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

Zelgadis75 said:
Best of all, India's specail unit is the fast worker, a worker with 3 moves rather than 2. This is huge, and useful throughout the entire game rather than one brief historical window.:goodjob:

Why a 3 movement worker great? I can only see that he can work immediately after entering a forest or hill. Is there any other benefit? Does he work faster by 100%?
 
CitizenCain said:
I'm starting to think Financial is highly underrated... and since I love industrious, Qin of the Chinese seems to be a powerful one. I should post my Beijing screenshot - 1200 AD, and my capital has 6 floodplains with towns on them, each generating 3 food, 1 hammer and *9* commerce. It makes the tech whore approach somewhat viable, even on Prince difficulty... So try Qin if you'd rather dominate with your production and economy/technology than just by pumping out lots of axemen.

Just a little correction: Mr. YING Zheng is called "Qin Shi (means first) Huang (means emperor)", because he was the first one to unite China and became the first emperor. "Qin" is the name of the dynasty, not the name of the emperor. :)
 
Organized has only one real strong point: Settler factories.

If you want to do the classic landgrab and claim as much land as possible, then organized is the trait for you...it'll allow you to not lose quite so much money while you spread yourself thin. Once you've eaten up all that neutral land, those half price courthouses help bring costs down even further.

Sadly once you're over the early game hump and start expanding your infrastructure, organized quickly dies off in use. The only real way I can see it keeping it's use in the long term is if you were a warmonger civ and needed to keep the national treasure in check as you adopt pricy civics and add new cities to your lands via conquest.

On the other hand, if you can pull a massive land-grab off in the early game and hold it, you'll reap benefits during the entire game with extra resources and workable tiles.

I might have to give Organized/Creative a try to see just how much land I can grab and how it helps me in the later game.


Edit:
I just realized...there IS no Organized/Creative leader! Am I mistaken? I thought they had all the possible combos covered...
 
Heroes said:
Why a 3 movement worker great? I can only see that he can work immediately after entering a forest or hill. Is there any other benefit? Does he work faster by 100%?


Every time they build a road, it takes two turns instead of three. Every time they go to mine or irrigate or build a cottage or whatever, they take one turn off of the process. This helps incredibly at the start of the game, and continues to be of use towards the later portions no matter if you are on a conquest or pacifist strategy. As was said, it is useful throughout the game, unlike every other special unit. For example, Panzers are incredible, but only at the end of the tech tree.


My first game was Asoka for the settler, followed by Frederick for his traits, then Gandhi, and now I am playing Cyrus. I like the settler as the best special unit. Industrious is excellent for Wonder building, and Spiritual definitely helps, because you can switch Civics without penalty, which you can greatly use to your advantage. I'm not really sure about Organized. It seems similar to yet much worse than Financial, but perhaps I'm missing something.

Frederick's Philosophy and Creativity are my personal favorite traits, though I have found Persia to be an incredible civ. Expansive cities grow much more quickly, combined with the Creative trait which, as mentioned, helps you expand tremendously, making Persia a very quickly growing culture, and besides which, Cyrus was quite a ruler.

Religions are incredibly useful for building up tons of culture points. The major temples such as the Pagodas, Synagogues, and Mandirs stack and each one gives a 50% boost to your culture rate.

I like Pacifism a lot, and Free Religion is incredible for civs that have established several, which you will have to if you want multiple Legendary cities. Theocracy and Organized Religion are very useful as well, as you don't have to worry about building many Monasteries, as all of their beneficial effects seem to expire with the advent of Scientific Method.

The whole religion thing is interesting. Another improvement I like is the lack of pollution, meaning you don't have to move Engineers every turn towards the end of long games, but I wish they hadn't simplified pollution so much. All of ecosystem management is just one building now, and that's such a waste.

I also really wish TTwo had gone or goes futuristic, as they're probably going to release expansions, and hopefully one of them will be now that they've closed themselves off from the "Adding five leader" expansion packs. I would sure be interested to see Take Two's version of SMAC, not that Civ4 is perfect. But it is good...
 
I had a really fun peaceful expansion game as Mansa Musa. Spiritual gave me a head start towards Hinduism. From there, I focused on getting more religions (ending up with 5 eventually). The result: huge rich cultural dynamo cities. Stacking all those 1/2-price temples on top of each other really piled up the happy faces, while my borders expanded out to flip 2 cities from my neighbors, with whom I granted 'Open Borders' to all but one. Then, my improvements focused on villages, which under the Financial trait, give an automatic 3 commerce very early in the game (when built next to rivers), and grew in time. Combined with 3 Shrines (I focused on Great Prophet production), and an aggressive missionary program, I was swimming in cash, such that I could easily afford to pour more money into culture (via the slider - a great gaming feature). I was well on my way to a Cultural Victory when my game crashed after I built the Taj Mahal circa 1600 :( Oh well - I think I'll try an Aggressive civ next - I have yet to fight anything but barbarians and animals!:mischief:
 
I like china Mao whoever. Phi/Org. Being able to cut down on civic costs is HUGE. Right now I'm pulling in 84 gc per turn at 90 research. 50% boost to great people production doesn't hurt either.

In every single game I have been able to get both Hinduism and Judism without a problem.

I have also beat the AI to Wonder production, especially with Pyramids. For some reason I got 3 great Engineers in the early parts of the game (one I saved all the way up to 1500 AD to start a Golden Age).

Their unique unit isn't too bad. 2 first strikes, 50% vs Melee, takes the place of Xbow.
 
OGGleep said:
I like china Mao whoever. Phi/Org. Being able to cut down on civic costs is HUGE. Right now I'm pulling in 84 gc per turn at 90 research. 50% boost to great people production doesn't hurt either.

In every single game I have been able to get both Hinduism and Judism without a problem.

I have also beat the AI to Wonder production, especially with Pyramids. For some reason I got 3 great Engineers in the early parts of the game (one I saved all the way up to 1500 AD to start a Golden Age).

Their unique unit isn't too bad. 2 first strikes, 50% vs Melee, takes the place of Xbow.

actually i find that chokunu's collateral damamge is so much more useful. just use a stack to 5 and you will reduce a stack of hordes to its kness. + they are real cheap too.
 
I like these:

Agressive- combine this with barracks and you can kick butt in the early game.

Philosophical- great leaders can have a BIG impact in this game, far more so than in Civ3 I believe. Just too bad armies went away...

Industrious- I think wonders can have a bigger impact in Civ4 too.

So I'd say Napoleon (Aggressive/Industrious) or Alexander (Aggressive/Philosphical). Too bad there's no industrious/philosophical leader

I'd say the weakest trait is religious- 1 turn of anarchy is nothing to worry about.
 
Askora said:
Every time they build a road, it takes two turns instead of three. Every time they go to mine or irrigate or build a cottage or whatever, they take one turn off of the process. This helps incredibly at the start of the game, and continues to be of use towards the later portions no matter if you are on a conquest or pacifist strategy. As was said, it is useful throughout the game, unlike every other special unit. For example, Panzers are incredible, but only at the end of the tech tree.


My first game was Asoka for the settler, followed by Frederick for his traits, then Gandhi, and now I am playing Cyrus. I like the settler as the best special unit. Industrious is excellent for Wonder building, and Spiritual definitely helps, because you can switch Civics without penalty, which you can greatly use to your advantage. I'm not really sure about Organized. It seems similar to yet much worse than Financial, but perhaps I'm missing something.

A normal worker has 2 movement, so he can also begin to road immediately after entering a flatland tile. A fast worker can be faster only when dealing with a tile which costs 2 movement: forest and hill. Although it's nice, I don't think it makes much difference.

What do you mean by "settler as special unit"?
 
Creative is great for the early game (if you don't have a religion - remember, religion also givesyou free border expansions), but rapidly becomes useless, given how many more culture sources there are in Civ4 compared to Civ3. Just finished a Prince cultural win as Catherine, and my leading city had over 500 culture per turn by game's end.

Oddly, it was named Illinois as it was a captured barb city far from my core. I built a bunch of cottages around it as there was no fresh water available, and the sick commerce of all those towns ended up cranking way more culture than my wonder/specialist cities (actually made a good bit of coin losing races to Gandhi on those), thanks to the culture slider option.
 
I played the Arabians first, like Sulla in his walkthrough. Pretty strong ofcourse, but since I just copied the strategy, I wanted to try something for myself.

I took Gandhi, because he had Mysticism from the start so I could get Hinduims easily.

The one trait is Spiritual, it's decent, but I did miss Philosophical a lot, GPP are a lot slower. Think I'd rather have that then Spiritual.

The other is Industrious I think, well I did build a lot of Wonders, which is good, but I miss the Philo. Next try will be Philo and Industrious.

edit: which doesn't exist ofcourse. damn ;)
 
I've learned that Expansion and Philosophy are the perfect accent to my playing style.

I've also learned that spiritual is not required in single playered games, as founding a religion is simple even if you have to research an extra tech to get there. I almost always found either Hinduism or Judaism regardless of my starting techs even on Monarch or Deity level.
 
I used to only play Sci/Ind in Civ3, so I found it a bit unsettling when I loaded up Civ4 for the first time and couldn't find a Phi/Ind leader. I later read one of Sulla's posts, and he said that combo wasn't included because the ability to create GPP wonders easily (Ind) + the 50% GPP bonus (Phi) was just too powerfull. So I had no choice but to venture into the great unknown, and try a bunch of other combos out... I'm glad I did.

I first choose Saladin (Phi/Spi), Phi of course is now agreed upon as being one of the more usefull traits, due to the importance of Great Peoples in Civ4. Simply put, Great People are great. Religious shrines, science academies, culture bombs, trade missions, free techs, super specialists.. what's not to love? Specialize a city for food, create a couple of specialists, and pump those babies out. Since they're one of the new concepts, it took me a few games to get the hang of them, and the more I got comfortable with the concept, the more usefull Phi seemed.

As for Saladin's other trait, Spi, well it's generaly regarded as one of the more useless traits. The reason for this is because most people see its only benefit as avoiding the one turn of anarchy you get by changing civics/religions - and losing that one turn really isn't that big of a deal. But as I've learned, that's not Spi's real worth as a trait. Every trait gets a cost deduction on one building, Phi gives you a cost reduction for universities, Agg gives you a cost reduction for baracks, and Spi gives you a cost reduction for temples, etc. But here's the thing, in a single city you can only build one university, or one barracks, but you can build up to seven temples (one for each religion). The more religions you have in a city, the more temples you can build, and the greater the culture, happiness, and Spiritual GPPs (through priests) boost. I see Spi as a trait which will be much more usefull at higher difficulty levels, where you find it very difficult keeping your citizens happy.

Next up was Louis XIV (Ind/Cre). What can I say, Ind is a great trait. Maybe the best trait, since it makes almost every other trait better. I mean, what strategy doesn't include wonders? To get the full effect of Phi's trait , you'll need to build wonders like the Parthenon and National Epic. To get the full effect of Fin's trait, you'll need wonders like Wall Street and the Oxford University. Simply put, Ind is great with everything, because everything is greater with wonders.

Now Louis' other trait, Cre, is something I didn't really appreciate untill it was gone. While it's true it's only really usefull in the early game when you're first settling your nation, it's so usefull during that stage that once you've gotten used to having it, it's very hard to play a civ without. Think about how how much pressure is put on you in the early game. Every turn is vital. You know you've got to build settlers as fast as possible, but you also need to start expanding your borders in order to claim resources, and at the same time you need to build workers to hook-up/improve those resources. No matter what you do your sacrificing something. But with the Cre trait, suddenly things become a lot simpler. Since your borders take care of themselves, you can focus entirely on workers/settlers, getting more of them out sooner than if you had to bother building obelisks in order to gain access to that horse/stone/copper/etc resource just outside your border.

Finaly, I tried playing a Fin civ (Qin: Fin/Ind), and this was the trait that suprised me the most. I remembered how badly Civ3's Com (commercial) trait sucked, and so I was kind of expecting more of the same. But as it turns out, the new Fin trait is nothing like the old Com trait (the new Organised trait gets that dubious honor), it's acctualy good - very good. Interestingly, the Fin trait is more about science than it is about money, as Fin boosts your commerce and commerce is what's turned into research. Of course if you lower your science rate from 100%, the extra commerce will be deposited into your your treasury as gold, but for the most part you're going to want to be running at 100% science unless you need some cash for your annual unit upgrade. Just as the Cre trait is usefull early in the game but grows less and less usefull through the mid to late game, the Fin trait isn't very usefull in the early game but grows more and more usefull through the mid to late game. The reason for this is three-fold. First and foremost are cottages, the backbone of a Fin civ, produce very little commerce early in the game, it's only when they progress from cottage to hamlet to village to town that they really become worthwhile. Second, the techs/civics which further improve cottages/villages/towns aren't available untill the the mid to late game. And finaly, the wonders which are best suited for a Fin civilization (wall street, oxford) aren't available untill the mid to late game.
 
I believe I may try Expansive and Industrious for my next game.

I'll try for a wonder-building Marathon.

The main reason I find Spiritual to be worthless is because I disregard Temples. They're too damn cheap! So what if you build 7 of them? Even when I played on Deity it wasn't hard building up a couple of Temples that only took 2-6 turns to build around the early renessaince.

I'd say the real production cost benefit is for Industrious. Why? The VERY useful Forge has it's production cost being halved. In itself this is a huge boon to production overall, especially when you're trying to quickly speed up production for the newly founded cities, or cities that you've just captured. If you don't have universal sufferage yet, you may have to wait 80-120 turns to get your forge!.... So... the forge is actually luring me back over to the Industrious trait. I may just try it out on Deity level if I ever get the balls to try it out again.

Personally though; if you were really worried about happiness. Go for Creative. Cheap Colloseum's will more than be enough to keep even the most fickle of neighbrohoods happy. I usually leave them to last since they cost on an average of 8 turns+, where as the temples are usually around 2-4 turns, and cathedrals around 6 turns. I'd prefer to just restrict growth temporarily than worry about happiness anyways.
 
Here's my view of things based on Monarch difficulty:

Expansive seems utterly useless to me. Happiness has always been the limiting factor in every game I've played. Having a bunch of extra angry people helps me how?

Creative was something I loved at first, but then I discovered that I always get Stonehenge first. Sure, it takes slightly longer to expand, but that's minimal. And the extra culture matters little in the long run. It might be more useful in multiplayer when getting Stonehenge first will really cost you.

Organized seems kinda crappy. Haven't played it (because of my theory), but civic costs tend to be minimal for me. I don't really like civics though. I switch a few in wartimes, I like Universal Suffrage and Free Speech when I've gotten a few towns and Pacifism in peacetime (which has no upkeep), but often I keep them at default settings, so it's really cheap.

Industrious is one of my favorites. Extra wonder production is nice and I really love the cheaper forge. I like getting the Oracle early and snatch Metal Casting with it to get the forges really early. It's the first thing I build in almost every city and as such it really helps when it's cheaper.

Financial is my absolute favorite. While other traits make little difference, this one is huge. An extra gold in each square that produces 2 is a lot of extra gold. Cheaper banks is no big deal though.

Philosophical... I don't know. It's hard to tell how much of a difference it makes, really. I have no judgement.

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.

Aggressive is kinda nice. Doesn't make that big a difference though since I rarely would have chosen the Combat I upgrade had I been given a choice. The city defense/offense are generally more useful. Cheaper barracks is always good for the early warmonger.

My ranking:

1. Financial
2. Industrious
3. Aggressive
4. Philosophical
5. Spiritual
6. Creative
7. Expansive
8. Organized
 
I see a lot of people saying Creative is not useful later in the game. I suppose if you are going for a peaceful win that may be true but if you are planning to conquer other civs Creative is great.

Remember stonehenge only gives +1 culture and becomes obsolete eventually. Creative gives +2 culture and is with you forever. So in the mid or later game when you are taking over cities, as soon as the resistance ends the borders start expaning. When a captured city is is resistance all the land that city controled reverts to neutral allowing other developed civs to expand their borders and take that land. With creative your newly captured city will quickly expand its borders and reclaim that land and resources before other civs do. Also the new city will be productive that much sooner being able to work the full radius of tiles.

Creative / Aggressive is a nice combo.
 
HounddogLGS said:
I'd say the weakest trait is religious- 1 turn of anarchy is nothing to worry about.
I wonder if it's bigger benefit will come when I start playing at higher difficulty level - namely the ability to more quickly grab a religion (or an extra religion). At noble, it's easy enough to stockpile 3 or 4 religions, even if you aren't religious. But I suspect at higher difficulty levels, this won't be possible. Having the headstart on the 3 early religions might be necessary to get even one of them.
 
Brutus2 said:
I see a lot of people saying Creative is not useful later in the game. I suppose if you are going for a peaceful win that may be true but if you are planning to conquer other civs Creative is great.

Remember stonehenge only gives +1 culture and becomes obsolete eventually. Creative gives +2 culture and is with you forever. So in the mid or later game when you are taking over cities, as soon as the resistance ends the borders start expaning. When a captured city is is resistance all the land that city controled reverts to neutral allowing other developed civs to expand their borders and take that land. With creative your newly captured city will quickly expand its borders and reclaim that land and resources before other civs do. Also the new city will be productive that much sooner being able to work the full radius of tiles.

Creative / Aggressive is a nice combo.
I agree. It is a bit ironic that the culture-generating trait is a far-from-optimal choice for players looking for a cultural win. The cultural victory only involves your 3 best cities, and the creative trait bestows a small bonus on all of your cities. Thus, if you're playing for a cultural victory, you're much better off going for expansive (higher pop = more production & culture), industrious (wonders!), philosophical (great people!), spiritual (early religion), or financial (more commerce = higher culture slider without running a deficit or hindering research).
 
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