(January 13th, 2013, 04:34)Serdoa Wrote: This video is not available in your country 
Ah. That's very odd - but you should be able to get the same music by opening a diplo window with Keelyn and listening.
![[Image: Balseraphs.png]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/Balseraphs.png)
Music for this post:
Anyway...Balseraphs and their situational toys:
First up is Mr. Perpentach himself!
Three traits, 2% chance every turn that they swap randomly to three new ones. But he's not really offered the booby prizes, every option he can get is good for something. This ought to be a real advantage compared to everyone else's 2 traits, if I'm flexible about it. I believe the possible traits are the same asthe adaptive options: Philosophical, Aggressive,
Spiritual, Expansive, Industrious, Creative, Financial, Organized,
Charismatic, Arcane or Raiders
Starting traits are, however, pretty bad for use from Turn 0:
Creative is good. Free border pops, and one of the only situations where I might consider building the half-price monument it offers. In the event it lasts until Festivals research, half price Carnivals will be handy too. Still, not much value to our first city, it only comes into play once we have expanded.
Arcane is useless until Knowledge of the Ether. Given that KotE is likely to fall around T70ish, odds of keeping our initial traits that long are about 25%. Likely to be null and swap before it's worth having.
Charismatic is mixed value. On the one hand, early game happy cap is extremely useful. On the other, any turn we could lose it and have to support unhappy citizens. On the gripping hand, in the early game we ought to be doing all the things that mitigate unhappy citizens regardless: seeking out new luxuries, building a lot of settlers and workers. So we'll plan to use it anyway - one more citizen in each city ought to be handy. A minor twist: the XP advantage to our units promotion rate is, I think, tied only to the trait, not to the unit (unlike Potency/Arcane). So a unit with 4XP, eligible for a promo, will lose that eligibility when we lose Charismatic. He wouldn't lose the promo itself, though. This will bias us toward using promos as we earn them, rather than the typical saving them for the last minute.
That's the downsides to our traits, pretty much. Upside to randomness? All the half-price buildings, which are generally too expensive to be worth building, except when they're half price. We need to be flexible. A list of traits and discounts:
Aggressive: Shipyard, Stable. Good trait for getting our coastal cities established, post IW, and Stables if we need them.
Arcane: Mage Guilds.
Creative: Carnival, Monument.
Charismatic: None
Expansive: Harbors, Granaries, Settlers
Financial: Markets, Moneychangers
Industrious: Forges, Workers, Wonders
Organized: Lighthouses, Courthouses, Command Posts
Philosophical: Elder Councils, Libraries
Spiritual: Temples
Raiders: None
That's a pretty long list of buildings we might get for half price if we're patient and prepared. Some general thinking on this that will apply to the whole game:
We want to unlock a bunch of these so that we can use them when we have the bonus: Festivals, Mysticism, Fishing/Sailing, Knowledge of the Ether, Military Strategy, Writing are all going to be more valuable when we have the relevant trait. They should be fairly early tech goals, I think.
We should build Smokehouses in preference to Granaries when we're not Expansive, assuming more or less equivalent meats/grains
It's worth building coastal cities, potentially we could get their entire trifecta of boosts at half price. Obviously not just willy-nilly
And...every time our traits change, I really ought to reanalyze tech goals, construction plans, worker plans, settlement plans - some of it will be obvious, like a wave of EC's when Philo and Markets when Financial. Some less so, like Libraries are still low value in a hammer city. Or diverting a settler to a coastal plant when Organized, for that matter.
Yeah...it's going to take a while to get through all the cool stuff the Balseraphs have. Patience, please!
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