Well I've been playing Prince games for the last few days as Augustus Ceasar. I won a couple times in a row (conquest) and got to thinking "Golly Ken, I wonder if you could do it with anyone other than rome?"

Well so I hit random leader and played as I figured was best. Wow.
It was very hard. I couldn't even get rolling. (Ragnar, btw, not a bad civ but I couldn't do it). Something was making this game much much more difficult than good ole' Gus. But what? I want to know what my weakness is so I can fix it and move up to monarch.

I didn't figure it was praetorians that I was missing so much as something else... something subtle.
I was never a financial civ to begin with, but I was using organized which can save you some cash... maybe my economy is too weak?

Then I realized what it was.
The creative trait allowed my early cities to pop their culture borders insanely quickly. So I said, well heck if that's all it is then I'll just use someone different that is also creative.

So I tried Catherine, low and behold I won without a hitch!
So yea Korea was a tech or two ahead of me but they couldn't handle my cossack storm (Satsuma had Heroic Epic, West Point and Five GG specialists. It produced a cossak every two turns that had four promotions)

So now I ask you, is it just me or is the creative trait very powerful?
I can win easily with it, but have a REALLY hard time winning without it.

Why on earth could that be?

Is this going to bite me in the back when I move up a level?
I noticed that there are no Fin/Cre civs.
Shame, heh

And as a final question, is it a bad thing to be addicted to certain leader traits or should I really be able to work with any of them?
I could win with Creative/Anything. Do I need to be even more flexible or is that ok/normal?

my personal opinion is that it's not a bad thing or a good thing ... it's your game, play it the way you want. if one trait is your absolute favorite, go for it. you don't "need to be" anything ;).

you might get bored with the limited selection of who's creative after a while. if so, branch out again, see if you've learned more in the meantime to compensate for the lack of those early culture pops. have you tried building stonehenge to get culture in all your cities until calendar? there's no guarantee you'll make it before someone else does, of course.

creative is one of the traits that when i'm picking a leader, instead of going random, doesn't usually excite me. but every time i do end up with it, i sure do miss it in my next two games. i think almost all the traits can be really powerful when you use the advantages they give you. we all have different playstyles that make different traits more powerful for us at first. IMO creative is nifty but it's not overpowered and better than all the rest. but it might be the most powerful for you and how you play right now.

i miss freddy's vanilla version. nobody is creative/philosophical any more, he was fun to play.

"I want to know what my weakness is so I can fix it and move up to monarch." you would be overall a stronger player, by the textbook definition, if you learn ways to use all of the traits to your benefit. just don't forget to have fun while you try to fix weaknesses, it's a game not a test *giggle*.

that ragnar game might have had an unforgiving map or something. have you tried a different non-creative leader since then?

If I'm not playing a Creative leader then I'll just chop-rush Stonehenge. It's a bit slower but it gets the job done.

Ya hendge is really easy to complete reguardless of the difficulty, ai doesnt prioritize it much, and its dirt cheap, I even put off calender till as late as possible, and for me that rules out the need for creative.

Ya hendge is really easy to complete reguardless of the difficulty, ai doesnt prioritize it much, and its dirt cheap, I even put off calender till as late as possible, and for me that rules out the need for creative.

Eh? Stonehenge is merely an alternative to Creative, it's not better. Creative is like having two free and permanent monuments in every city. Stonehenge also doesn't give you half-priced libraries, theaters, and colisseums. The best thing about Henge is the early great prophet, I think. Even earlier if you're playing Egypt.

You might be researching to many early techs. Research the ones you really need for your strategy, then start more of beeline for something a little further up the tech tree that you would like to exploit. Use the techs along the path to trade for the techs you left behind. Heading for writing fairly early lets you build libraries, which will give you your border pops back.

For my experience level, I use this stategy: mining, BW, roads, agriculture, AH, pottery, writing, math, alphabet, CoL. Seems to work well for a good start on prince no matter what leader I get. I leave all the rest(fishing, sailing, hunting, archery, mysticism, polytheism, meditation, priesthood, IW, HBR) behind unless I need it for the UU or to gather a specific resource.

After my second city, a library is my first build.

Creative would be my favourite trait, purely on the grounds that I always miss it when I don't have it.

I liked it alot when I first started developing my stategy, until I learned I could whip away angry citizens to build libraries or theaters, instead of letting them starve. That's just as good as creative for me.

It happened to me. Then, I played other leaders to find a replacement to
creative.
And there are, just one have to pay the price of said replacement:
Incans, or mysticism+monument, or early religion+temple, or writing+library.
Best regards,

Well, yes, to build Monuments is a pain.
In reality one thin you need to change is way you choise city placement.
With out creative it is best to place cities Near resources you need now, like cooper/marble or food resource nessesary to grow this city.
If city can grow it can whipe obelisk.

So, with out creative you have less freedom ic city placement.

Well .... obviously you can win with a non creative leader ....

As it was just mentionned before you just have to adjust your tech path ...

* Bulding a monument is not really a pain : it take 15 turn as you dot it your priority (select a forest case instead of a food one, it must be the first thing to build)
* Ususally i do not try to build Stonehage, on prince level i am trying to focus on Oracle, Pyramid and/or Parthenon. If i am focusing on Oracle, Oracle + Stonehage will give too many great Prophet points to my opinion (i like to have 1 or 2 great prophets but i don't know what to do with more ...)
* The important thing is to check when you will discover Calendar, here there is really a pain to discover it too soon with some cities getting the culture/turn = 0 --> then you must go for a librairy which is too expansive for a small city with a non creative leader
* Usually with a standard map size, and regarding to your economy, you shoul not discover it too soon !!!!:D

When it hurts the most not to have creative (for me) is that early grab for copper and/or stone/marble.

I like to have the freedom to place my city in a more comfortable position a tile or two away from the copper safe in the knowledge than in about 10 turns the border will pop anyway. That's about how long it will take me to build the road anyway, so nothing lost.

I was just playing as Victoria and I built my second city two tiles away from stone. As soon as I did it I realized that I wouldn't have the stone until AFTER Stonehenge was done.

DOH
(It was actually fine. That was a crazy game anyway. I ended up building Henge in my capital while the second city worked on Oracle. When oracle was done it got me CoL, and popped the border to grab that stone. With the stone I chopped the Great Wall AND the pyramids in my capital. After that I had so many GE's popping up that I couldn't help but get any wonder I wanted)
Ended up with Great Wall, Oracle, Henge, Great Lib, Colossus, Hanging Gardens, and Notre Dame (I've never had that many wonders in Prince before)

I wouldn't have even bothered except for all the great engineers.

^^You sound like a wonder addict. Unless you're trying for a culture victory, you should skip most of the wonders you mentioned.

Hi Various ,

Well at Prince Level you surely do not have to say no to all this wonders !!! :)

I guess, even with a lot of forest to chop, it was a particular game that you won't repeat that often.

@varus

You can get a creative-like effect just by founding a religion and spreading it, or building stonehenge. Creative with cheap theatres and libraries is attuned well to the Specialist Economy and to culture wins.

I'm guessing you're finding creative to be a crutch because you aren't using religions or stonehenge.

Traits, like wonders and UU's can be crutches, but it's always fun to figure out a power synergy.
Just figure that if you can emulate a trait, you can then replace it with a trait that gives you a better synergy in your strategy.

I'm ambivalent about Creative. When I have it, I like that I get free border expansion on all my cities. But when I don't have it, I don't miss it at all. I just have to remember to take a few turns to research Mysticism before I drop my first settler. I usually don't go for Stonehenge unless I get stone, and in those cases I usually go for Pyramids instead. I just take the 15 turns to build a monument. Can't build anything of value with a population 1 city anyway, and by the time the monument is done, I usually have a pop 2 city that can build something decent, and is now generating culture.

Creative is cool and all, but you really have to weigh its benefits to its costs -- primarily that of a 'better' trait.

If you're using creative just for the border pop, then you're wasting it, imo, because at that point you've reduced its usage to a mere +10:culture:/city. Everything else is useless bonus.

However, if you actively (ab)use your cultural bonuses beyond the first border pop, then by all means keep it.

Colosseums are ridiculous expensive considering the time period you get them in. As a warmonger intending to fight WW or a builder just trying to grow large cities, reducing them to cheaper than a Temple is golden. Likewise with the Theatre. They're cheap enough already -- making them even cheaper feels like cheating.

Pursuing a cultural victory is obviously another great use for Creative. Theatres are the earliest must-have for a culture victory, because they generate great culture and allow 2 artists (for a total of +13:culture:/turn to the Creative leader).

The final bonus is the same as for a cultural victory, except the purpose is not so much to win culturally as much as it is to simply swallow and flip your neighbors' cities.

Whichever the civilization and leader -- it's not about WHAT trait you have, it's about HOW you use it.

-- my 2:commerce:

Pursuing a cultural victory is obviously another great use for Creative. Theatres are the earliest must-have for a culture victory, because they generate great culture and allow 2 artists (for a total of +13/turn to the Creative leader).

I wouldn't pick creative for a cultural victory. Theatres may be important but they're the joint cheapest building in the game. The half price bonus doesn't give much of a bonus.

yeah it sounds odd but when i play for cultural victory, creative is one of the traits i definitely don't want :lol:. others are just far more valuable long-term the way i play that type of game.

There's plenty of traits to be hooked on that make the game hard to win without- I'm currently addicted to Spiritual. I was playing a game as Victoria, leveraging financial pretty well. Well, I neglected to upgrade some of my garrisons, and lo and behold, Mansa Musa drops a galleon of Riflemen and Cannon next to a semi-core city guarded by a sole Axeman. With Spiritual, I would have been able to switch to Nationhood and Slavery and have an extra two Rifles in that city and an extra two in its Musketman-guarded neighbor and save them both. As it was, a couple of cities got razed and I got frustrated.

Now I'm playing as MM and stomping on everyone. I love switching to Nationhood for 5 turns, drafting up a new army, and then going back to Free Speech. Jumping around between OR and Theocracy is great, too. And the ability to freely jump from Universal Suffrage to Hereditary Rule if war weariness is starting to get bad is phenomenal too.