Anti-CAA (creative addicts anonymous)

[Polobo]

The creative addict thread started getting off-track and the OP there wanted reasons/techniques to get away from addicted. Here is why you should continue shooting up and listing to Music.

Creative really comes into play in two parts of the game. Initially when you are founding new cities and then during conquest when you are conquering new territory and are adding many smallish cities into the empire.

Early game you can either use the trait to immediately put cultural pressure on opponents (blocking is situational) OR use it so you can ignore early culture requirements and focus on other aspect of empire building.

Later in the game you can use the culture to quickly pop twice (in order to get the 20cpt onto the outer BFC), plus run scientists to get 6 beakers (and maybe artist culture if really needed) while building farms to support those specialists. This will get cities quickly integrated into your empire and recoup their cost of acquisition and maintenance. If they remain on the border then they can continue to use the major bonus of creative and libraries/theaters to maintain or grab additional land OR, if well protected, they can quickly build a collessium to further raise their happy cap while they grow and specialize.

In both situations you can also more easily ignore religion and since you are going to be working the writing/drama path anyway can pickup literature and music without going too far out of the way and improve your military and GP production rates.

Now, if you only plan on building up the core cities then creative does not make a strong choice since after the initial settlers you will have fewer opportunities to leverage the trait bonuses (constant or situational).

 

[Silence101]

I have to admit, I am somewhat of a CRE convert - my biggest issue with Creative was that it fizzles after the opening turns. I still feel that way to a degree... Polobo brought up the warmongering aspect of Creative and using it to push culture when conquering new territory. It does help in getting the '20 culture per tile' multiplier up and running faster as well as the cultural defense, but I don't think that in the grand scheme of warmongering it's typically going to be the winning factor.

Creative also grants production bonuses on three fairly cheap buildings, several of which are highly specialized. Again, helpful, but not a huge selling point for me. Half priced libraries are great, but there's other half priced buildings I'd rather have.

Where Creative shines is in its ultra powerful early game... and honestly, more and more I think that makes up for its late game fizzle. Polobo touched on this as well - Creative vastly improves your REXing ability by helping to aggressive shut out nearby civ's, which gives an early game land advantage. More (good) land typically means more resources, more commerce, more production, more food - which translates to faster teching, bigger military, more population... these early advantages have an exponential impact on the mid-late game if capitalized on effectively because you can simply do more in less time than you could've otherwise.

 

[Bleys]

One of the powerful mid-game features of CRE is cheap theaters. I almost ALWAYS whip/chop one first thing after taking an enemy city I plan to keep, even without CRE, post Astronomy. It REALLY helps a ton to have it so cheap.

 

[futurehermit]

Creative is a SE/warmongering trait imho. If you're not going hard warmongering game-long, you're going to feel creative fizzle. However, if you're going hard on warmongering and running a high culture slider, being able to quickly whip out theatres and coliseums in newly-captured cities can be very helpful, not to mention the extra cultural output to help control territory and cover the land tiles to increase your land %

 

[madscientist]

Creative is a SE/warmongering trait imho. If you're not going hard warmongering game-long, you're going to feel creative fizzle. However, if you're going hard on warmongering and running a high culture slider, being able to quickly whip out theatres and coliseums in newly-captured cities can be very helpful, not to mention the extra cultural output to help control territory and cover the land tiles to increase your land %

I agree. One reason why Kublai Khan is such a dangerous AI to play as or against. Zara is equally dangeroues since he has the org trait which get's him 6 cheap buildings plus a UB that get's extra culture. In fact there is no weak creative leader at all.

That said I have never had a problem playing without the creative trait.

 

[Artichoker]

Yes, it'd say Creative is a powerful trait. It's hard to nail down why, but I find that in the games I've played with a Creative leader, economy tends to be better.

First, there's the +2 that comes for free. That means it takes 5 turns to get the all-important 10 for the 2nd ring of tiles.

The 3rd ring is also important, as it allows cities to more easily connect to each other, thus forming a continuous territory. With the +2 free , in addition the the +2 for having a Library, that's +4 per turn, allowing you to get the 3rd ring in 25 turns.

This is approximately the timeframe we are looking at to settle new cities. When doing so, the extra culture of existing cities will connect more easily with the culture of new cities, which will also increase at a faster rate.

When you bring enemy cities into the picture, the extra puts added cultural pressure on their borders, while making it more economically viable to make new cities away from your old cities (thanks to their existing culture).

This means, settling near enemy cities is both more economical for yourself, and detrimental to the enemy city, giving you very good groundwork for attacking that enemy city.

 

[Shadowcrow]

I'm going to say what I said in the other thread, I don't use it too much, but I like creative because while it may not directly give benefit late game, I like the fact that theoretically creative when leveraged properly uses the early game as a set up for a late game in which you larger "country" holds more resources, better land for commerce and production and hence faster research and a bigger army earlier.