jackelgull
An aberration of nature
But Imperialistic didn't exist back in Vanilla.
Hm, interesting thought experiment: Imagine a map consisting only of ice, without any resources, river, hills or water. You'd mostly work citizens until you get either Caste or a specialist slot providing building.
Let's go over the traits:
Financial: Completely useless, there'd be no tiles providing even one commerce, let alone two.
Expansive: Health is useless for size 1 cities, you'll never produce more than 3 Hammers per turn without settled great people before Factories so no effect on worker building speed, the two buildings it boosts are of no use either so nay.
Aggressive: This one might actually prove useful, if every city is producing with the exact same speed (2H/Turn) you can have a better quality of units with the same quantity which is better than nothing as you can use them to more reliably acquire more cities, and hence more sources of two hammers per turn.
Protective: See Aggressive, though since everyone can only build archers/longbows, catapults and warriors until gunpowder I'd say this one is actually a bit stronger.
Charismatic: Happiness is useless, for the less experience needed see the two points above.
Philosophical: You can only ever have a single specialist per city, but it does give you your rare great people in shorter intervals than otherwise which is not to be underestimated. I imagine settled Great People will make out the bulk of your production and commerce, as they are just so much more powerful relatively speaking when you have literally no tiles to work.
Spiritual: Hm, first I'll have to analyze how the different civics would work out in this scenario before I can say anything about the quality of this trait, though it would at least retain its bonus for diplomacy as you can switch civics and religions on the fly whenever an AI asks you to.
Industrious: The bonus for Forges would be huge, less for the +25% Production though but more for the Engineer slot, effectively adding +50% Production over the city tile and citizen.
Imperialistic: For earlier Great Generals see my better quality at same quantity point under Aggressive, but the +50% Production for Settlers is where it's at. With no workable tiles the only way to increase your yields to spam as many cities as possible, though maintenance will quickly become a problem.
Creative: Culture is useless, but the double production for Library is awesome for the scientist.
Tell me if I forgot any traits.
Now my thoughts about civics:
Government: Hereditary Rule and Police State are completely useless and Universal Suffrage might just have some use, but Representation is the best available choice for the +3 Research per city.
Legal: Free Speech is just a no-no, Bureaucracy might give you some extra hammers if you have a bunch of settled great people in your capital, Vassalage could be useful for better units, Nationhood because of no maintenance though it's actual effects are all irrelevant.
Labor: Slavery is useless, as is Serfdom unless you enjoy spamming Forts everywhere, Emancipation as well, so the winner by default is Caste System with its specialist slots.
Economy: Mercantilism or State Property. With eternal size 1 cities trade route commerce won't ever amount to much and corporations are impossible to found, Environmentalism is crap as always and so the only question you should ask here is whether you'd get more from de facto doubling the population of all your cities or removing city distance maintenance.
Religion: Organized Religion for missionaries without having to waste hammers in monasteries, Theocracy for better units or Pacifism for earlier great people. Free Religion's +10% Research isn't worth squat when only very few cities even get close to producing over 10 beakers per turn. I'd say Pacifism is the best choice here, though OR and Theo also have their uses.
As for the civ, you'd obviously want a resourceless UU.
Anyone up for actually trying out such a game?
I think you hit most of the points for this thought experiment, but I would like to say the best civilization, it seems to me for this criteria are the ottomans under Suleiman, if we aren't playing unrestricted leaders. Agriculture might be useless in this case, but the wheel would be quite useful to hookup cities. And while distance maintenance would cripple city setting a bit, there is a certain distance that a city can be settled in which it doesn't provide any distance maintenance at all, if a strategy article I read is correct. All together I can have twelve cities without a distance penalty, though number of cities might put a crink in my style.
And while gunpowder is very far away, if we have a lot of cities and we have a religion and a shrine courtesy of philosophical, then we can fund expansion and research. Espionage might be helpful too, for tech stealing.
If we are playing with unrestricted leaders, then possibly the Mali under a protective leader for an early skirmisher rush.
