Charisma is Repulsive?

[gdt]

Hmm, that seems to be the takeaway from browsing the threads here. Contrarian should be a trait because that's me on this. I get that charisma is highly dubious in multi player but hating it vs the AI doesn't make sense to me.

Thinking that charisma only gives you a little help with diplomacy is a big mistake. I get that people don't like the humans (although they should) because they get off to such a slow start. That's democracy for you. Don't blame it on poor old charisma.

Charisma can keep you alive in the early and mid game when you should have been long dead.

Charisma gives you the best leaders. Charisma can give you an enormous economy with dominant tech.

Charisma is kind of like buying a lottery ticket. It can hit big and if it does you will win. Even if it doesn't you can still often have a decent shot.

At the risk of causing a few aneurysms here's my favorite race against the AI on impossible.

Charismatic dictator. minus spying, minus ground combat and low gravity home world. How's that for a slow start. I love winning with this race,

Blame it all on Charisma. :)

[schraubafix6]

so you deliberately make the game more difficult by not choosing any positive traits, or just charisma as a single bonus?
I must admit this never crossed my mind before, though it is clear that you can get a higher score if you leave unspent points.
For me it was always great fun and motivation to find the synergies, the traits that work together to achieve even greater usefulness.

[gdt]

Yeah I often play for VPs on impossible. An "out of the box" race has a victory point multiplier of 1.0. This race has a one of 2.7. I play this game quite a bit so I have spent time fiddling around with various types of races. I'm glad I decided to finally double up by purchasing the Steam version. I'm currently experimenting with some of the racial setups offered by other players here. It seems that no matter how much you have played this game there are still new things to learn.

Choosing no positive traits with max debilities doesn't seem to work very well. I find it amusing that just charisma with max debilities can still have a decent win rate. Fair warning - if you play this race prepare to be patient. These guys don't exactly specialize in blitzkrieg. :)

[Sloan]

Playing a faction with the repulsive trait I got the colony leader, Lydon. He gives “diplomacy plus” with other factions. As a result, the other factions treated my faction with -1, a slight dislike.
Charisma is worth 3 points? You could take:

• Omniscient.
  
• Large Home World [1] +Rich Home World [2]=[3]
  
• Artifacts World [3]
  
• +10 Spying [3]
  
• +50% Growth [3]
  
• +1 Production [3] or +1 Research [3]
  
• +25 Ship Defense [+3] or +20 Ship Attack [+2]
  
• Lucky [3]

[gdt]

Originally posted by Sloan:

Playing a faction with the repulsive trait I got the colony leader, Lydon. He gives “diplomacy plus” with other factions. As a result, the other factions treated my faction with -1, a slight dislike.
Charisma is worth 3 points? You could take:

• Omniscient.
  
• Large Home World [1] +Rich Home World [2]=[3]
  
• Artifacts World [3]
  
• +10 Spying [3]
  
• +50% Growth [3]
  
• +1 Production [3] or +1 Research [3]
  
• +25 Ship Defense [+3] or +20 Ship Attack [+2]
  
• Lucky [3]

Charisma costs 3 points. It's probably worth quite a bit more. Charisma can give you the following:

Telepathic Training, Terraforming, Dimensional Portal. Research Lab, Autolab, Advanced Damage Control, Virtual Reality Network, Advanced Government, all 3 Android types and Galactic Lore. One of the reasons I never pick omniscient is that there is a high likelihood of getting Galactic Lore from one of several leaders.

It's fine that people like to play repulsive. You get picks back for doing so. There seem to be several excellent race set ups using repulsive. I just think that if you aren't used to playing Charismatic you aren't aware of part of the game that is available. It's not just that you get the pick of the best leaders.. If you are used to playing repulsive you are used to the AI not trading with you. Getting some of these techs in exchange for acquiring a leader means that several (sometimes all) of the non repulsive AI races will trade in order to get this tech from you. This can help charismatic races to narrow the tech differential. If you trade carefully you can often arrange it so that some high cost fields don't have to be researched at all.

Colony leaders are not that important in the end game but getting the ones that give you tech boosts in the early through mid game can be decisive. Fleet leaders are always important and the best ones can give you boosts for various traits that impact your entire empire in addition to their primary duties of boosting the effectiveness of your fleets.

Early leaders can also have an impact on both your economy and your research (more your economy realistically). Diplomacy seems to be an underappreciated part of this game. Keeping aggressive AI's at bay diplomatically isn't easy but it's not impossible - even on impossible.

Charisma's impact on your economy can be dramatic. Remember that in addition to trading with you the AI races will also set up trade and research agreements and sign non aggression pacts. If you add in a leader who gives you a trade bonus (not uncommon) you can end up generating large amounts of BC's in income every turn reasonably early in the game. The non aggression pacts also allow you to build colonies in systems owned by the AI without being subject to attack- as long as you can maintain the treaty.

I'm glad to hear that you were able to appreciate getting Lydon in one of your games but a leader comparable to Lydon is a quite likely early game acquisition if you are playing charismatic.

So not saying repulsive is bad. To each their own. Am saying that being this critical of a trait that you don't seem to be familiar with is not helpful.

[ArmsForPeace84]

I stopped taking Charismatic because more than certainly any other trait costing 3 picks, it made the Impossible difficulty versus AI feel like Easy. And it's not at all difficult to work into an already OP build, given its low cost.

Repulsive has the reputation it does as an easy choice because strategy discussion naturally gravitates toward PVP. Where there may even be a handshake agreement for everyone to use it. And not just to free up picks in exchange for giving up diplomacy options the players will never use amongst themselves. But also to cut down on endgame techs being awarded early by leaders, and to reduce the extent to which AI neighbors (if there are any) can be exploited other than through conquest.

[Sinophile]

On Lower difficulties, other races were too weak to stand up to you. On higher difficultes, they hated you regardless.