Trait reflections.

[oyzar]

Currently there is 1 financial in top 6, 3 in top 10(in score). This is after 16 of the 28 people who signed up for the game were financial. Apparently financial is not all it is made out to be! (though of course it could be said that position and skill make up much more of where you go than your traits...). Of the 7 people eliminated or crippled(counting hoplosternum and elkad as cripled) 6 are/were financial(the last one was rome). Creative seems like a much better bet, 3 of the top 3 are creative, however of the 7 dead/crippled 3 are also creative. There were 10 starting creative, so while it is stronger out than financial, it isn't totally dominating either...

[r_rolo1]

OTOH agressive seems a good bet :p  2 of the top 6 are agressive  .....

[oyzar]

two of the top 6 are philo as well

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Or, it could be a case of neighbors targeting financial civs, as they pose the greatest long-term threat if left unchecked. If given the choice of two adversaries with equal power, I would tend to aim for the stronger one, myself, as they pose the greatest threat. 

[oyzar]

I can't say agree with that at all, 2 thundra starts, 3 poor players and 2 bad positions(one cramped other overexpanded) doesn't seem to point towards that at all...

[Capsavian Hopewell]

relatively speaking, we had a proportionate number of "bad starts" in CC2 as we did CC1.  In CC1, we had two players who had basically impossible starts (Draconis and Classical_Hero) and a few others with "iffy" starts (Whiplash, Darius Silva, maybe one more on the other continent?).

That was with 18 players.  So with 28, we had about 4-6 with poor starting locations.  Seems roughly proportional to me.

Yes, unfortunate, but it's luck-of-the-draw.

[oyzar]

We could just have played a balanced map though...

@ Going after the strongest. In SP you can't actually lose to the AI if you try(most of the time anyways, though on diety it is certainly not always true), in mp going after the strongest guy around is more often than not futile and stupid(i've learned this from experience  ).

[Capsavian Hopewell]

I have been known to take the stupid course of action, on multiple occasions.

[Levgre]

Well, financial gets stronger the more land/population you have.  Organized is similar to it also in this way, both these economic traits are better, the larger your empire is.  And a strong economy tends to be king in civ (assuming the player is able to leverage that economy militarily, either by teching military techs, or sustaining a large army with the money they have).
With a small amount of 2 commerce tiles financial it is not that useful.  For you right now, it gives at least 50 extra commerce a turn, I think?.  I don't think that benefit is beatable by any other trait.

Traits that give you building discounts tend to be consistently strong with fewer cities or more cities, since it always eliminates a proportional % of your hammer cost, cheap libraries are good early when you hardly have cities, and they are good later when you have many cities.  So they are more dependable, but they don't really have an increasing effect with larger empires.


I still say financial is overall the strongest trait in the game(when here isn't tech trading at least), but with the small amount of land available to each player, it depends a lot on luck of start/land etc. for whether it is good for a certain player.
 If you end up with little land and need to expand you want military traits, if you 'can't' expand military, creative could be superior to financial since it helps push your constrained borders and reduces some hammer costs early game.

[DribNairb]

Creative gives an extra bonus with advanced starts since you get to use the entire fat cross (and build improvements on the resources) immediately. You can also see a little further into the shroud without cost and place your cities accordingly without any extra cost.
As far as I know, there's no obvious benefit in an advanced start with any other trait - is there?

[Levgre]

Creative gives an extra bonus with advanced starts since you get to use the entire fat cross (and build improvements on the resources) immediately. You can also see a little further into the shroud without cost and place your cities accordingly without any extra cost.
As far as I know, there's no obvious benefit in an advanced start with any other trait - is there?

Nope.  But that's compensation for the fact that without advanced start, the creative player would get to use the entire fat cross sooner than any other player.  Creative is a trait which is designed to have a large benefit come right at the beginning of the game, with your first 1-3 cities, so you can expand without buildings.

If they didn't let you use it immediately, creative would be much worse in advanced starts than it is in regular games(it probably still has less impact in advanced start than in regular games as is, since you can't explore and strategically block off land with a city, although it may be close in impact).  Because with advanced start everyone basically skips to turn 50 or so, so if creative did nothing during that time it would be weakened.

[Viktor Ahriman]

Well, I am financial and organized.  I agree with Lev, that I see this trait as a trait that is benificial for the late game, when your civ is large.  In Chaos I, I had an advantage.  I started with 4 gold mines and 3 gem mines.  That jumped started me.  I started slow in Chaos I, but once the wheels started to move, like when I was building banks and marketplace, I started to climb fast in the standings.  I am new at the game, so I havnt tried any civs with different traits.  I tend to stick with financial simply because I always seem to have money problems.  (When I was playing SP and my first Pitboss game).  I cant say how I am doing now.  Its nice to have discussions like this.  I didnt know that creative gets a better start that any other trait.

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Since civs of any flavor can still purchase a culture expansion for each of their cities, creative does lose a bit of its luster in advanced starts. 

I say:  Industrious is best!    

OK, maybe not so much...

[oyzar]

I was just mentioning the fact that it seems like the (atm) weaker players have chosen financial, while among the people who are best out there are rather few. The traits that makes buildings cheaper don't get weaker when you get bigger(with larger maps basically), however there are some traits that do, namely philosophical(twice the cities with twice the amount of specialists certainly don't generate twice the amount of great people) and industrious(twice the cities certainly don't mean twice the amount of wonders). Organized is weak more due to the difficulty than anything(it is also stronger earlier than later, due to the late arrival of factories). It is more that financial don't get any weaker in comparison when sizes increase, other traits like expansive and creative remain just as strong on large as small maps(although imo both of them are better when you are not cramped, which is not the case for a lot of this map).

Also financial is making 81 commerce for me, not 50...

[DribNairb]

I was just mentioning the fact that it seems like the (atm) weaker players have chosen financial,
<snip>

You heard it here first. Oyzar is a weaker player 

81 extra commerce from financial!?!? How about sharing the love? 

[Capsavian Hopewell]

hahaha, good stuff.

Well, I will most likely remain a middle-tier player in this particular game, but I'm enjoying it all the same.  I'm not the "best" as described by Oy Czar, but I'm content.

[Viktor Ahriman]

Sure, thats what you always say, until one day you are riding high just like in Chaos I. 

[Capsavian Hopewell]

This one is an entirely different bird, Viktor!  But it's ok, as I'm still enjoying how things are going.  I don't mind "losing" so long as it's a fun ride!

[Viktor Ahriman]

Different bird, but same color , or something like that!