believe it was Sampsa who a year or so ago pointed out that commerce doesn't snowball in the same way hammers do. Granted I argued for the snowballing of commerce back then, but the point is still true. Hammers don't snowball consistently throughout the game either. They snowball the most during the expansion phase and when building an army. When you're just trying to grow a tech advantage hammers are nigh worthless on their own and failgold lets us not only turn them into boosted commerce but allow us to turn food into commerce. Overflow can't go into wealth. Often when you have overflow and no need for those hammers, you build wealth anyways and just save that overflow. There seems to be a double standard where idle failgold hammers are horrible, but idle hammers otherwise in the midgame are fine since you don't need those hammers right away. For the record, in building anything all hammers are all technically idle til the item is built, we just generally don't think of it that way. Big ticket items, like Moai (which I rarely build sans-IND) take overflow from multiple other items to complete, and those hammers are idling a lot longer than failgold.
TLDR: Don't think of failgold as idling hammers, think of it as a way to invest hammers that aren't urgently needed at the moment.
 
I am a long time player but I have only recently started “getting good” at the game (partly by joining this community) so this list is going to be from my experience playing multiplayer games with family at low difficulty levels (Noble and lower).

S: Financial
A: Philosophy, Industrious
B: Creative, Aggressive
C: Expansive, Spiritual
D: Organized

Disclaimer: I don’t have enough experience with Defensive, Imperialistic, and Charismatic to rate them.

Financial: [insert Drew’s simple explanation] the lack of effort needed to make this part of your strategy is especially helpful at our low skill level.

Philosophical: Strong trait that is really underutilized by noobs, but as of recently, great people have become a more important part of our strategy. At this lower skill level I feel you could easily merge my A and B tiers together because the players aren’t as good at exploiting the bonuses.

Industrious: For our easy difficulty multiplayer games, we would always race for wonders, and when one of us had this trait, they got most of them. I will say that I would like this trait a lot more if I were better at the game (which I am training for) I could make much better use of this trait. The biggest reason I think this trait is overrated is definitely a skill issue on my part :p. Ex. I just found out that trying to get the fail gold is a viable and useful strategy.

Creative is not quite as useful in lower difficulty games but it’s a huge quality of life bonus that allows a lower level player to think less about culture pops.

Aggressive is a lot better in the lower difficulty levels and in multiplayer conflict, which is likely part of why it was balanced weaker in other situations. It is nearly overpowered in this context. We are really bad at launching attacks with lots of units (something I am working on) so how well our units are upgraded makes a huge difference. (We have many wars per-game with each other and the AI.)

Expansive is very underpowered in the lower difficulty levels which give you lots of health for free. Also we are bad at expansion (something that I am getting much better at) so the faster building speeds are mostly unhelpful.

Spiritual has its potential capped by our skill issues (but I am getting much better at leveraging it).

Organized really stinks at lower difficulty where civic maintenance is mostly irrelevant. Its benefits are tiny compared to the other traits so I found myself avoiding this trait and getting upset when it was randomly selected for me.

Edit: tldr is that with this very different context a lot of things change, but the ranking ends up very similar.
 
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Not being a Deity player nor really knowing the extent of the relationship of traits to Fractal like the better players leaves me with adding only some opinions of the traits themselves, in general.

1.) EXP and SPI are the most consistently overrated traits
2.) AGG and IMP are the most consistently underrated traits
3.) CHA gets slept on a lot
4.) nobody actually likes ORG except me :(

Though I can see how Deity and map types that further challenge grabbing lots of land paint a good picture of ORG only being good for Factories as drew states. Then it certainly doesn't look very good at all haha. But I do like my mass over expansion down here on Immortal, and ORG is a good cushion!

It's also kinda funny that these 6 traits are largely the "middling" traits and subject to a lot of biases, where it's pretty easy to see why FIN/PHI/CRE are great in a general context and PRO is basically like not having a trait. IND is a trait that my opinion of has pretty much consistently dropped as its greatest power is so situational, but it can move around a lot based on how much effort you want to put into abusing it, much like SPI.
 
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Well drewisfat stated his conditions for evaluating traits which is indeed very necessary. In a 4-6 city deity breakout game ORG is weak. If you instead have 25 cities to settle peacefully ORG and EXP are top tier traits.
 
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