Spiritual Trait - seriously underrated?

On most discussions regarding civ traits I've found that the top ranked traits are invariably Financial, followed by either Organized or Philosophical, with some people preferring Aggressive, but very rarely does Spiritual get mentioned as one of the top traits.

I agree with Financial being tremendously strong in the later game, and I also like Organized for building large empires or warmongering, but I played my first game recently with a Spiritual civ on Monarch and I've been blown away by the flexibility of this trait.

I played Gandhi, who is Spiritual/Industrious, and I had stone nearby, which made me a lock for the Pyramids, which really unlocked the power of the Spiritual trait from early on. The ability to switch civics at the drop of a hat without losing a turn is awesome if you play a game strategy involving a lot of switches. I spent a lot of the game in Representation/Mercantilism, occasionally dropping into Universal Sufferage when I needed to rush-buy large investments like Universities or Factories. Finally, having prepared my empire with missionaries, I dropped my research to zero, switched into Vassalage/Theocracy (with the Pentagon) and cash-rushed about 50 tanks in 5 turns, each of them with 3 instant promotions...time to take over the world...

Essentially, being a Spiritual civ gives you the extra benefits of Aggressive (switch into Vassalage to build military, then switch back). It's like having several civ traits rolled into one. As long as you make proper use of it (switch civics often and appropriately - e.g. Vassalage/Theocracy for military building periods, Organized religion for buildings, Pacifism if you want to make a push to get a GP or 2, etc etc) then you can adapt your game plan with far more flexibility than the non-spiritual civs. Some of the numerous switches I made in this game would have involved 3 or even 4 turns of anarchy, which is an enormous waste of resources.

I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I would now rank this trait as at least my 2nd favourite, even challenging Financial for 1st place (Fin. is great, but it's slow to get going, and I find you get tied to a single strategy (cottages, Kremlin, Universal Sufferage for example) - it's a good strategy but anything gets boring after too many games - plus in multiplayer I suspect Spiritual might play stronger than Financial since Fin. is so vulnerable to pillaging and only gets really strong in the late game.

Spiritual is quickly becoming one of my favorite traits as well. So much so that i've been playing as Mali for the last 3-4 games.

On Monarch I think that there are strategies that work well for traits other than financial. I have yet to seriously try Spiritual but I am having megga trouble going cold turkey on Creative which many players just don't rate, did try Hatty a couple of games ago but came unstuck quite quickly, but worth another try.

spiritual certainly seems like a good idea if only to abuse slavery. Bounce back to slavery, whip up something in the city with globe theatre, bounce back to civic to choice, wait for population to regrow, rinse and repeat.

While it is probably not as powerful as financial or industrious, or even philosophical, I really like it as a trait...it is fun to play a spiritual civ. The first time I played a spiritual civ, I made it a point to utilize civic changes more often...it really taught me the power of different civics...

johnny rico...use that same general strategy, but instead of slavery, think nationhood and drafting...

or rush an AI with spiritual, get pyramids, and jump to police state

ironically enough, it seems the most versatility with the spiritual trait exists in bouncing religious civics.

I think all the traits are pretty powerful but most of them can be underutilized. I think spiritual is just more difficult to take full advantage of compared to others. Although it is a nice one to have for people that are new to the game that want to mess around with civics.

Very thought-provoking topic. Sometimes we can't just follow people's words.

I remember the argument against Spiritual was that one doesn't need to switch Civics more than a few times in an entire game of a few hundred turns.

In my own experience, I usually switch at:

- Slavery (as soon as Bronze Working)
- Representation (as soon as Pyramid)
- Organized religion (as soon as I adapt a state religion, which is in itself 1 turn Anarchy)
- Bureaucracy (as soon as Civil Service)
- Free Market (as soon as Economy)
- Emancipation (as soon as Democracy)
- Universal Suffrage (as soon as my happiness in the most crowded city allows for the hapiness loss)

- State Property (mid-late game, sometimes doesn't happen)
- Freedom of Speech (very late game, sometimes doesn't happen)
- Freedom of Religion (very late game, sometimes doesn't happen)

And I usually have around 3-4 war-peace switch between Universal Suffrage <--> Police State, and Emancipation <--> Nationalhood. Every switch takes about 2 turns.

So in total I wasted around 20 turns on switching, in a game that ends in 300-400 turns (usually I end the game at infantry).

So, with spiritual, I could have saved at least 5% of my turns. That doesn't sound too bad. Also, I can enslave whenever I want, or hurry production during a heated war.

Sorry for wandering here, but ... You said a couple of times that financial is weak in the early game? It is pretty rare that I don't get a starting location with access to a lake or shoreline. Access to even 1 of those tiles with Fishing really gives research a jump start.

maltz said:

I remember the argument against Spiritual was that one doesn't need to switch Civics more than a few times in an entire game of a few hundred turns.

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Here's my question: how would you recognize if you were changing civics too often as a non Spiritual civ?

I've gotten the impression, from my recent games, that I haven't been paying enough attention to civics. I don't normally play religion openings - especially if creative - so I don't normally get OR until after I start back trading for pre-reqs. Heck, I've only recently begun to play as though I recognize that Monarchy has more upside than wineries.

But my most recent game got me thinking... I drew HC as a random leader (standard size lakes map), and decided to make a run for an early religion (while putting together a Quecha rush to capture London). I failed to check my opponents, and as a result lost the race to Hinduism, which forced me up the tree into Monotheism. Unfamiliar territory for me.

Now, OR is the peach for buildings (and early missionary spamming, if you are trying to break yourself of the habit of building too many monasteries); but Theocracy is cheaper, and gives that magic extra promotion. So there are two combos I'd like to be in, depending on what's in production.

Now, because I tend to run a VERY light military, I was taking special care to space in a military tech every other opportunity. So I was constantly zim zamming production (new buildings, new units, new buildings, new units).

And it hit me that, had I been planning a bit better, I should instead be looking toward research paths that stack buildings, so that I can build 30 or 40 turns of buildings in one batch; which is probably enough to justify a civics swap (40 turns becomes 32 turns under OR, or thereabouts).

[For example, The Currency/Guilds/Banking stretch should likely be followed by a jump to OR if you aren't there already].

But maybe I'm overthinking this.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

But maybe I'm overthinking this.

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I think you're still underthinking it. The more you play with spiritual, the more ways you find to exploit it. The possibilities are almost endless. Try it, you'll see.

I've reached a point where i find spiritual to be the second most powerful trait after financial.

Zombie69 said:

I think you're still underthinking it. The more you play with spiritual, the more ways you find to exploit it. The possibilities are almost endless. Try it, you'll see.

I've reached a point where i find spiritual to be the second most powerful trait after financial.

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Interesting that the AI that many feel is the "best" is mansa Musa with the spiritual/financial combo.

You also can benefit from the spiritual trait, if you aim for cultural victory and have to build multiple temples, because they&#180;ll be cheaper. Of course that&#180;s not a really big factor, but remember that you need 3,6,9 temples for the cathedrales to be build.
And if you ever come 5 turns short in the space race, next time try spiritual.

I hate to play a non-spiritual, mainly because my playstyle is entrenched in the civic-jumping. Like Zombie said, try spiritual, and you will find ways to put it to use.

Just a few...
- Religion scouting (if you have a holy city for a religion which a potential enemy has spread through their cities, pop onto that religion for a bit and see where his units are)
- Slavery for emergencies (or wonder rushing)
- Changing between theocracy and organized religion and concentrating your entire civ on one task or another can be a boon to your output... I spend a lot of my mid-game oscillating between military and buildings
- Easier to accept diplomatic demands to change civics...
- Less headache

So how does that work with the diplomatic demands to change civics? You acquiesce to their request and then switch back without incurring a relations penalty.

Given all the conveniences, I'm pretty stoked to try a game with a spiritual ruler.

Nice observation brutalus.

"Interesting that the AI that many feel is the "best" is mansa Musa with the spiritual/financial combo."

I think this might be due to the fact that the AI likes to change civics as soon as they have the tech to do so...so they lose all those turns to Anarchy, unless they are spiritual like Mansa...whereas when I am playing a non-spiritual civ, I will generally try to keep to as few civic changes as possible, because I'm usually playing on Emperor, and losing several turns of research in the early/middle game is not an option. So the AI is not playing Mansa "well", it may just be that he has the most powerful trait (Financial) combined with a trait that gives him several "extra" turns of advantage through having no anarchy. This alone might be enough for us to say that Spiritual is actually the 2nd most powerful trait...

Gandhi usually does very well in my games too, generally powering ahead in research even though he's not financial. That is, until I invade him, pillage all his towns and stomp his underpowered military into the ground...my least favourite type of game to play, however, is something like a large archipelago map where Gandhi or Mansa Musa are on the other side of the world to me.

Unless I'm playing as Washington or Roosevelt. Navy SEALs are fantastic on those maps...

...but I'm digressing seriously here.