Celebrate the last couple of hours of this decade and the first night of the next one
All the best to everyone for 2010 – crazy shit, I remember when I was writing “1994″ as a date in school next to essays 
This article continues my series about Ironman&ffa, taking my previous articles on Traits in ffa and Ironman and Ironman/ffa: maps, difficulty, settings – How to adapt as a basis. I recommend reading them first.
So after those two, what is this article still about: I want to explain why picking certain trait combinations isn´t good, though the single traits are. For example on Grid Ironman Fin and Philo are good traits, but Elizabeth isn´t a good pick (though not a bad one as well).
Why two good traits don´t make a good leader
It’s a simple thought: Fin is good, Philo is good, so picking both should be just fine. This doesn´t work out for two major reasons: First both are economy traits and second they are contradicting each other in the strategy they need to be played out properly. Fin needs fast expansion, while Philo is favoring slow expansion. Philo needs cities to work farms for food, specialists and production tiles for wonders. Just with Fin those should be working cottages – they cant do both at the same time. So both traits lose momentum.
On the other hand if u are picking an expansion trait together with one of them, they help each other. This works slightly better with Fin then with Philo but is useful for both nonetheless. Take Exp/Fin for example. Expanding faster will let you work more cottages earlier and the other way round Fin will keep your economy from crashing while power-expanding.
Philo doesn´t interact that good with Exp, because the true power Exp lies in being able to slave efficiently early, because of the cheaper granaries. But with Philo you should not be slaving that much, because u need cities being constantly on high pop, either for building wonders or working specialists. So imp is working better with Philo, because you have mines for wonders anyway and will also be chopping more, with having some more workers. This is because having high pop cities early requires more workers for getting enough tiles going. As soon as you reached that state they can do other things. This fits perfectly, because imp makes chopping a lot more useful. As a matter of fact Philo/Exp is still better than Philo/Imp, just because Exp is such a strong trait. But you will notice that the difference is significantly smaller than between Fin/Exp and Fin/Imp.
So in general the traits you pick need to interact with each other, so they both enhance each others effect. Or if that is not possible at least do not decrease each others effect.
Expansion traits are great here, because they interact well with everything. Some traits interact better with expansion traits then others (Fin,Org compared to Philo/Imp), but in general they always help. Most picks are based on picking one economy trait (Philo/Fin in most cases) and one expansion trait as helper.
Exp/Imp – The Curiosity
This is a special case. With economy traits picking two of the same kind isn´t good, but with expansion traits this can work out. Basically those two enhance each other, giving you the fastest possible expansion. This lets you grab huge amounts of land, which should turn the game in your in your favor later. However there is another limit to expansion: Your economy. So you will have to focus on working some cottages to prevent it from crashing. Still how well this exactly works out depends on the land. If u can plant some gems/gold with your first 3-4 cities it will go smooth. As long as you got some rivers and get some cottages going fast enough everything is OK. Lacking both you are in trouble and have extra-focus on working cottages, slowing down your expansion.
On higher difficulties Exp/Imp is impossible to play, because there is no way to deal with the maintenance costs.
Agg + Expansion Trait
Having Agg with an expansion trait (Exp if u can choose of course) is a nice combination for any kind of open land map. You can use the expansion trait to get some cities going fast, then fight an early war (Sword-Axe stack). If u attack someone who has neither he doesn´t have a chance.
Or the other way round you can use Agg for expanding heavily grabbing a lot of land. People will think twice about planting aggressive into your direction or even attacking you.
Org as an Expansion Trait
When playing on higher difficulties (only then picking org makes any sense), Org is working like an expansion trait. Not in the way of getting workers/settlers faster, but by allowing you to expand at all. When having Org you will be able to expand faster then others, simply because you can afford it economy wise. This works out because on higher difficulties the limit is not how fast you can get settlers/workers, but if you can afford planting another city. This render real expansion traits rather useless, making org a good alternative.
Choosing your Leader
This last part explains, how to actually approach choosing a leader, with all the information given in my articles.
First of all you have to analyze the settings: Unusual difficulty? Space for how many cities per player? Open land map? Water map? Ironman/ffa diplo? How probable are early wars?
All this as to be taken into account. Now the most important question is, if there is anything you definitely need to pick, e.g. an expansion trait on pangaea, or fin on archipelago. If there is a must pick (which happens rather often), this narrows down your options for the second pick, to those interacting with the first. Now think about what strategies are probably going to be working best and which you prefer to play. Doing so also take into account how the above mentioned factors rate up/down the traits (higher difficulty rater up org, much space rates up fin). For example on pangaea with a lot of people, the game is most probably going to be very militaristic, so picking Agg to your expansion trait makes sense. This gives you initiative and the possibility to fight early wars. Of course you can still pick Fin, but you should be aware, of being in a defensive position towards the Agg players from the start.
On maps with a lot of space, Fin is probably a must pick, if its allowed. Philo is still an option, but a risky one. This leads to picking an expansion trait second, because they interact best.
Also you should consider, if there are any peculiarities you want to plan for, like rushing Great Lighthouse with Industrious on archipelago.
In general in most situations picking one of the big economy traits (Philo and Fin) with a expansion trait is the way to go, but there are a lot of specific situations the settings can create (often doing so on purpose to break that monotony). So always check twice. This should not be hurried.
happy picking
Shizanu
*UPDATE* (29th December 09): Golden Age is banned.
This is the first edition of a new series that is similar in many ways to traditional “Game of the Month” (GotM) games which many civ sites provide regularly. Those set one or many tasks to be completed at all or as fast as possible. Everyone can participate by downloading the save and playing it. There have been many very creative and interesting GotM and there wouldn´t be a good reason to set up yet another one. Consequently the idea behind this one is somewhat different.
First of all the challenges will be played (most of the time) on the usual multiplayer settings of the game, that being quick speed and noble difficulty. Second they will be designed in a way that simulates a scenario which demands a way of playing that follows key game principles but also the laws of certain types of multiplayer games. So for example a challenge could involve expanding as fast as possible while neglecting military units and research till a certain amount of cities has been built. Another could be getting as many specific units as possible till a certain turn. Third they will be quick to play. We´ll try setting up specific goals – not a diverse range of tasks like conquering an opponent (especially if that opponent is an AI). Hopefully this way we can focus the game around a clearly defined topic to be able to compare different results and later on provide a way of how to do it “right” in order to achieve a result close to what´s possible. That then is the fourth aspect that is supposed to make this more than a GotM – a video of “how to do it”. We might not always be able to achieve the perfect solution to a task in every single setup, but I´m confident that we can provide an idea of how to tackle certain problems and what to do when you want to achieve something specific, like building as many units as possible in a certain time period or building up research as fast as possible or whatever else is required.
).You are alone on an Island. Your goal is to make 100 or more 
research per turn, while not having a negative income. At the same time you need to have built at least four cities and workers each. The Great Library is banned – it is not allowed to build it.
Save: Challenge #1: “Robinson Crusoe’s thirst for knowledge” (click to download)
map: small, low sea, tropical Equal_Islands
leader/civ: Elizabeth of Netherlands
goals: 100 per turn without negative income, at least 4 cities, at least 4 workers
rules: Great Library banned, no starving a city to get a “one turn result” which doesn´t represent the real situation, no “building” technology in cities
deadline: January 10th, 2010
I hope you enjoy this. Try it out, takes only about twenty minutes. If you have questions or remarks, send them together with your save to challenge@fastmoves.de. We´ll probably involve those in the video.
P.S. For clarification a screenshot. On top is the income, it’s “positive” at +56. Below is the reserach rate, it is at 100% generating a total of 1575 .
Merry Christmas, whichever way you may spend it!
Today no article, just a little slideshow I pasted together some time ago showing a four city war buildp in an Ancient game with Shaka of Zulu. It´s probably more an “attempt in art” then something of strategic value 
music: “Miserlou” from the “Pulp Fiction” Soundtrack
Continuing the series on Ironman/ffa (see here for “Traits in ffa and Ironman”) this article is going to describe what impact different maps and other options like difficulty have on the game, how you need to adopt your game style to that and what influence that has on how good the different traits and civs are, with a special focus on choice of civ.
First games have to be categorized into two groups: Ironmans and ffa-diplo games. both formats can be played on all kinds of maps, but the game format itself already has a lot of impact on the way the game will be played.
Ironman means that the game is played with always war option checked and no kind of communication about the game being allowed. This makes the game a lot more militaristic, because you cannot keep yourself safe by negotioating non-aggression pacts (nap), but have to keep a constantly updated defensive force at your borders. Especially Ironmans on open maps like Pangaea often become very aggressive. Still there is a lot of unspoken diplomacy in an Ironman, which I will describe at another point.
As an additional note happiness is a far bigger issue in Ironman than in ffa-diplo, because you cannot trade any resources and are stuck with what you get from the map generator.
ffa-diplo games are more communicative then Ironman games, so they are more peaceful in most cases. People can make non aggression pacts, trade resources and have trade routes. This favours peaceful buildup and makes waging war more difficult then in an Ironman. Additionally war weariness is a far bigger issue, because the decrease from always war option doesn´t take effect. Something important you should talk about before starting an diplo game, is weather you are ok with 2v1 and breaking diplomatic agreements. For example in the german ffa community battlefield.com (BF) both was very uncommon, though not strictly forbidden by the rules, (Btw. If someone is talking about BF-style game, he means this format), while in other communities it is more common. One way or the other making sure beforehand that everyone expects the same from the game, will spare everyone a lot of trouble afterwards.
I cannot describe the possible effects of every map, but fortunately they can be categorized into three major groups:
very defensive maps:
Hub, Islands
semi defensive maps:
Ring, Wheel, Grid
open land maps:
Pangaea, Continents, Hemispheres, Fractal, Archipelago &co (basically all the usual “realistic” maps except Islands)
The most important characteristics of those are that land grabbing doesn´t play a role and war is virtually impossible till mid/late-game.
This downrates expansion traits, because one of the major reasons for picking those, is that they will let you grab more land then your opponents and thus enable you to convert your early advantage into a longterm advantage as well. But since the amount of land is basically fixed from the start of the game, this isn´t possible here.
Elizabeth (Philo/Fin) is probably the best choice for those settings, but all other Fin and Philo leaders are possible as well. Not picking any of those two traits ins´t recommendable.
Since these games will often develop into pure buildup contests, also your civchoice should be focused on such in a longterm perspective. Civs with UBs that provide happiness (Maya, Ottomans) are very useful and Netherlands is very useful as well, because the Dike will provide you with a lot of useful extra hammers in lategame.
UUs are unimportant, with the exception of Indian Workers for buildup and Eastindiaman and Berserks for boatings.
In general your strategy should be aiming on a longterm buildup race. Expand carefully and get your tech going fast.
Those are very similar to defensive maps, but another factor is added into the equation: landgrabbing and early wars.
On Ring, Wheel and Grid you can fight land wars from the beginning of the game, so everyone has to take care of military from the very beginning. On the other hand attacking someone early rarely makes any sense (only if the map is very small in comparison to the number of players), so you are still focussing on buildup for the major part of the game.
Different is, that you have direct land connections to your opponents, so there is land to fight for. This makes picking expansion traits important, because otherwise your neighbours will settle faster and also can more easily afford building military in the beginning, so they can pressure you and cut themselves a good chunk of land. So better do so yourself.
This is more important on Ironman games, because with diplomacy you will often agree on a “settling-line” with your neighbours very early.
Depending on the mapsize Medieval wars become very attractive (Though on maps with more then 8-10 cities per player they rarely make sense). Especially conquering a weaker or unsuspecting player with a prepared cata-ele-mace stack and quickly slaved knights to rush into the breach can be a way to go.
Also attacking in lategame becomes more of an option, though mostly in Ironmans. When you are leading by a couple of techs on reaching Assembly line, you can attack with Infantry and Artillery covered by Machine Guns.
Games are still decided by space-race in most cases – basically all in ffa-diplo. In Ironman it happens that the leading player can conquer one player after the other and it is also safer for him to win that way.
Best leaders are those with one expansion trait and one buildup trait, like Pacal (Fin/Exp), Victoria(Fin/Imp), Peter(Phi/Exp), Civchoice is the same as on very defensive maps, though Netherlands isn´t as good, because there is less water, but Rome and Byzantine become a possible pick for midgame wars, though not very good, because announcing what you are going to do is never the smartest thing.
On open land maps there is the biggest difference between ffa-diplo and Ironman games. While with ffa-diplo they can, depending on the players, still be quite peaceful, in an Ironman you will be on the brink of open warfare from the very first to the very last turn. FFA-diplo games will be similar in many cases, at least under the surface.
War is possible at any point of the game, so you have to keep your eyes open and your power high all the time. The best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war.
Furthermore landgrabbing becomes a huge issue, because borders are in no way pre-designed by the mapskript and have to be fought about.
How tight things actually become is dependant on the mapsize. When players are hardly able to plant 6 cities each, several wars will certainly take place early. With about 10 cities each, landgrabbing is still a huge issue and expansion traits most important, but fighting wars isn´t useful early because others will take away the land you could have settled.
In general you should only start a war (except early rushing), when you have planted all the land you can get. Just planting cities is always cheaper then taking them from someone else.
On tight open land maps an expansion trait is basically a must pick, you may even prefer a second or Agg to Fin or Philo. Though when playing something like Hemispheres, where it is more likely to have some space and a continent with two or three player, economy traits become better again.
The choice of civ is changed more dramatically. On the one hand the “natural” mapscripts provide less happiness resource problems on average, while on the other hand picking civs for UUs becomes a lot more interesting.
You can pick for Anti-rushing UUs like Holkan and Skirmisher. You can pick for rushing UUs, like Immortals, Impis and War Chariots and you can pick for midgame UUs like Praets and Catraphacts. On an open land map you will probably be picking UUs over UBs.
Anyway this category has most variety. A Hemispheres map with 5 continents and 7 players, is more like Islands, while Pangaea is the worst aggro map you can get. Check the mapsettings carefully, also taking factors like sealevel into consideration before deciding on your picks. Furthermore you should get some experience how big the individual mapscripts are. For example a standard low sea pangaea with eight players is still very tight, while low sea, eight players on Hemispheres is a huge map with lots of space.
You will probably be playing 90% of your games on standard size, so this doesn´t matter much. However it should be mentioned that the mapsize in the options is having an impact on the rise of city maintenance costs in relation to the number of planted cities. So if you ever get to play a small map, you should consider it equals to slightly increasing the difficulty, so you should give Organized and early courthouses some more consideration.
Most MP games are played on noble difficulty. However in Ironman and ffa games players sometimes decide to use higher difficulty for a change. This has influence on several things, especially the value of certain traits, the way you have to expand and the use of waging war.
Higher difficulties rate down expansion traits heavily, because expanding fast will let your economy crash hard. Organized becomes a very useful trait, because city maintenance and civic upkeep costs are higher. In general the focus is changed to economy traits, and picking two of those becomes a far better option.
Additionally you have to adopt your game style in general. Focus on working cottages very early and think twice before planting another city. Same goes for war, because another 6 cities will have a bigger impact on your city maintenance in all cities and thus your science rate.
Concerning choice of civ higher difficulties make Holy Rome and Zulu interesting picks, because you can reduce your city maintenance costs by 70%/75% instead of just 50%. (read here about Ikhanda/Rathaus) This can have huge impact. Though Holy Rome has the better and more straightforward boost, Zulu is probably the better choice, because Holy Rome´s starting techs are very bad, while Zulu is having good ones. This also depends on weather you are building barracks anyway, because you are in an aggressive game or not.
When choosing your civ, also check the starting techs of each, besides UB and UU. This is an often underestimated factor that can cause quite some problems with early expansion. In Ironman and ffa you should go worker first in 95% of the games, so that worker needs to be able to do something. When you have starting techs mysticism and fishing they don´t help you at all. Now Imagine you have only an animal food resource and lots of forest. You need to research two techs (Agriculture/Hunting + Animal Husbandry) to be able to connect your food (resource and then another two (Mining + Bronze Working), till your worker can do something else.
Basically they can be rated like this:
1 Agriculture, Mining
2 Wheel
3 Hunting
4 Mysticism
5 Fishing
The first two will let your worker immediately do something useful, while enabling you to research tech Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working immediately as well.
With Wheel your workers at least always have something to do and it’s a pretech for Pottery.
Hunting at least enables you to research Animal Husbandry right away, though not being of much help itself.
Mysticism and Fishing are virtually useless, though the first at least is something you always need at some (early) point.
Picking a civ with only one starting tech of 1 and 2 is ok and leaves you with a very low risk of getting problems. Picking two bad starting techs is something you should avoid.
Even though the title suggests different, there are basically no just good or just bad unique buildings (and units). Every UB and UU has to be evaluated in the context of the game settings and overall strategy it´s supposed to be used in. A (fictional) unique unit archer that gets +100% against melee units is useless in an game played on Islands, where you have no (military) contact with your opponents until Astronomy is researched and archers are long obsolete. A unique building is good if it significantly supports a (playable) strategy.
Obelisk
Unique building for Egypt; Replaces Monument
+1 
+1 
for Charismatic leaders
Can turn 2 citizens into priests
The Obelisk is a Monument that additionaly allows you to work up to two Prophet specialists in a city. First of all there is very little use for Prophets in Multiplayer outside of Ironman/ffa games. There there are a couple of uses for them like founding a Religion’s holy building in a Holy City or attaching them to a city for additional production and gold, especially early on. Getting wonders like Stonehenge, Oracle and especially Artemis Temple for those Prophets is kind of a possible strategy – or better named – an answer to certain situations the map generator sometimes throws you into in an Ironman like game. Probably more on this from Shizanu some time soon… Unlike in certain setups in Single Player it´s not a good idea to spend a Great Prophet on bulbing for example Theocracy in Multiplayer.
The main aspect though isn´t even so much whether Prophets are useable in a good way or not, but the fact that in a long game that´s all about research, you want to get a scientist for an academy first and probably another couple of those to settle in your capital afterwards. What the Obelisk could do best is getting you a Prophet earlier then anyone else can – you don´t want a Prophet that early though and even if you did, you´d rather do it via Stonehenge/Artemis/Oracle + Temple.
So in a long term game you don´t want Prophets as early as a monument which the Obelisk´s ablity could do (especially you also don´t want to invest into getting that Prophet that early) – and even if you did, working one Prophet takes a Philosophical leader twelve turns to pop the Great Prophet, that´s pretty long, it´s 24 turns for a non-Philosophical already. Egypt is picked mostly for its Warchariots (read about those here) in ancient, classical and sometimes even medieval start games. There its task is getting as many warchariots as soon as possible, not spamming GPs which can´t even bulb important technologies. There is little synergy between strategies that involve warchariots and those that involve breeding specific GPs like Prophets which rather have a long term effect no matter what used for.
Two rather subtle aspects are the main positive uses for egypt´s Obelisk. If you get it in a random leader long-term game like an Ironman, you´ll be able to later on in the game when having a surplus of food work next to scientists and the one engineer from forge, also Prophet(s). Overall that gives you slightly more options and in the course of a 200 turns game diversifies your GP pool in so much that you get more different GPs for Golden Ages. The other aspect being a point race in an ancient or classical start, where egypt can – if it realizes in time – get a prophet or even two for Golden Age(s) or bulbing a technology, both in order to gain more points.
Odeon
Unique building for the Greek; Replaces Colosseum
+3
+2 ; +1 from Hit Singles; +1 per 20% rate
Can turn 2 citizens into artist
The Odeon is a Colosseum that provides you with an additional happiness (good in long term games just like the Hammam, the Ball Court and the Mausoleum) and also lets you work two artists at a point in the game where no other civilization can do that by any means. Only Greece can get an artist for a culture bomb (read about culture bombs here under “D.” ) in ancient, classical and early medieval at all. Due to the fact that this requires putting one city aside for a considerable amount of time and building the Colosseum into it before that (and having researched Construction for the Colosseum) this is not always a good thing to invest into – but it can well be. The longer the (ancient/classical) game, the higher the probability that the investment is worth it. Main reason why Greece isn´t a “high pick” on those eras is that the Odeon cannot be put to great use everytime since even an artist is not able to make you catch up if the game has been going bad the first half – and in that first half other civs shine more. Still an option and especially in random civ/leader games a fine thing to get if you know how to put it to use efficiently.
For Good UB – Bad UB part #1 click here
For Good UB – Bad UB part #2 click here
For Good UB – Bad UB part #3 click here
For Good UB – Bad UB part #4 click here
For Good UB – Bad UB part #5 click here
For Good UB – Bad UB part #6 click here
*UPDATE* (21st Dec 09)
Shortly after the game resumed, [PPP] updated their massive power lead consisting of Knights and Currasiers into Russian Cossacks and razed an overall of eight cities of [NBK] (for power lead see check graph seen in the beginning of the video). From there on the already existing technological advantage brought them both Mining and Sushi Inc., also grabbing the happiness wonders Hollywood, Rock’n'Roll and Broadway together with the Eiffel Tower, losing the less important Pentagon same turn. In the end [PPP]‘s 79 cities gave them ranks 1,2 and 3 in production together with a technological lead, while the game wasn´t far away from Space Race getting started.
Here a video which starts at the beginning of the Cossack attack. In order to watch it in full mode, you need to go here.
As for the author, I was gifting money all game to keep my team mates at 100% research, myself not building any research enhancing buildings and staying at 100% money rate – if the game had continued I would have build libraries, observatories and universities within 3-4 turns into almost all cities and turned up my research, while jaegga would have kept on saving money. Till that point we had basically only three people teching, I saved and used about 20000 gold for various upgrades and building buys, not counting of course the per-turn gold I was gifiting. I actually had just started switching to technology, when they conceeded, meaning there was quite some potential for increasing our research rate further.
Here a screenshot of my gold city 
(click it to enlarge) – notice that Sushi isn´t spread in all our cities, yet.:
20th Dec 09
Tonight from around 19:00 CEST on the second half of the Ironman Teamer game between clans [PPP] and [NBK] will be played. A live stream of the game will be available from around 19:00 CEST on at:
The game is going into its deciding phase now. [NBK] just lost a culture bombed city at the front of Moineau with HolyRome to a slow stack that didn´t move on, but retreated after the city kill.
The following Article is about the individual usefulness of traits for ffa and Ironman type games (for description of game types see here) and how you have to adopt your game style to those traits in order to put them to full use.
Some traits are only useful in certain situations or on certain settings, e.g. organized. Others require a very specific game style to be of use, e.g. philosophical. So there aren’t just good or bad traits in general, but you have to decide by the settings and the game style you want to play. Also u may be playing a game with random leaders, so you have to fit your game style to the traits you got, not the other way round. For this it’s important to be familiar with the possibilities of each trait, not only your favorites.
+1 commerce on every tile, that already gives 2 or more commerce.
Financial gives one of the strongest long term boosts to your economy. The big point here is, that fin allows you to get more commerce of your land, then it originally provides. The bonus of fin is not bound to a specific point in the game, but will work from the first to the last turn, thus making it very useful plus providing you with a lot of flexibility.
Someone may build his libraries faster with creative or get his cities going fast with exp, but, presuming you get the same amount of land, in the end you have the same buildings and cities, but just get one more commerce of each tile.
The two major points of use for fin are working cottages and water tiles. The big point about water tiles is, that fin is the only way to “improve” water tiles, besides certain building everyone can build. Because of this fin becomes disproportionally strong on maps with lots of water like Archipelago, Islands and Hub. The effect on cottages of course should be used, so when you are fin you should be playing some kind of cottage economy. While fin is making cottage economies terribly effective it also kind of binds you to using a cottage economy, which can be a disadvantage.
+25% production of worker
+100% production on granary and harbour
+2 health in each city
Well, Expansive is of course for expansion. Not much of a surprise.
Expansive is one of several expansion traits, but definitely the most useful of those. The bonus on workers is pretty useful, but you have to understand, that this is only on hammers, but not on food changed to production. Since you will often be making your workers with food overflow this isn´t too imbalanced.
What makes expansive really useful is the 100% hammer bonus on granaries reducing the cost of a granary from 2 slaved pop to 1 slaved pop. This enables you to grow a new city to pop 2 and slave a granary, thus doubling the slave-production output of that city, providing you with a big boost. With expansive u can plant a new city, connect one food tile, slave a granary and you have a well running city with 3-4 worker turns investment.
As you may have noticed exp should not necessarily cause you to build more workers, but can actually enable you to manage with less, speeding up your expansion even further.
+100% great people points
+100% production for universities
Philosophical is one of the strongest traits in the game and the second big commercial trait besides Financial. But it also is the most difficult to play and in its effect very dependent to how you use it.
The big point of philo is of course the bonus on great people points. The production boost on universities is nice, but nothing important like all production boosts on buildings in mid and lategame in Ironman. This is because on a game lasting 200 something turns, it doesn’t matter much, if you get something some turns later, as long as it does not directly influence your early expansion like the expansive trait for example. Of course it helps, but there are far more effective bonuses available. The bonus on Universities is actually one of the better ones, because when having teched Education you need them for Oxford as soon as possible. This can make some difference in the race for Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty etc.
Now the bonus on Great People can only be used, if you are getting any kind of Great People points, which does not happen by itself.
There are two ways of getting those points. First is working specialists in your cities. Without Philo you can usually only get two great people with just working specialists in your cities before the lategame, if you don’t use Pacifism or National Epic, which both have to be researched and dont necessarily are on your tech path. Also whether you can use Pacifism is dependant to how much military you currently have (need to have) due to the additional significant unit upkeep cost of that trait. National Epic only helps in one city and requires a fitting spot to be effective.
With Philosophical you will get far more great people from working specialists in cities, because you can get some in other cities then your national epic city as well. This enables you to use a GP rotation system, making GP in various cities each one in turn, while the others collect GP points again. Also in lategame with Mercantilism and possibly Statue of Liberty or food overflow from corporations GPs will pop automatically, providing you with enough of them to run the necessary golden ages.
This alone makes Philo a useful but not powerful trait. What can make Philo the strongest trait in the game is the combination with wonders and a super city specialist economy. For this you have to grab as many of the early wonders as possible. Which actually doesn’t matter that much, though of course Artemis Temple and Great Library are especially good.
These early wonders will automatically provide you with a constant Great People flow throughout the game. Best is if u got a good production city early, so that you can build those wonders all in one city.
Now you will most likely pop Prophets, some scientists and maybe an engineer. These great people you immediately settle in thet wonder city. Since these GP provide you with more hammers this leads to an exponential effect: hammers => wonder => great people => more hammers => more wonders => more great people => more hammers => …
Besides getting tons of wonders with some nice effects all the settled GP will produce huge amounts of science and gold. Later you put University of Oxford and either Globe Theatre or Wall Street into that city. This way just like with fin you can gain far more commerce from your land, then it originally provides. A single city working about 15 tiles will make the commerce that usually takes 4-5 cities to get. This tactic is especially strong on small maps. When everyone is having 12+ cities the bonus of fin working on all those cities will outweigh the boost of Philo on ur single wonder city.
This leads to the big problem of Philo: Its use is very dependant on circumstances. For a wonder economy wonder ressources are very good, if not vital, those you don’t always get.
If u have to wage war Philo wont help you, while with Fin you will still get better tech from your cottages while slaving units. Also the use of Philo varies strongly with map size. The lesser land you have, the more effective Philo becomes in comparison to other traits.
+50% on production for settlers
+100% on great general points
Imperialistic is another expansion trait, probably the second strongest. +50% on settlers is pretty much and will enable you to slave a settler after preproducing it for one turn in any pop-4 city, while without Imp, you have to preproduce 26 hammers into the settler, which can take some time, depending on land situation. Thus your cities don’t necessarily need mines or anything to get expansion going.
Also Imp provides you with very interesting options of making very early settlers. When you e.g. have a pop-2 city with plains cow and plains copper, you can easily just produce settlers there. In addition chopping a lot early settlers becomes really attractive as imp.
Being Imperialistic forces you to play slightly different from Exp. Probably you will end up building granaries pretty late and slave little. Settlers are easily made with 2 chops and some production turns or just produced in cities with good ressources. Imp should also change your settler/worker ratio significantly since it’s often more effective to first plant a city and then get the workers to improve it, or at least have less workers when planting.
Still Imp is clearly second to Exp, because the boost from granaries is just too strong for a fluent expansion curve.
+2 culture/turn in every city
+100% production for libraries, theater, colosseum
Creative has two aspects, both being valid, but only in combination making it really useful. +2 culture/turn make it an expansion trait, sparing you the cost of monuments and enabling you to plant the spots you want without the problem of cities only starting to work after having spent 10 turns on building a monument and waiting for expansion. This can be especially useful when needing a strategic resource fast.
The production boosts are only interesting when you want to build libraries very early, which is the case when being Philosophical and wanting to go for early scientists. Both traits together make for a very fast Academy in capital giving your tech a nice early boost. Still you should be careful with investing too many early resources into this, because delaying early expansion can prove fatal. More on this with economy strategies and game types.
+100% Production on courthouse, lighthouse
-50% civic upkeep
This is a very tricky trait. On standard ffa settings with noble difficulty, standard mapsize and room for about 10 cities it’s pretty useless. Civic upkeep doesn´t rise to noticeable amounts before lategame – and you never pick anything just for lategame.
City maintenance costs aren´t dramatic either, so getting courthouses a few turns later won’t hurt you. However when playing with higher difficulty or on smaller maps, city maintenance rises a lot faster when expanding. Now it can be interesting to have Org to get courthouses early in newly planted cities keeping up your science rate. This is most interesting when picking Org together with Holy Rome´s improved Courthouses (read about the Rathaus here).
Additionally higher difficulties rate down expansion traits, which Org often has to compete with for being picked, because you don’t want to get cities as soon as possible, when they will ruin your economy. This makes Org an interesting option from Monarch difficulty upwards. With higher difficulty civic upkeep also becomes a more relevant factor too. Still Org is only useful on large maps with room for at least 10 cities.
Of course when being Org you should get code of law rather early.
+50% production on wonders
+100% production on forges
Of course interesting point are the +50% production on wonders. This will enable you to decently build wonders without wonder ressources. Anyway there is a problem. Some people will always have the wonder recourse and still be faster. But if you have wonder ressources you don’t really need Industrious. So this trait is only really useful, if you go for massive wonder spamming, but whether that is possible depends on your opponents game style, resources and traits. Thus it’s much of a gamble.
Industrious is one of the traits you are probably never going to pick on your own, but can come in handy, when getting them via random leader. There is much worse – and nothing really to say anymore.
+100% Production on Temples
No Anarchy
Spiritual isn´t good, isn´t bad and doesn´t really change much. It’s a trait, that’s useful, but nothing you are going to pick of your own choice. Also you won’t change much about your game plan, except maybe switching civics once or twice more often. Of course Spiritual favours caste system phases for GP making, since you don’t need a Golden Age for those, but it’s no necessity.
+1 happiness
+1 happiness with monument
-25% EP for unit promotion.
Ah, finally we have hit one of the most useless traits there is for ffa. To say something positive: With the extra happiness you can go Math before Monarchy in a few more situations.
Free strength 1 promotion on melee and gunpowder units.
+100% production for barracks.
Just like Chm, Agg doesn´t help with buildup, so it’s not useful in general. Still there are some situations on close open land maps where you will be grateful for being Agg. People are less likely to attack you, and most of all Agg opens up the possibility for killing someone with an Axe/Sword stack if you dont have enough space.
If you want to “use” Agg actively, attack someone with Axes/Swords or Maces. Anyway don’t attack someone just because you are Agg. Just use it to have an easier war.
Free city defense I and Drill I promotion.
+100% production on walls and castle.
Erm… Protective makes it less likely that you are going to be attacked early… else… ask random generator for something better.
The “culture bug” allows using production and in some cases surplus food of a city twice in one turn. In order to do so you need to work culture as a production item (requires Music) in a city and queue (Shift + click on item) another item behind it. If the city´s culture expands the turn you do so, the hammers the city produces are used twice, once for the culture, once for the item behind it. If you queue a worker or settler, the food is used twice as well, going once into the city´s granary and once into the worker/settler.
The gain of this is that you get especially the first culture expansion in all cities one turn after planting without having to sacrifice a turn of production. One turn is a lot in terms of micromanagement on many settings, especially teamers from Renaissance to Future. It works with all expansions though, be that the first at 5 culture points (quick speed!), 50 for the second or 250 for the third.
Be careful though, the city manager will change the tiles the city uses towards those that produce the most food if you put culture in front of a worker in the production queue since cities accumulate food to grow when working anything then a worker or settler. That means that if you put a worker into the produciton queue and then culture in front of it, it might be that the overall production of the city falls below the needed hammers to get the culture expansion and the culture bug isn´t triggered instead the city accumulates food and works culture, but doesn´t get the next expansion. Change back manually to the correct tiles!
I did a video showing the culture bug, sadly the recording software used – while potentially being just fantastic – is still causing trouble. I tried it many, many times and it either stopped recording for no reason or caused other trouble. The mail to the support is out so that hopefully in the future we can provide better quality. The video I can present misses the “switch back” of tiles towards food instead of production and only shows the queuing of a worker (food also used twice!), not of something else (only hammers used twice!). Additionaly it “flickers” and can only be set to full screen when going to the actual site where it´s hosted, because wordpress doesn´t support Java.
I really hate writing this passage instead of just presenting you with a good video, but I hope that even this lousy one has some value and promise to fix the problems in the future in order to be able to embed videos in proper quality, with all content and an acceptable full-screen option!
To watch the video in full screen click here, start it and click “full” in the middle of the player
The current pool of available maps for multiplayer is not very rich. Keeping in mind that the game and with it multiplayer gaming is four and half years old it can be assumed that a lot that is possible has been tried. The CCCAC (the clan council that organizes the biggest multiplayer tournament, the CCC) is always on the search for new and exciting settings. The condition though is and has to be that a setup provides equal or at least pretty similar chances to all players, be it a team or a solo game. Maps like Pangae, Archipelago or Continents to name just three are all fine to have a fun game, but they are not suited well for a competetive match. Currently the maps suited for multiplayer can be counted on one hand. Inland_Sea, (Green)Wheel, (Green)Ring, probably Team_Battleground, some of the “Equal”-maps (like Equal_Islands) and Grid is basically a complete list and even among those a 100% fair setup is not guaranteed, especially on Inland_Sea and Team_Battleground.
A map for such a setup needs to be balanced enough in all significant aspects to not put one side ahead from turn zero on due to land quality, land mass, civ position or placement of strategic ressources. There are four kinds of potential maps that can provide this.
An entirely mirrored map (including mirrored starting positions, also in team games) comparable to what is used in Warcraft3 or Starcraft is one way of providing a fair setup for a game with two parties in it. It´s not automatically an interesting setup, that provides for different progress of a game with room for creative ways of attacking and interacting with an opponent every time, but it can be, in any case, it´s at least fair.
Mirroring a map “just” gives opposing sides exactly same land – not more, not less – that doesn´t say anything about the quality and possibilities of the setup. In what way are strategic, food, luxury or wonder production enhancing ressources distributed? What “ways” are there to reach the opponent – is it just two narrow fronts or an open area? Any map could be mirrored, any land/sea shape could be generated as a mirrored setup.
On a mirrored map everyone still has to handle and micromanage his land just like on any other map. The game basically looks the same as on a non-mirrored map, just isn´t pushed in favour of one side havign a start with a 6-food (grass pig for example) and the other with a 3-food (plains cow for example). Two aspects can be problematic and require consideration during map script creation. The first being how the “middle” on a flat (not cylindrical or toroidal) map is created. The middle can´t be too “good” in relation to the rest of the map, because otherwise planting the ressources mirrored there (basically “stealing” ressources from the opponent while using the same own ressources) is too strong and pushes every game towards a race who gets the middle first. From this logic it becomes clear that if a map provides in not too far distance from the starting position an overall of 5 or 6 food ressources and 2 of those are in the middle, that´s not good for a fair game. This can be avoided by programming the map script in a way, that prevents a too big accumulation of ressources in the centre. Even more important is that the rest of the map is balanced enough that it cannot happen that a city that got culture bombed gets a significant part of the map´s ressources into its cultural borders.
An equal map is pretty similar to a mirrored map in the way that it provides the same starting position to each player, also in 1v1v1vvX game like a CTON or Ironman. The difference is that only a certain part of the map is the same, surrounding land from a certain distance on different though. Equal_Islands for example is (bugs taken aside) equal for everyone in all aspects since it´s sea beyond a certain point anyway. Equal_Inland_Sea though differs once you go away from the starting position more then a radius of around 5 tiles. Since the initial part of the game (especially in earlier eras) is the one that most is affected by land differenes, an equal map can prevent an unfair setup pretty well.
A preset map would be one where every tile, every ressource and every starting position of a civ is known beforehand – just like in Warcraft3, Starcraft and similar games. This ca be a mirrored map, but doesn´t have to be. Such a map can be planned, constructed and balanced in tests before being released. It would allow for preparations by teams (including what to pick), involving own strategy, but also counter strategy to whatever the opponent might be doing. Quite similar to for example knowing that on a certain Warcarft3 map this or that (getting a certain creep; developing a certain technology etc.) plays a bigger role. Constructing a map that doesn´t lead to one strategy being ultimately the only way to go would be very challenging, but could provide yet another layer of strategy to the game – making very specific pregame preparations possible.
Such a map wouldn´t necessarily have to be mirrored. In a teamer each team might have to play each side once or it could be that one team choses the map, the other choses the side to play on.
A preset map just would have to – like any other map for competetive play – keep up to certain standards of balancing unlike for example current Earth maps, which are preset, but far from balanced.
A “just” balanced (though not mirrored, not equal, not preset) map would look like maps look today, though being programmed in a way that it doesn´t create a land mass that favours one side heavily.
ressources
land quality and quantity
positioning
ressources
Each food ressource gets a value depending on how “good” it is, taking into account that the value has to be different depending on the era. For example Grass pig (6-food) gets the best possile value for an ancient or classical game since you cannot have any tile make more then that. Unirrigated Rice (4-food) gets a low value in an ancient start, but a higher one in Renaissance for example since you can irrigate it there (5-food) from the start. There are games like Ironman where you go from ancient to modern and beyond, but the start is ancient – the fact that you get more food later on, 6 with Biology and having irrigated the rice for example is nothing that would unbalance the concept though could be taken into consideration. Main point being, each food (food is everything that produces 4 food at least after being improved, flood plains being treated separately) gets a value. The overall value should be equal for each player – not team to avoid having all food accumulating at one player. What that value is can either be preset in the mapscript or maybe even be an option while hosting the game.
Strategic ressources are already dealth with pretty well nowadays with the “balanced ressources” option that many maps have. This option only balances those ressources, nothing else. It puts all of them into a certain radius of each players starting position, that usually being up to 5 tiles. Each map script should have this option, best the possibility to have the host set a a radius in staging.
There could be a set number of Luxury Ressources for each player/team. In team games some ressources can appear more often then once, it´s only important that those are ressources that can be used. An ancient teamer that will never see Calender researched can´t have one side with dye, silk and sugar and the other side with gold, ivory and dear. Same is true for wonder production enhancing ressources – here though it´s especially crucial that some ressources are either available to all or none, especially marble.
All categories of ressources can overlap – ivory can count twice, once as a luxury and once as a strategical ressource, same for copper, gold (lux+wonder) etc.
land quality and quantity
As for the rest of the land, you should have a pretty equal amount of plains, grassland etc. tiles. It´s not fair for an ironman game if one has 50% rivered grass tiles, while the other has 50% plains tiles. Each map can be split into as many equally sized parts as there are teams (players in a solo game). Each tile should have an equal amount of each tile – still of course can produce very different quality of land, but never worse then potentially now. Also this way land mass isn´t distributed unequally like right now on Inland_Sea for example, where you can have significantly less land to potentially plant from turn zero on.
positioning
After the map has been theoretically (by the map script) split into equally sized parts, the starting positions of each player should be in a way that the distances to the back, to the front, to team mates etc. are equal or close enough to being so.
Some other options that could be interesting when setting up a game in staging room:
Last but definitely not least a factor which has less to do with balancing, but a lot with what a game will look like, whether it´ll be one with lots of fighting or rather one with a focus on buildup, the shape distribution of land and sea mass, basically the shape of the map.
How many ways are there to reach the opponent, how far do fronts stretch? For example flat medium sea Inland_Sea has two rather narrow fronts. Each team puts a city on each side and knows that every attack has to go through that city or at least past it. On the other hand flat Green_Wheel has two pretty similar fronts, but a big middle part as well. Units can come from multiple directions and even move through to the back player without having to pass the front cities. Cylindrical Green_Wheel adds the aspects of boating – you can boat from back player to back (or other) player. Creating maps that balance having various and interesting options of attacking (or not havoing those if you want a more builderish game) is a challenge, but one of the most important once if you want to create good multiplayer maps. Making a map too “open” can result in a bloodbath with research playing a small role (that´s fun!). Making a closed map with clear fronts can result in a reseach heavy game, players building up while controlling their one front (that´s fun!).
Whatever the map script generates, it has to be able to “split” up the map into equal parts between players as described above in order to do the balancing (as describe above as well ^^), especially also when the map is played cylindrical or toroidal.
All the types of maps described above can be used for competetive games – it´s not necessary to chose one, coexistence is very benefitional here. All of them have their setups where they can shine – just like “unbalanced” maps have nowadays for a fun game of civ. Just if you want to wage a clanwar or setup a tournament, you´d probably most of the time want to provide equal chances to the participants.
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