What Leader traits have you played and what have you learned?

[ejdacanay]

lol i edited george washington to have philiophical

 

[Bezhukov]

I've found my new favorite: Mali.

The UU is nuts early - 4 strength archer with first strike. No worries about counterattacks, AI pillaging, or city vulnerability.

Financial gives you SO many options, including my favorite:

With spirtual, you can spam temples in all your cities. For every third temple, you get the right to build a cathedral. The new cathedrals are something entirely new in Civ4 - a culture multiplier. Now if you had to just rely on buildings/wonders for culture like in Civ3, this wouldn't be so crazy. But Civ4 also gives us the new culture slider.

So say you manage 5 cathedrals in one city (the most I've gotten so far, but not impossible - you don't have to found the religions to get them). That's +250% culture. Now using your commerce trait, say you manage to get 100 base commerce in this city (not at all difficult, with each town making 8). Even at only 50% on the culture slider, that's 175 culture/turn without even counting buildings!



Oh yeah, then there's Free Speech and the Hermitage and super specialists...
All your tile are belong to Mali.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

Agressive was essential with me waging a very early war and defeating the Germans. In the long run though, I'm not sure if it will be all that useful. My problem with winning is that I keep getting beat with the Space Race.

But see, you weren't taking advantage of your trait bonus. If you're Aggressive, find the bastard that is winning the space race, then proceed to terraform a few of his cities. That'll put a kink in his plans.

Oh, and it is in my humble opinion that both the Khans are great civs to play. Very fun. =)

 

[schwanenfeldii]

I played my first game on Noble. I always play my first game of a new civ with the Americans and I'm not a huge fan of FDR , so I picked George Washington (Financial/Organized).

I thought Washington wouldn't be a great leader trait wise, but he turned out to be pretty good. Financial and Organized complement each other well, since both get you more money. I beelined for Alphabet so that I could trade techs right away. Then I used my powerful economy to keep the tech lead for the rest of the game. I ended up winning a space race victory.

I never founded a religion, which was a bit of a mistake, but I never really needed one because I had so much $$$ coming in. Also, I made friends with a powerful country by adopting their religion. Since they had money coming in from all my cities, they were a pretty good tech trading partner as well.

 

[Dog of Justice]

(deleted because of accidental double post)

 

[Dog of Justice]

I consider the creative trait to be absolutely essential. When your cities are able to produce 2 culture points from the begining, without having to build a culture producing building, you can get a great head start. If you play your game correctly, you can easily get the majority of resources and land on your starting continent with minimal fuss.

After the creative trait, I'm unsure of what would be the best trait. I've played with Agreesive as Kublai Khan and Spiritual as Hatshepsut. Both of those traits has been useful. Agressive was essential with me waging a very early war and defeating the Germans. In the long run though, I'm not sure if it will be all that useful. My problem with winning is that I keep getting beat with the Space Race. So I need to find a way to produce more research points. I've been eying the Industrious trait. A lot of those wonders should help increase my research and great person production. Philosophical might also be a godsend, but I'm not sure if it will be very useful during the begining of the game.

Building Stonehenge is a workable substitute for being Creative, and that generates early GPP for you as well.

I think Philosophical/Financial (Elizabeth) is abstractly the best pacifist combination. Being a Wonder lover, I initially thought Industrious was a no-brainer pick, but after looking at it more carefully I changed my mind; I posted elsewhere why the math was unfavorable to it.

However, if you're unwilling to cheat with restarts, you may have no choice but to take a leader that starts with Mysticism if you want to play pacifist.

 

[Mardil]

Spiritual doesn't seem that helpful either. Mostly because I rarely change civics since I find few of them useful. Maybe if I discover new uses for them with time, but that turn of anarchy is no biggie.

You rarely change civics because you're not spiritual.
You're building a lot of units this turn? Then, for this turn, you're in theocraty / vasselage --> +4 xp. And the next turn, you're back to the previous civics...
With spiritual, I change civics almost every ten turns, something like 50 times a game... If you need to rush a production, then you turn just this turn for a civic which allows rushing...

As a spiritual civ, the question is not "Which is the best civics combination for my civ", but "Which is the best civics combination for this turn". It is slightly different.

 

[Thrag]

I leaned that for some reason when I choose to be a random civ I always end up the Spanish.

 

[SheckyS]

I leaned that for some reason when I choose to be a random civ I always end up the Spanish.

Funny you say that. I've had a similar problem. I'm not ALWAYS the Spanish, but choosing Random does seem to come up Spanish a lot more often than it should. So far out of 5 random games, I came up Spanish 3 times, German once, and Persian once.

Anyway, if the game's random number generator is screwy, get yourself some dice and roll for it.

 

[mohalen]

my favorites are still the americans and persians, but i like to try other leaders too

 

[Speciou5]

It would make cultural victories far too easy.

Industrious = More wonders = more great leader points
Philosophical = Double great leader points = more great leaders

An Ind/Phil leader would likely get around 3 times the great leaders as a civ that has neither trait.

Yes, from my experience these two are the best peacetime traits. Even potential wartime if you are getting Great Artists. Just don't fall behind as you can't build wonders if you don't have the tech.

 

[Mujadaddy]

My first game I was Hatshepsut (Crea/Spir) ... and I got lucky (Noble) and founded Buddhism, Hinduism, AND Confucianism --- I say lucky because she doesn't start with Mysticism, even though she's Spiritual...but, hey, the wheel...

My next game, not having the Creative REALLY hurt -- I couldn't figure out what I was missing!

Personally, I see the wisdom in a religious monopoly, especially early... ...but I would advise that IF you found multiple religions, DO NOT send missionaries for any of them except your STATE religion --- no reason to give the enemy more temples & church buildings

 

[Gufnork]

I will concede on Spiritual. I can definetly see the advantages of it now, my main problem having been the fast paced game making war nigh impossible. With some mods slowing down tech speed war is more of an option making civic manipulation more desirable. It's still not one of the strongest traits though.

Expansive also seems a lot better after advancing to Emperor difficulty. Happiness is still the major limiter, but the ways to go around it is much more attractive. I can see how it must be awesome at Immortal since you get less health and apparantly a huge leeway in happiness if it only starts becoming a problem at population 8 (it's a problem at population 4 in Emperor). With Representation I can see how that works, but not without it and it's not possible without the Pyramids. Still, I'm considering trying an expansive civ and try to get Monarchy early, which ought to help me with the happyness problem.

 

[Bezhukov]

The Malinese capital (spiritual/financial) is now pulling 1215 culture/turn.

 

[Ad Hominem]

I bought the game on its first day out in Greece (that was yesterday) and squeezed a to-know-us-better session in my tight schedule. I wanted to play Alexander (why the heck didn't they include a second leader for Greece? Like Perikles... dammit) but I changed his aggresive trait (as I am a peacemonger rather than a warmonger) to "Expansionist".

My first impression is that the expansionist/philosophical trait combo is quite powerful, but I haven't tried anything else yet. Currently I dominate my first game on noble (huge map, btw, and the lag is awful even on the 1000s BC where I was last night when I stopped playing) and I love the game - except the lagging problems, but this is not the place to discuss those...

 

[TigrisJK]

I've almost played exclusively with Catherine after having tried Frederick, Bismarck, Asoka (though the fast workers are REALLY nice), and Elizabeth.

I've a friend who swears by Elizabeth, but it doesn't fit my strategies.

Catherine is Cre/Fin, and the Cre *really* helps in the early game landgrab... and I don't have to dedicate any extra $$ to culture development, they're already doing 2 culture per turn, which keeps those filthy enemies at bay.

Pretty much prevents my towns from ever being switched culturally, which is excellent.

Financial is a no-brainer, at least for me. Money = research. It may not help so much in the early game (it only increases the money output of tiles of two coins or above) but mid-late game, if you have enough workers going, you've already got two coins per turn in quite a few squares...

The difference is staggering.

 

[BAD MOJO]

In my opinion, ORGANIZED is by far the better trait at the begining.
You can do a setteler rush of to about 6 cities without spreading yourself to thin financialy.
I just finished playing Washington, and is defenetly now my favorite.
Every other game I found myself trailing the AI in closely or viseversa, but it was always very close race.
Creative is good to have because the culture early on that doubles the size of your borthers but when you match up three cities of ok size to one creative, the latter doesn't stand a chance.
As for Washington, not only does he have that sweet advantage at the begining he is also FINANCIAL so once you get to the later stages of the game you could still be running over a dozen cities with research at 100% and money still flowing in.

Washington rules

 

[CitizenCain]

In my opinion, ORGANIZED is by far the better trait at the begining.
You can do a setteler rush of to about 6 cities without spreading yourself to thin financialy.
I just finished playing Washington, and is defenetly now my favorite.
Every other game I found myself trailing the AI in closely or viseversa, but it was always very close race.
Creative is good to have because the culture early on that doubles the size of your borthers but when you match up three cities of ok size to one creative, the latter doesn't stand a chance.
As for Washington, not only does he have that sweet advantage at the begining he is also FINANCIAL so once you get to the later stages of the game you could still be running over a dozen cities with research at 100% and money still flowing in.

Washington rules

No offense, but you only think this because you're dead wrong. Organized reduces civic upkeep cost by 50%. NOT city maintenance, civic upkeep. Now, civic upkeep is unfortunately almost always below 10 gold a turn (and is usually 0 in the early game), where as city maintenance/inflation can easily
get up over 100 gold per turn. So organized is easily the worst trait - it does nothing in the early game, and only saves a few gold later in the game when you're pulling in hundreds of commerce anyway.

 

[phoulishwan]

No offense, but you only think this because you're dead wrong. Organized reduces civic upkeep cost by 50%. NOT city maintenance, civic upkeep. Now, civic upkeep is unfortunately almost always below 10 gold a turn (and is usually 0 in the early game), where as city maintenance/inflation can easily
get up over 100 gold per turn. So organized is easily the worst trait - it does nothing in the early game, and only saves a few gold later in the game when you're pulling in hundreds of commerce anyway.

From what I understood of the Organized trait it actually works exactly the opposite. There's nothing you can do to lower your choice of civic costs except change civics. Where as Organized combats your city maintenance costs. Perhaps I misunderstood how it works as I haven't really played with the Organized trait much?

But I do really like Washington also for excellent coastal starts. Although I haven't tried a game with him yet. He makes for an excellent starter on good fish starts, with 3C from coast tiles and his ability to pop out worker boats immediately. Along with half price Lighthouses, American coastal cities will get big fast.

 

[CitizenCain]

From what I understood of the Organized trait it actually works exactly the opposite. There's nothing you can do to lower your choice of civic costs except change civics. Where as Organized combats your city maintenance costs. Perhaps I misunderstood how it works as I haven't really played with the Organized trait much?

I thought that too, but that's not the way it is. It even says in the Civlopedia "-50% Civic Upkeep Costs." Poke around your financial and civics screens a bit, and when you notice how low your civics costs really are, even in the later game, you'll be sorely disapointed.