General Traits for Multiplayer

[a432]

Tiered General Traits Multiplayer

I figured a discussion about the general traits as it pertains to multiplayer only would be relevant since the v4 patch. 

S-Rank: These are must takes, Very good traits
A-Rank: Good traits
B-Rank: Ok, situational, or specialized
C-Rank: Bad traits, never take 

Positive Traits:
S-Rank:
1) Auxiliary force: Ever notice how you have extra prestige but no core slots in which to deploy units? Not anymore after taking this trait, however it needs to be combined with liberator for maximum effect. 
2) Liberator: You are gonna be capturing a lot of cities, airfields, docks, etc so why not be making 50% prestige? This trait is required to use Auxiliary Force for max effect.
3) Perimeter Control: Zone of Control matters... A lot. With this trait you can eat away at the enemies ZOC. This will allow you to easily strike at vulnerable units like artillery and AA. It can also help you encircle or just get that mass attack bonus. Lastly and maybe most importantly it prevents the enemy from encircling you! This is because your units cancel the enemy ZOC. So as long as you have a string of units tracing back to a supply point your units can never be encircled.

A-Rank:
1) Infantry General: You are gonna be using a lot of infantry, or at least you should if you are doing it right. This will give you more core slots to... you know... deploy more stuff.
2)Deadly grasp: Encirclement already is very annoying even after only 1 turn, so why not take it from an annoyance to "ouch that hurts!"
3)Anti-air Vetern: OMG OUCH MY PLANES!!!! Wow why didn't I make this S-rank. When you stare down air combat predictions of -5 to your planes you really reconsider attacking near AA. 
4)Deep recon: Knowledge is power, right? Well this gives you a lot of good info at the most important points of the map, the victory hexes. You also get to know when your opponent is not protecting his victory hexes allowing for a paratrooper to easily steal it. Oh also 5% extra for your recon bonus, you are using recon... right?

B-Rank:
1) Battle Academy:  25% extra exp is nice but this isn't the campaign, it is just a single battle. Even with the increased XP gain you still are only getting 1 star or 2 stars
2)Operational Initiative: Lets face it, combat will not even happen until turn 3 on all but the smallest map size, so effectively this trait only gives you +1 to initiative.
3)Flexible command: Situational, could be A rank, but you have to plan your army and moves around it AND your opponent has to allow you to encircle him. Obviously it combos well with deadly grasp but you could likely encircle your opponent without this trait just as easily.
4)Killer team: It is ok. RNG will likely give you at least 1 or two pretty worthless traits.

C-Rank:
1)Trophies of War: Well humans generally aren't as dumb as AIs so you aren't likely to easily encircle and force surrenders on many units. And unlike the campaign you probably don't want to field captured units.
2)Industry Connection: RNG at its finest, the likelihood is this will be wasted on some new recon unit and not that super early tiger 2 or is2 like you hope. 
3) Panzer General: Tanks are good but you aren't gonna deploy that many of them. There just isn't enough Open terrain to make buying a lot of tanks worth it.  
4)Master of Blitz: Meh, The bonus just isn't strong enough and you don't have enough open terrain and tanks to make use of it. 

Negative Traits:

S-Rank:
1) Slow Modernization: This trait is an auto pick because you are being smart and disbanding your entire army on the deployment phase, right? If so you will never upgrade a single unit in the course of the game so this is a free trait basically.

A-Rank:
1) No overstrength: There are better, more efficient ways to deal with a problem then overstrength.
2)bad luck: You plan everything you do based on the combat prediction right? So then it probably doesn't matter if that -5 turns into a -7 does it?
3)trench slog: I mean it is just 1 less point of entrenchment removal, you probably are over-killing the unit with artillery and combat bombing anyway right?

B-Rank:
1)Green army: With the quick exp gain now you are probably going to wait to preserve the rank of units more than 3 times.
2)Retrograde army: Depends on the year the fight is happening. Sometimes there isn't much change in equipment for 6 months, sometimes there is.
3)chaotic fire: Think of the the 2, 3, or 4 ammo units, this really really hurts them
4)Ineffective supply: Sometimes this really matters similarly to why chaotic fire is such a pain
5)Poor Maintenance: Same train of thought as ineffective supply and chaotic fire. Also RNG is bad.
6)Inept logistics: -10% core slots isn't the worst thing but also not the best

C-Rank:
1)Poor ground control: ZOC matters a lot, you can't just give it away ever.
2)Delayed reinforcements: wow this is a quick way to lose, you will always want to reinforce units as opposed to letting them die and rebuying them
3)Denied artillery: As the saying goes "Infantry wins firefights" "Tanks win battles" and "Artillery wins wars". You need all 3 pieces of combined arms to be effective. Remove one and everything else falls down.
4)Denied air force: The air force is basically long range artillery and you really need air power to not only make a break threw but also protect your own assets.

What are your thoughts?

[Catacol]

I'd like traits for multiplayer to be redesigned. They have recently been switched off for scenario designers, which I take to mean that the designers know they are designed for the campaign and not for one off multiplayer scenarios.

For them to be useful in multiplayer there has to be a different set.

[Horseman]

I'd like traits for multiplayer to be redesigned. They have recently been switched off for scenario designers, which I take to mean that the designers know they are designed for the campaign and not for one off multiplayer scenarios.

For them to be useful in multiplayer there has to be a different set.

Yeah definitely. I haven't played multiplayer (yet - but then i'm not normally a big mp) But traits in a campaign are completely different to balance than in MP or even in a stand alone scenario.

In the OP aux force is listed as a must have - for standalone scenarios where slots are the limiter rather than the prestige then yes 100% After all in this situation theres mechanically no real difference between a core or aux unit. For a campaign its not so clear cut....