Enlightened is one of the top tier traits, up their with Financial and Philosophical. What exactly does the science bonus translate to? Assuming everybody has an even research rate, then for every ten technologies you will be ahead by one technology. This is a huge bonus, especially earlier in the game when the fate of your civilization is essentially decided.
The culture provided by the religions can be invaluable in the mid-game when all of the religions are being founded (although the benefit of this dwindles in the late game). Plus, with an increased production speed on monasteries, your city can produce even more culture! This is terrific when you're having to deal with early border issues. The faster monasteries will even further aid in your research rate, too!
Later in the game an Enlightened leader will also be able to produce observatories and laboratories more quickly. These will provide an even better research rate and the laboratories will help you secure a space race victory, which the Enlightened trait is already good at doing.
High-Priority Technologies
- Pottery
- Meditation
- Astronomy
- Liberalism
- Quantum Mechanics
- AI
Useful Wonders
- The Great Library
- The University of Sankore
- Oxford University
- Aluminum Co
- Standard Ethanol
Best Buildings
- Monastery
- Library
- University
- Observatory
- Laboratory
Useful Civics
- Free Religion
- Representation
- Emancipation
How to Use It
What's great about the Enlightened trait is that it will work with either a cottage economy (CE) or specialist economy (SE). This allows you the freedom that the other two top-tier trades, Financial and Philosophical, do not provide. However, matched with either one of those traits, Enlightened provides for one of the most powerful trait combinations in the game.
There's really no specific way to use the Enlightened trait. The faster research buildings might want to encourage you to get to the technologies granting those buildings a little more quickly (as well as Writing and Education, even though the libraries and universities are not faster with Enlightened). Also, the culture boost due to non-state religions might mean you want to grab a couple of the early game religions just to have that small culture boost that can be hard to come across before Drama.
Like with the Financial trait, any commerce-improving resource is going to have its effects multiplied through Enlightened. Gold will now provide you even more of a science boost than ever before! This makes the better commerce resources even more attractive than before, so if you have a way of getting them, ensure that you do so.
The Downside
The Enlightened trait is going to really help out specialist economy cities and cottage economy cities. Production cities are going to benefit very little from the Enlightened trait, since commerce won't be consisting of much (or any) of the city's worked tiles. The Enlightened trait also won't help cities much that aren't well-developed in the mid and late game (though given all cities are undeveloped in the early game, it'll still help then).
The Enlightened trait will also not be as effective without a pure focus on research. This trait is most efficient when the research slider is turned up as far as possible, so lowering research in favor of gold, culture, or espionage will decrease the benefit you receive. This makes espionage tactics and gold-buying tactics a bit less attractive to a leader with an Enlightened trait, since their trait isn't living up to its full potential.
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