Traits

[Antilogic]

I also take Metal Casting instead of CoL. You get there pretty fast, so it is available without leaving a lot of other techs unresearched. And early forges and Colossus can be a real advantage!

The Colossus only really makes a difference if you have several coastal cities citizens in the water to make use of it. It typically doesn't help me in most games, because I have somewhere between 0 and 2 coastal cities--usually not worth the investment.

On an archipelago map, though, that could be a greater advantage.

 

[Tavenier]

The Colossus only really makes a difference if you have several coastal cities citizens in the water to make use of it. It typically doesn't help me in most games, because I have somewhere between 0 and 2 coastal cities--usually not worth the investment.

On an archipelago map, though, that could be a greater advantage.

Yep, and I play most of my games on continents-maps. So probably 70% of my cities are coastal. So in my games I always see the economy go up a bit as soon as the colossus is finished.
But the forges are the biggest advantage for me to go for that tech.

 

[Antilogic]

I agree forges are a strong advantage--I always go for MC over CoL if I'm industrious...but if I have a choice and I'm struggling to increase my research, I typically go the other way around.

 

[FoxTrot12]

Why do people like Spiritual so much? No anarchy? Not that great. A few turns of anarchy aren't that bad in the long run.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Why do people like Spiritual so much? No anarchy? Not that great. A few turns of anarchy aren't that bad in the long run.

Sometimes you need that civic RIGHT NOW, not one or two turns down the road. For instance, me and one of my friends were allied--I was Brennus, he was Augustus. When Genghis Khan took the opportunity to invade me, I could switch to Nationhood right away and start pumping out draftees. The only reason that Antium didn't fall to the English when Churchill pulled the same trick on my friend a few turns later was that Churchill's army all landed in the same place and therefore it was a good idea just to upgrade and rush (he was running US) units at Antium.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Yeah, spiritual is not for you if you change civics only about the time you get new one (i played like it when i started..), but to really use civics to fullest spiritual is needed. For example, when you change from infra building to army building/drafting that can mean change of 2-3 civics at time to get most of them. On epic speed thats 2 or more turns of do-nothing on first switch. After the army has been pieced together, maybe 10-20~ turns later switch back to infra/science gear. Again, 2 or more turns of do-nothing without spiritual. Count all missed turns for a whole game and its different than few turns of anarchy.

Not to mention when Monty comes saying "You would do wisely by adopting police state" you can just change and switch back in five turns (and wait him to stab you on the back).

 

[KMadCandy]

Why do people like Spiritual so much? No anarchy? Not that great. A few turns of anarchy aren't that bad in the long run.

the more i learn to use it effectively the more i love it. when i have nothing to build (last 2 days i'm doing my first OCCs, so there are times like that), i insta-change to vassalage and theocracy and make highly promoted units. of course then sometimes i never use them, since i'm like 'oh no war, that's scary!' *giggle*

spiritual is definitely a conditional trait. if you use it often and use it right, it's super sweet in every stage of the game. if you don't change civics often, it's wasted.

i suppose all the traits are like that, but i haven't tried them all yet.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

Spiritual is without peers when it comes to dealing with surprise attacks. You'll be able to switch to slavery and nationalism without the anarchy, which means you can draft on the same turn, and have those whipped units for the next turn.

Diplomatic wins. Lets say you know you need votes. Switch your religion (or to free religion) one turn and see where that gets you. If you still dont have the support, switch to a civ's favorite civics.

I hate building temples. Usually when Im building a temple it is because I have to, not because I want to. Spiritual knocks out those pesky temples quick. Also nice to spam those temples to deal with happiness problems.

Lets say you have a big army and you want a gs for an acadamy but you dont want to pay the cost that pacifism brings. Switch to caste system and pacifism with mercantilism for a free specialist, toss in representation real quick for a little beaker boost, farm out the gp, switch back.

And dont underestimate how much you lose in a turn of anarchy. Lots of hammers and beakers lost. Plus sometimes that one turn is critical in being the first to liberalism or building a wonder.

Try playing a game with spiritual and make a point to switch civics as much as possible. Switch according to the situation...theocracy and vassalage when youre building troops, switch off slavery when you arent whipping, switch to universal when you have excess cash. Switch to civics that will help the most, even though other civics might seem to be ok. Then play a game without spiritual. You'll be wishing you could switch like you can with spiritual.

I know if Im not spiritual I wont switch as much as I do when I am spiritual. The anarchy turns can be critical, and you certainly dont want a lot. There have been plenty of times where I lost out on a religion, wonder, or waited to attack an extra turn just to see that my target city upgraded their units. This is on Monarch.

 

[Panda]

At the moment, Creative.

 

[FoxTrot12]

I don't change my civics that much, so I guess Spiritual isn't for me.
I think that some of the new Warlord traits are underrated. Mind you, some are also overrated.

 

[Technocactus]

Spiritual is my favourite. I like to change civics, and I can micromanage civics with Spiritual.

 

[Greybriar]

Industrious and Expansive are the Traits I normally choose.

 

[harusame]

in my opinion, Spiritual is the best trait ever
no anarchy has several invaluable potentials:
- switching between universal suffrage and representation = insane research and production
- Converting among religions to follow AI = best diplomacy
- switching between nationhood and slavery/free speech/bureaucracy = best way to build military

i like industrious as well, mainly for rushing pyramid

 

[siggboy]

What are your favorites? I like Agressive and Charismatic. Also, Creative and Financial are good alternates.
How about your least favorites? Spiritual is my immediate answer.

Hey, I just wanted to post a poll about this! Very nice question, it will always be interesting to discuss I think.

I didn't play Warlords yet, so my picks are from vanilla Civ only.

My favourite is clearly Financial, because it is super-versatile and weighs in heavily from turn 1 to the very last turn, regardless which strategy you are pursuing. Probably the "best" trait of all.

I also like Spiritual - this would probably be my runner-up to Financial. In the late game it is quite weak because you often don't have to change civics anymore then, but upto that point I really love the ability to change civics and religions without penalty. Especially the opportunity to go to Total War Mode (Police State/Vasallage/Theocracy) without anarchy is very powerful in my eyes. I prefer a small, strong army over a large one, for upkeep reasons and manageability. However it's more an emotional attachment I have to Spiritual -- it simply "feels good" to have no anarchy. Theoretically it's probably not the strongest of all traits.

A very weak trait overall in my eyes is Expansive. Surely there are strategies and synergies where it does come handy, but in the general case it's simply quite weak. Probably it's more important at high difficulties with their ridiculous health penalties, but up to Monarch I don't feel a real advantage from the Health bonus. The happiness cap kicks in before health becomes an issue (and while you can run a fairly unhealthy city, having red faces is just so much more of a problem). As for cheap harbors, who cares? Cheap granaries can be nice, though.

--Sigi

 

[Thedrin]

The happiness cap kicks in before health becomes an issue

There are much more ways to increase the happiness cap than there are ways to increase the health cap. While unhealthiness is a less serious than unhappiness, beyond the very early game unhealthiness more often than not is the real limiter on city size.

 

[siggboy]

No love for the new expansive? Come on--workers are vital to your growth, and saving dozens of turns building them is a great bonus. The traits seem a lot more competitive now...I can't single one out as being incredibly weak.

Since I was bashing the old Expansive in my post, here's my two cents: I don't think the faster Worker build makes up for its weakness, especially since they've also reduced the Health bonus from +3 to +2 in Warlords. I typically only build a few workers over the entire game, the rest are stolen from opponents (or conquered).

In my eyes, to make Expansive attractive it should reduce distance maintenance cost by a few percent (and also give a Health bonus, and maybe faster Granary/Harbor builds).

However, as I've said before, I'm sure there are certain strategies that really profit from the Expansive trait. I'm only saying that overall I think it's not very appealing to me in both of its variants.

--Sigi

 

[siggboy]

There are much more ways to increase the happiness cap than there are ways to increase the health cap. While unhealthiness is a less serious than unhappiness, beyond the very early game unhealthiness more often than not is the real limiter on city size.

This is correct, but I have never found it to be crippling so far. Maybe this is due to my play style (which included neglecting GP farms up to this point, one of the many weaknesses of mine). If you look at it, there are quite a few sources for health points even in the medieval era: 11 health resources, 9 of which are common (banana, clam, corn, cow, crab, deer, fish, pig, rice, sheep, wheat) and granaries, harbors, and grocers, which provide further health. Later on, when your cities grow really big, you get additional techs, improvements and the Environmentalism civic if you really need it.

So still, I'd like to see a convincing scenario where health was really the showstopper so the +3 bonus would have helped a lot. And I'm not talking about ridiculous difficulties or the OCC.

Probably, one of these scenarios involves your civ growing mainly vertically, but then your entire strategy lends itself to an expansive leader anyway. My point though was that a killer trait should be versatile and work well for all kinds of strats (like Financial does, in my opinion).

--Sigi

 

[siggboy]

Spiritual is without peers when it comes to dealing with surprise attacks. ...

You've summed up the benefits of Spiritual really well. Now I like it even more ;-).

--Sigi

 

[siggboy]

Creative is cool, your borders pop without having to worry about building monuments/stonehenge/libraries. Too bad it's not much more useful besides that. Pairing that with imperialistic is great though.

I really like it in the early game, where you are worrying so much about getting those key resources ASAP, and sometimes you've got two of them in the fat cross but not in the 3x3 city radius. Waiting for those obelisks to kick in really hurts. However, after a certain point creative becomes quite useless, because you've got so many other ways of popping out borders quickly. A nice strategy about which I've learned lately is to use caste system to assign several artists -- this also works with large conquered cities, whose borders then pop instantly to the full fat cross when the revolt ends. Really nice. Of course you need Spiritual for this to be effective if you're not running Caste System anyway.

I think you're giving up too much in the middle and late game when picking Creative. I'm a bit surprised that so many people here rate it that high.

--Sigi

 

[Thedrin]

Through resources and associated buildings there is 27 available happiness (limiting incense to 2 happiness) and 25 available healthiness. Not counting late game accessed technologies it's 21 happiness and 22 healthiness. So for almost everyone of the medieval-available health bonuses there's an available happiness bonus. Then there's medieval-available buildings that increase health and happiness independent of resources - various temples, theatres and colosseums increase happiness while only the aquaduct increases healthiness but there's also the forge which decreases healthiness. There's still more of ways of increasing happiness; culture slider and hereditary rule.

Then on top of that there's the risk of unpleasant resource allocation. All of your happiness resources can be providing 2 happiness by the mid-game. If you're on a continent where you only have livestock and seafood for health then you'll find the health cap to be a big problem before astronomy. Your inland cities will only be getting 6 health from resources.