I'm a very successful Deity player (when I choose to play it) I'm telling you straight up ORG will always net you, at a minimum, 1 early additional city.
Once people learn to grasp proper tile management, tile improvements, and how to properly settle their cities they'll instantly begin to appreciate ORG much more. I find most people drastically waste their land and settle cities way to far apart. A single FP and riverside farm becomes a whipping monster. It's so very easy to spam seemingly useless cities together that have the potential to create absurd amounts Treb/Sword/Cross/etc.
I'm guaranteeing anyone playing the higher levels that by around 500AD ORG can easily let you found 4-5 more cities (Granary is all you HAVE to have) bringing your potential whipped unit count impressively higher.
It's obvious you are playing something like HUGE FRACTAL maps. Most people, especially deity players, play on standard, either fractal / continents or pangaea. Your arguments seem overblown even assuming a weird fractal map, but certainly hold no water on Pangaea.
Point One: It gets you an additional city?? Wut? Initial city settlement on deity pangaea is almost entirely dictated by the AIs settling, the geography, and how quickly you can build settlers. ORG might help you (a very small bit) afford an additional city, but on Pangaea maps you're founding so few cities yourself, this is not the "limitation". If I can found another decent cities, even if it throws me to 20% research or something for a few turns, I would, but ze problem is I cants!
Point Two: "if you were rly good at stuff you'd see how good ORG is".
In fact, it's EXACTLY the opposite for very obvious reasons.
Good players build their cities close together (you admitted).
Good players don't run up their city pops, they whip (you admitted)
Good players run less water tiles / build less stupid infrastructure -- few lighthouses
Result: The bonus effect ORG has on civic maintenance and cheaper CHs / lighthouses is made much smaller, because good players are already playing to minimize those things.
Point Three: "4-5 more cities at 500AD!"
I've had games with 6 cities at 500AD. They might not be going to the HoF any time soon, but are you seriously suggesting I would have been stuck with just my capital without the awesome healing powers of ORG?
No, of course you're not. Though you haven't stated so, it's obvious you're playing on drastically different settings than me (and perhaps most other players here).
Which is exactly the point. ORG quite literally ranges from worst trait in the game to the best trait depending on game settings.
Consider a situation on the border of being winnable and consider it from the last time that the economy is really important (Lib breakout) on Deity Pangaea, and on avg you'll see:
0 Courthouses
0-2 lighthouses
< 10 GPT saved from "civic maintenance"
~~~
As for the rest of the traits. I like CRE and SPI almost equally. Usually I consider Phi/Fin/Ind the lead traits, and CRE/SPI the best support traits, followed by exp/cha.
And I'd actually rather have one lead trait and one of the good support traits then two lead traits, so some of my favorite leader choices reflect that.
I think people are underrating Creative here. Yes libraries are affordable without Cre. But look at it this way. Some of the "building X reduced by trait Y" affect buildings that you are rarely building. Most of my cities get libraries, so that's a lot of saved hammers, and early on in the game. And you get theaters half price and don't have to build monuments, saving you a lot more hammers, and early beakers on myst.
From another perspective, Creative will get you a bunch of extra border tiles that you otherwise wouldn't have, or would have to fight for (expensively). It's hard to put a tangible value on that, since it will vary, but I'd like to think extra tiles are important
and perhaps somewhat underrated in how important they are. You're not just getting a few extra tiles, you're robbing them from an AI. Even tiles you can't work in your cities, creative surely nets you a lot of extra forests you otherwise wouldn't have. Boom there's a lot of hammers. Similarly creative can get you extra luxury resources -- and even if these are some desert incense monstrosities, that's taking a resource from an AI, then selling this resource back to the AI, getting GPT for your economy and giving him a resource that barely helps him, while taking the gold he does need.
As to which is better CRE/SPI that's going to depend on the game (and game speed!). But I'm always happy to see either of them. CRE is like an easy button for borders and SPI is like an easy button for diplomacy.
you can do so without much lost (usually).
and 
right away, from the first riverside cottage (or sea tile, etc)
Yikes........ double post =/. But I might as well use it hah!
). Getting boxed in on Deity is common on Pangae but you can still spam out more cities working nothing more than 2-3 tiles and whip units with great success. So in my eyes there's still some love to be found.
