Addicted to Creative

[Bleys]

There are two very important factors to consider with Creative as well. Map is one. On less "crowded" maps, like Hemisphere and Continent, its less critical to get fast border pops. But on Pangaea, its essential, just look at the advice of top Pangaea players, "at pop 2 whip a monument".

Another thing about creative is that yes, it is not as powerful throughout the entire game, but since "the entire game" is usually dependent on getting off to a STRONG start, especially at high levels, its late-game lackluster can be less important. Lets face it, if you arent playing the first part of the game well, late-game is going to suck, period.

I think this is the point of the OP. Is that early game "super-mega-boost" worth it, since in the long run, CRE gets less and less powerful as the ages go by.

 

[Kelvenor]

On lower levels I use to wait until I could build library to get culture....big mistake when you increast the difficulty the AI expend realy fast. You need to expend your borders to prevent back filling. Monuments are my priority now in my first 6-8 cities, then barracks

How do you prevent culturewars, choking borders and preventing development of your cities especialaty in mid game?

@ InvisibleStalke

Two examples:

- Game where I played as Willem (creative) bordering Saladin (spiritual). In border cities his culture drowned mine out easily. Multiple holy cities, cheap temples etc easily drowned out my culture.

- Game where I played as Augustus (industrious) bordering Suri (creative). Again I captured one of his cities with Praets. Later he was pushing my borders and threatening to take it back. I used Industrious to put a wonder in the city - versailles - and suddenly +12 culture from the wonder pushes the culture right back again. Later I can easily drop hermitage in the same city in only a few turns.

How do you counter a culture war? I had this problem with Gandhi, my border cities were chocking, Is the sword/bullet/bomb the answer or just pushing the culture slider to 30% and building all culture building ?

What are your strategies for border cities? Do you plan your build priority ?

 

[Mossada]

Pretty interesting discussion even though I didn't quite intend it to become a comparison of the Creative merits to other traits. Obviously, I find it useful, so much in fact, that I have a hard time winning on higher difficulty without it.

I also understand the arguments against it, Creative does dimish in power as the game progresses. I'm willing to concede that on paper its not as strong as what you call "top-tier" traits. Let's think about it for a minute though. If I were to name three "strongest" traits I would go with Financial, Industrious, Philosophical. It's no coincidence that for the most part these three never appear together. Only exception is Huyana Capac who is Ind/Fin and by most accounts overpowered. So the reality is you can only have one of those "top-tier" traits. Creative supplements any of them very nicely.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

On lower levels I use to wait until I could build library to get culture....big mistake when you increast the difficulty the AI expend realy fast. You need to expend your borders to prevent back filling. Monuments are my priority now in my first 6-8 cities, then barracks

Most early cities get monuments - either whipped at pop 2 or more likely chopped. I do wait on libraries for a few where their best tiles are in the inner tiles. Later cities often get nothing - they borrow the culture of the surrounding cities.

How do you prevent culturewars, choking borders and preventing development of your cities especialaty in mid game?

@ InvisibleStalke

How do you counter a culture war? I had this problem with Gandhi, my border cities were chocking, Is the sword/bullet/bomb the answer or just pushing the culture slider to 30% and building all culture building ?

What are your strategies for border cities? Do you plan your build priority ?

How many cities are fighting a border war really? I usually might have 2-3 max. And what is the purpose of these cities? If they are cottage cities they belong in your core where they can't be pillaged. If they are garrison/military cities then you don't want too many otherwise you will be indundated with costs.

Anything you do to solve the culture problem should be a per-city solution - not an empire wide solution such as the culture slider.

With spiritual you can put cheap temples and spam your religion into the city. That matches creative already. But you can also switch to caste system and run 2-4 artists for a few turns. That drowns out what you would get with creative.

With industrious, place something like the parthenon in the city - that will solve your culture problems for a long time.

With aggressive leaders, the sword will solve most of these problems and just raze some extra cities to keep their borders away.

 

[bardolph]

Heres my problem with creative.

Industrious leaders are the best wonder creators. Thats true at the start of the game and its true at the end.

Philo leaders are the best GP creators. True at the start and at the end.

Financial leaders are the best commerce creators. True throughout the game.

Aggressive/Charismatic leaders are the best warmongers. True throughout the game (Aggressive has the lead early and debatably charismatic may overtake at points)

But Creative leaders are only best in culture in the early game.

Agreed. But "Best in Culture" isn't really a fair measure of the usefulness of Creative. Truth be told, Industrious is "Best in Culture," hands down, due to the cultural output of wonders. This is why Industrious leaders are the best suited for Cultural Victories. Probably the best victory condition for Creative is Domination, due to the free border pops.

The advantage of Creative is best characterized by not by being "Best in Culture," but by being "Best in City Establishment." Between the free border pop, plus cheap Theaters, Libraries, and Coliseums, Creative is easily the best trait for getting a city through that critical period between being a newly-acquired drain on your economy, to becoming a productive addition to your empire.

Later they will be overtaken by industrious and spiritual/religious leaders who can easily drown out their culture. In their core competency they lose ground to what is essentially a side effect of other traits.

I agree that Industrious leaders are better producers of culture, but not all cities are equipped to produce Wonders, and Creative cities have a shot at competing against any non-wonder city.

The Spiritual trait is has no relationship to the acquisition of religions, so it is misleading to call them "spiritual/religious" leaders. While it may be true that many Spiritual leaders happen to start with the Mysticism tech (Ramesses being a notable exception), that tech also comes at a price (it takes one of their tech slots), and even then, there is no guarantee that you will win the race to a religion, should you choose to follow that path.

Besides, I highly doubt that the +1 culture from cheap temples can ever "drown out" a creative leader, considering the +2 culture straight off the bat for the Creative leader, and cheap libraries and theaters to boot.

Border wars are not a cinch with creative. +2 culture becomes irrelevant in the mid game.

The +2 bonus is only irrelevant against large, well-established cities. Against smaller cities, it's often quite easy for a Creative leader to catch up, not only due to the +2 bonus, but also due to the cultural output of cheap theaters and libraries.

But in any case, no trait should give you immunity to any kind of pressure, be it cultural, military, or whatever.

- Game where I played as Willem (creative) bordering Saladin (spiritual). In border cities his culture drowned mine out easily. Multiple holy cities, cheap temples etc easily drowned out my culture.

As I mentioned earlier, "Spiritual" does not mean "Religious." It's the holy cities that were your problem, no the Spiritual trait.

- Game where I played as Augustus (industrious) bordering Suri (creative). Again I captured one of his cities with Praets. Later he was pushing my borders and threatening to take it back. I used Industrious to put a wonder in the city - versailles - and suddenly +12 culture from the wonder pushes the culture right back again. Later I can easily drop hermitage in the same city in only a few turns.

Wonders can be built by non-Industrious leaders, too. Especially National Wonders, when you have no danger of losing a race.

Also note that the Industrious bonus can be easily overcome by having access to the appropriate wonder-building resource, such as stone or marble. Additionally, the amount of resources that Industrious leaders devote to their wonders often comes at the expense of military units and city improvements, which can have disastrous consequences for Industrious leaders.

The +2 bonus is simply too small for this to be a good trait after the early game. It only helps border cities - and by less than one artist running would do.

I would argue that, by late game, ALL traits lose their edge to the advantages offered by having larger territory and access to better resources.

 

[bardolph]

Pretty interesting discussion even though I didn't quite intend it to become a comparison of the Creative merits to other traits. Obviously, I find it useful, so much in fact, that I have a hard time winning on higher difficulty without it.

I also understand the arguments against it, Creative does dimish in power as the game progresses. I'm willing to concede that on paper its not as strong as what you call "top-tier" traits. Let's think about it for a minute though. If I were to name three "strongest" traits I would go with Financial, Industrious, Philosophical. It's no coincidence that for the most part these three never appear together. Only exception is Huyana Capac who is Ind/Fin and by most accounts overpowered. So the reality is you can only have one of those "top-tier" traits. Creative supplements any of them very nicely.

I actually prefer Organized to Financial, since it encourages you to build improvements other than cottages. Plus, cheap courthouses rock.

When playing a non-Creative leader, you have to plan for culture. Creative leaders don't have to plan. They can spam first, and plan later.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Agreed. But "Best in Culture" isn't really a fair measure of the usefulness of Creative. Truth be told, Industrious is "Best in Culture," hands down, due to the cultural output of wonders. This is why Industrious leaders are the best suited for Cultural Victories. Probably the best victory condition for Creative is Domination, due to the free border pops.

The advantage of Creative is best characterized by not by being "Best in Culture," but by being "Best in City Establishment." Between the free border pop, plus cheap Theaters, Libraries, and Coliseums, Creative is easily the best trait for getting a city through that critical period between being a newly-acquired drain on your economy, to becoming a productive addition to your empire.

Best in city establishment - maybe.

I don't think its quickest at getting a city up and profitable. I think that crown easily goes to financial or organized.

The Spiritual trait is has no relationship to the acquisition of religions, so it is misleading to call them "spiritual/religious" leaders. While it may be true that many Spiritual leaders happen to start with the Mysticism tech (Ramesses being a notable exception), that tech also comes at a price (it takes one of their tech slots), and even then, there is no guarantee that you will win the race to a religion, should you choose to follow that path.

Spiritual has such a huge synergy with religions that spiritual/religious really can be used together. It isn't whether a civ starts with mysticism - its the gameplay that makes them religious. Your bonus building requires a religion. You can flip civics and one of the most likely place you will be doing this is in the religious civic column which again requires a religion. You can run multiple religions for diplomatic trading bonuses. If you are playing spiritual and you aren't putting a lot of effort into religion you aren't using over half of the power of the trait.

Mysticism only affects the starting religions. A spiritual leader can easily play for Theology or Code of laws instead.

Besides, I highly doubt that the +1 culture from cheap temples can ever "drown out" a creative leader, considering the +2 culture straight off the bat for the Creative leader, and cheap libraries and theaters to boot.

No - the +1 from cheap temple plus your religion which you spammed equalled the culture from creative. It was the four artists you ran under caste system whenever you want that drowned it out.

Of course creative can run artists too. And build theatres. And libraries. And universities. My point was that border culture wars happen in only a few cities and there are lots of other solutions. A trait that's net effect in the midgame is a couple of extra tiles in my weaker cities isn't that strong.


The +2 bonus is only irrelevant against large, well-established cities. Against smaller cities, it's often quite easy for a Creative leader to catch up, not only due to the +2 bonus, but also due to the cultural output of cheap theaters and libraries.

Also note that the Industrious bonus can be easily overcome by having access to the appropriate wonder-building resource, such as stone or marble. Additionally, the amount of resources that Industrious leaders devote to their wonders often comes at the expense of military units and city improvements, which can have disastrous consequences for Industrious leaders.

Industrious has such a huge synergy with settled great people that I often find the reverse - my industrious civs enter the mid game with the greatest production potential. Going for the AP and building cheap forges means that this spills over to all my cities - I am not short of hammers.

Early game you have a point - and its a bit of an exploit to weakly defend your cities while you build wonders and rely on the power that wonders appear to give you.

I would argue that, by late game, ALL traits lose their edge to the advantages offered by having larger territory and access to better resources.

All traits can be replaced by having more land. But what if you don't?

 

[patagonia]

Pericles is creative+philo - which I agree is a good synergy. Hatty is creative+spiritual and is totally underpowered compared to Ramses in my opinion. Cathy is another one that I agree has good synergy for an early landgrab. And you could argue that Zara has similar synergy in that he can pay for his early landgrab.

Hatty used to be my favourite leader pre-BtS for the combination of creative, spiritual (the trait that's the most fun (if mm-intensive) to abuse fully) and war chariots, but Pericles is the strongest creative leader now in my opinion.

I've not got much time for the Phalanx, but creative for border pops and half price libraries, and philo for rapid GS generation just screams SE. With an academy in the capital pre-1000BC you don't even need the crutch of early representation. Add in the cheap UB and theatres that make it a breeze to run up the culture slider and stay in caste system late in the game when all the AIs are running emancipation and you've got some strong synergy.

==========

Of course, this is doing nothing to help the OP stay away from creative. My main solution would be to fogbust (the GW is another dangerous crutch to get addicted to) and make sure you've got plenty of workers to develop early cities and chop yourself some monuments. Substitute creative for another strong trait/early UU to tide you over in the meantime.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Besides, I highly doubt that the +1 culture from cheap temples can ever "drown out" a creative leader, considering the +2 culture straight off the bat for the Creative leader, and cheap libraries and theaters to boot.

In addition to it being the combined culture of both the religion and the temple, Spiritual gets a production boost to all seven Temples -- not just two culture buildings (one of which is cheap as hell already).

Also note that the Industrious bonus can be easily overcome by having access to the appropriate wonder-building resource, such as stone or marble.

I don't think that's a valid point, because you aren't guaranteed to have access to the appropriate resource(s) in every game. What you are guaranteed to have available in every game is Caste System, Religions and Monuments.

 

[[db]Perseforis]

Optimal city placement is not a given. Why would it be? There are so many situations I can think of where you would have to place your cities in less optimal spots just to get a crucial immediate advantage because you don't get the free +2 culture, including the presence of other civs' cities nearby.

I can provide a concrete example of this, from just last night. I had the choice of either immediately restricting Justinian to a three-city peninsula, by placing a city in an otherwise sub-optimal position, or placing the city optimally and allowing his settler + support (in sight and moving towards me) through. A tough choice, but I chose to cut him off. Creative may have made the difference and allowed me to place the city where I wanted, cutting off Justinian anyway.

I haven't played as a Cultural leader in a while, and I've now got a hankering to do so given this thread...

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Creative's my second favorite trait. Some thoughts that haven't been brought up yet:

There's an obscure, undocumented technicality that makes Creative pretty godly, namely the fact that all tiles in a city's radius except for its outer ring get +20 culture per turn. Twenty. This means that in border cities, you're about twice as fast in getting this insane bonus in the outer ring of your fat cross (that's when you hit 40% cultural defense.) If you're 3 squares away from a rival city - a common occurrence, I find - you can snatch that outer ring from their inner ring, then get to 40% fast enough to get that +20 bonus, allowing you to hold it.

15 or so extra turns it takes you to put up a monument and let it do its thing is enough time for an AI to slip a settler between the temporary gaps in your borders, beating you to a city site you really wanted, which is really gay when it happens. Love creative for making me immune to that.

Go high enough in difficulty and even industrious leaders have trouble winning a race to stonehenge. Great wall's a much safer bet, and is a better wonder to boot. Great spies >>>> great prophets for one thing, they're like a quadruple lightbulb that has a delay before it works. So I don't really respect that argument against creative.

 

[Polobo]

In addition to it being the combined culture of both the religion and the temple, Spiritual gets a production boost to all seven Temples -- not just two culture buildings (one of which is cheap as hell already).

Do you really find you are able to GET 7 temples/religions in a single city; I think 3 is a more reasonable number but feel free to argue. Any, with 3 you get 3 happy and 3CPT (the religion benefit occurs for any civ that has the religion, the discounted building is the advantage) with no possibility to increase the happy by running the drama slider. You spend 120 hammers, ignoring Christo Redentor.

With creative you get 5 CPT, 1 happy and the chance to get more happy, plus the science boost. You spend 110 hammers. You also have 2CPT from the trait itself.

Spiritual has the advantage when it can build up a single city to higher populations and with more religions whereas creative can do better at expanding cities outward (7CPT after spending about the same number of hammers, without the religion requirement).

 

[futurehermit]

Most of my best games are with creative leaders. The bonus comes SO EARLY. Being able to work the best tiles in your 2nd city's bfc in the first few turns of the game, being able to completely avoid the religious tech path to tech more important things, to save the hammer investment needed for stonehenge/monuments...all of these things add up to a MUCH faster rush or rex. And that in turn will get you off to a better start in 9/10 games.

For me, if the early game plays out to my favour, the game is a win 9/10 times. So having a trait that helps out so much in the early game is a huge boon.

My best games are with hatty/cathy/kublai. I also have a top game with Freddy, so that counters the theory somewhat, but that was just me abusing panzers

 

[Bleys]

Most of my best games are with creative leaders. The bonus comes SO EARLY. Being able to work the best tiles in your 2nd city's bfc in the first few turns of the game, being able to completely avoid the religious tech path to tech more important things, to save the hammer investment needed for stonehenge/monuments...all of these things add up to a MUCH faster rush or rex. And that in turn will get you off to a better start in 9/10 games.

For me, if the early game plays out to my favour, the game is a win 9/10 times. So having a trait that helps out so much in the early game is a huge boon.

My best games are with hatty/cathy/kublai. I also have a top game with Freddy, so that counters the theory somewhat, but that was just me abusing panzers

QFT, very well said.

Freddy was CRE/PHI in Vanilla, heh. I accidentally picked him when I got BTS thinking those were his traits, then started getting annoyed when my borders werent popping like they should! LOL, that was funny, I am such a n00b sometimes.

 

[UncleJJ]

This is an interesting thread. I feel that Creative and the role of culture in the game is underestimated or even taken for granted. For me it is vital part of the game that can make a big difference if leveraged properly.

You can view the Creative trait two extreme ways. One extreme is to forget about your cultural worries and concentrate on other aspects of the game. This works really well and is what the OP appears to be getting at. One of your concerns is taken care of for "free". Here you use it as a way of getting cheap culture in the early game. You don't need to worry about monuments or Stonehenge or whatever saving huge quantities of hammers and beakers at a critical time. After founding a new city it takes only 5 turns to get that first border pop... almost impossible by any other means in the early game. The cheap library and theatre emphasises this relaxed use of culture.

The other extreme is to use it as an important aspect of your plans to dominate your continent or landmass. Here the key technology is Music an often ignored technology. Combined with a state religion it gives astonishing amounts of culture that dominates your neighbours border cities. Combine Sistine Chapel with a state religion, a monastery, a catheral, a temple and that gives obscene cultural pressure for little outlay in hammers. Creative is not essential for this cultural aggression but it helps to establish the conditions that Music exploits. Even if your enemies are provoked into war they are attacking against severe cultural pressure with high defence bonuses (100 culture= 40%, 500 =60% and 5000= 80% ) for your cities and incur heavy War Weariness if they attack or even defend due to your culture in their tiles.

Once a conquered city is under your control it immediately gets 2 cpt as soon as it emerges from revolt without any other action, resulting in a border pop in 5 turns and the +20 culture zone bonus Monkeyfinger mentions. Adding a religion to the city, or whipping a theatre reduces that time for a Creative player but is pretty much essential if you are not. Building up your own culture in captured cities is an important aspect of the game often neglected. You need it to remove the Motherland unhappiness problem and to allow drafting and remove the threat of revolt. You need it to get control of surrounding tiles. Even in the late game Creative has its uses if you are conquering new territory.

 

[Kelvenor]

If they are cottage cities they belong in your core where they can't be pillaged. If they are garrison/military cities then you don't want too many otherwise you will be indundated with costs.

Anything you do to solve the culture problem should be a per-city solution - not an empire wide solution such as the culture slider.

With aggressive leaders, the sword will solve most of these problems and just raze some extra cities to keep their borders away.

Thanks good advice!

 

[Artichoker]

In my view, Creative is a way to occupy more territory per city, thanks to the +2 free culture and cheap Libraries (which give you an additional +2 culture).

It allows you to focus your city placement on areas which can limit your neighbors' city placement. This works best when your leader has some good war trait, such as Kublai Khan (Aggressive + Creative) or has a good UU, such as Augustus Caesar (Organized + Creative + UU).

 

[mercury529]

Just one more factor to consider that I did not see mentioned. Assuming a creative leader will generally have a cultural advantage in border cities (which I assume most will agree is generally the case), this translates to a defensive advantage. If you are able to hold your borders one ring further than you could without creative, you have bought yourself one more turn before an attack force reaches a border city. This is sometimes enough to shore up your defenses with troop movement, whipping/drafting, and building.

Similarly, if your border town is pushing culture hard enough to overtake one more ring of an enemies border town, it takes you one less turn to take over the town. In the extreme case, you can declare war and immediately capture a city or two.

 

[Roxlimn]

By the same token, a trait that "only" gives you one early free settler at the start of the game would be "weak" because it never matters past the first turn.

We all know how wrong that is. An extra settler is such a huge benefit most people would easily consider it grossly unfair.

Creative saves you from making Stonehenge or Monuments. Those hammers can translate into more Settlers or science buildings, or more Axemen for an earlier attack into an neighoboring Civ. This benefit cannot simply be put aside as simply worth a handful of hammers. Timing is important.

 

[tempuraki]

nothing matches the speed of border pop by creative trait. there are ways to mimic it and they came close, but not quite. If the "settle it and forget it" style is such a big part of your game plan, then I think you will not be satisfied by the cheap knock-offs. So perhaps the best way to get over creative is to take the need to border pop out of the equation: ICS. I mean, if you can't pop it like a creative leader, then why pop at all? Here's a fine thread started by none other than InvisibleStalk himself:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=258432