How to use Spiritual

[VeniceBeach]

I've seen a lot of comments that the Spiritual trait isn't that good except for founding an early religion and saving a few turns of anarchy here and there.

In order to properly use Spiritual, you have to change civics all the time. For example, I prefer Organized Religion for the +25% building production, but if I have a military unit that is about to be built, I can switch to Theocracy (assuming I have the proper techs) for one turn to get the extra +2 experience, without interupting production. Once built, I can switch back to Organized Religion so the rest of my cities only miss one turn of the +25% bonus. If I have vassalage, I can switch to that too and get +4 experience. Since vassalage is so expensive, I don't want to stay with that civic more than I need to, and thanks to Spiritual, I only spend one productive turn on it.

There are lots of other examples where this kind of movement comes into play. Basically, you can always have the proper civics for game actions that take one (or a few) turns to complete and then switch back to your long-term civics.

 

[elderotter]

yes, I agree it was easy to switch in and out of police state for the wartime benefits in fact it helped immensely not to have to wait even 1 turn.

 

[ritterpa]

Agree, especially on the high-upkeep civics that yield unit bonuses. It would also be nice to switch to hurry up production, then switch back to a preferred civic.

I'm thinking of playing a spiritual trait game just to learn all of the civics thoroughly!

 

[playshogi]

You have to wait 5 turns between revolutions.

 

[Entrinzikyl]

It's only one turn between revolutions when you change civics.

 

[MenacingVitamin]

No, what he means is that once you change a civic (revolution), you have to wait five turns before you can change any of them again, so no rapid-fire civic changes. In essence, You can't change to one civic and then change it back the very next turn.

Still, five turns isn't very long to wait as long as you plan accordingly. It's nice that you can change more than one civic at a time.

 

[ritterpa]

Forgot about the 5 turns. The best way to do it would be cyclical then. Go through a period when each town produces a military unit or two, then switch civics...