As I mentioned, I picked up R&F late (just a week ago) so I still have that youthful twinkle in my eye about some of the game additions that many have become fatigued and feel blase' about. But when looking at the various more recent tier lists (not the "it just came out, we're so stoked about it, Attack of the Clones is better than Empire" but rather the "we've had time to digest the new material and that was the worst Star Wars movie ever" lists) I'm surprised that there seems to be consensus that the Cree are middle-of-the-pack at best, and lower-tier-but-not-bottom-tier at worst.
I'll concede that the UU is unremarkable, especially for me as I play without goodie huts. Those of you who do play with the huts should find moderate impact as they can scout more (and find more huts) without having to stop to heal, and when they do heal its more effective - not that they heal more points but healing ten points to a 20 strength unit has more survivability than healing 10 points to a 10 strength unit. Further, you frequently have to pull your scout back to help out with barb horse groups or an off-guard DoW from a neighbor, and they are much better at that. Without huts, though, I don't build scouts and I won't be building okihtcitaw. But saying that they can be just good at best because of this is like saying that the Aztecs can't be great because the Tlachtli. The shared visibility is also an underwhelming bonus and I pretty much just disregard this bonus.
But of the three bonuses that remain, I think one is good and two are great. The good bonus is the extra route capacity and free trader at pottery with trade routes claiming tiles. Some complain that you get this before you have your second city, but I use it for a different purpose. You send the trader to the nearest city state that has a TR quest, which you probably have a free envoy with for first civ sited. One for first civ, two for this route, then add one of the ancient era civics that gives an envoy and you have both an ancient suzerein (plus era score) as well as the first tier of envoy level bonus. Also gives you extra gold and probably just one of another yield, but this early in the game that's a pretty significant boost percentage-wise. Some also complain that you have little control over which tiles you get, and I certainly wouldn't advocate selecting city location in order to get better free tiles, but they still add some free tiles, including third ring tiles, which reduces the overall tiles that you end up buying.
The first of two great bonuses that the Cree have is the bonus food(sending city) and gold(receiving city) from pastures and camps in the receiving city. This plays right into one of my strategies that I use pretty much every game - you have a single "tradehub" city (I often rename it exactly that so I don't forget) which has your government plaza and all the districts that give hammers to internal trade routes (CH, HB, IZ, and ENC.) So this requires that the city have enough growth potential to reach size 13, has access to a coast or lake tile, and enough production to get these districts up. When you do so, each city can and does build either a CH/market or HB/LH to add a trade route and each city sends that TR to the tradehub, making each city get +2 food and +6 hammers (note: I care little about food from trade routes, food is plentiful in this game compared to civ5 and hammers are at least twice as valuable to me for this reason. If you disagree have a city with the other four districts.) I'll often save one trader slot for new cities as the +6 hammers per turn really helps them get their infrastructure online quickly. For the Cree, make your tradehub city in the city that has the most camps and pastures, in my current game there are 6 combined camps and pastures in a city near the capital. I did some re-roll, "reveal all" tests and found that most starts have a settlable spot near their start with 5 of these resources within 3 tiles and just about every one had 4. So assuming it's only four, that means that all your cities other than the tradehub get a bonus of 6 food and 6 hammers and the tradehub itself gets 4 gold per city that you own. This also means that you have a single city making absolutely ridiculous amounts of gold - there are very few percentage multipliers to gold in a single city, hopefully there will be more in the future. But applying this type of bonus to this city will yield a lot.
The second great bonus is the UI, the mekewap. First and foremost, an improvement that adds hammers to a flat tile? Yes please. I think it's only them and Austalia that can do this. And it's two hammers pretty early. And adding just a few of these gets you housing levels that everyone except for Kongo (and Indonesia but only on their ideal map) have to wait until the industrial age to get.
So between the tradehub yields and the mekewap, Cree cities will have lots of high production tiles in almost all cities and a strong baseline production. They also have two of the three things needed for very large cities - nearly limitless housing and abundant food. If they just prioritize amenities they can have very large cities working almost exclusively mid to high production tiles.
The complaints that I hear:
-"Mekewaps interfere with farming adjacencies and district adjacencies" - then don't build them there. Having a prerequisite of just any luxury or bonus resource means that they can be built in many locations, and while the restriction of not being next to each other may make you want to place them in spots where they get the biggest bonus, I prefer to try to place them so flat tiles have MW and hill tiles have mines.
"the trader comes too early, you don't have another city yet" - like I said, trade with a city state or another civ then. Even if you can't use this for the ancient era suzerein, it's still bonus gold and other yields. By the time that route finishes, you'll have your second city,.
"Right before R&F came out, we realized just how powerful chopping/harvesting was, and now it's even better with Magnus. The Cree make you either decide between using this power or getting the Cree bonus." - there is some truth to this, but tile feature chops (forest, rainforest, marsh) are still on the table, and some bonus resources can still be harvested with little to no impact on the Cree bonuses (namely food-based resources, minable resources and resources that are adjacent.) This leaves quite a bit to please the chop happy and still take full or nearly full advantage of the Cree ability.
"They don't have any bonus that helps a specific victory condition." - This one confuses me because most tier lists have the S tier as civs that have major advantages towards multiple VCs, the A tier as civs that have major bonuses towards just one VC, and the B tier as civs that have minor bonuses towards multiple VCs (which is where most list the Cree, although some rank them lower.) From my experience, there are two major yields, science and production, and one minor yield, gold, that allow you to rofl-stomp through the game if you can amass sick amounts of them. Science means you can win a space game for obvious reasons, dom games because you have more powerful units, culture games for earlier access to key techs (which are arguably more impactful than key civics) and religion because, well, you just can. extreme levels of production mean you can build more stuff for... whatever you need to win. Gold means you can buy whatever you need to win ( a similar but IMO weaker arguement could be made for faith.) Looking at them independently and nearly exclusive of each other - very high science with little gold or production is a rough time, you can access stronger stuff but can't get it out quickly enough and are vulnerable to someone you're way ahead of swooping in and taking what you have. Very high production or gold but very low science means your units (or buildings, etc.) will be outclassed but can still win through attrition, which is why I value hammers more than any other yield. The Cree have the ability to make very high production and supplement it with very high gold which allows you to build and buy whatever you need to win.Civs like Rome and Australia also don't get much in the way of bonuses that are specific to the victory conditions, but its acknowledged that their bonuses help them win any VC, and I feel similarly about the Cree.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're the best civ in the game. That distinction is quite debatable and I feel that either Aztec Nubia, Persia or Australia get that nod, unless you allow specific map conditions to be selected for the game in which Indonesia on islands with abundant resources is unequaled. But seeing where most people rank them, among civs that they are much better than and behind civs that you could make the argument of at least being their equal, I think some people may need to boot up a game with them.
I'll concede that the UU is unremarkable, especially for me as I play without goodie huts. Those of you who do play with the huts should find moderate impact as they can scout more (and find more huts) without having to stop to heal, and when they do heal its more effective - not that they heal more points but healing ten points to a 20 strength unit has more survivability than healing 10 points to a 10 strength unit. Further, you frequently have to pull your scout back to help out with barb horse groups or an off-guard DoW from a neighbor, and they are much better at that. Without huts, though, I don't build scouts and I won't be building okihtcitaw. But saying that they can be just good at best because of this is like saying that the Aztecs can't be great because the Tlachtli. The shared visibility is also an underwhelming bonus and I pretty much just disregard this bonus.
But of the three bonuses that remain, I think one is good and two are great. The good bonus is the extra route capacity and free trader at pottery with trade routes claiming tiles. Some complain that you get this before you have your second city, but I use it for a different purpose. You send the trader to the nearest city state that has a TR quest, which you probably have a free envoy with for first civ sited. One for first civ, two for this route, then add one of the ancient era civics that gives an envoy and you have both an ancient suzerein (plus era score) as well as the first tier of envoy level bonus. Also gives you extra gold and probably just one of another yield, but this early in the game that's a pretty significant boost percentage-wise. Some also complain that you have little control over which tiles you get, and I certainly wouldn't advocate selecting city location in order to get better free tiles, but they still add some free tiles, including third ring tiles, which reduces the overall tiles that you end up buying.
The first of two great bonuses that the Cree have is the bonus food(sending city) and gold(receiving city) from pastures and camps in the receiving city. This plays right into one of my strategies that I use pretty much every game - you have a single "tradehub" city (I often rename it exactly that so I don't forget) which has your government plaza and all the districts that give hammers to internal trade routes (CH, HB, IZ, and ENC.) So this requires that the city have enough growth potential to reach size 13, has access to a coast or lake tile, and enough production to get these districts up. When you do so, each city can and does build either a CH/market or HB/LH to add a trade route and each city sends that TR to the tradehub, making each city get +2 food and +6 hammers (note: I care little about food from trade routes, food is plentiful in this game compared to civ5 and hammers are at least twice as valuable to me for this reason. If you disagree have a city with the other four districts.) I'll often save one trader slot for new cities as the +6 hammers per turn really helps them get their infrastructure online quickly. For the Cree, make your tradehub city in the city that has the most camps and pastures, in my current game there are 6 combined camps and pastures in a city near the capital. I did some re-roll, "reveal all" tests and found that most starts have a settlable spot near their start with 5 of these resources within 3 tiles and just about every one had 4. So assuming it's only four, that means that all your cities other than the tradehub get a bonus of 6 food and 6 hammers and the tradehub itself gets 4 gold per city that you own. This also means that you have a single city making absolutely ridiculous amounts of gold - there are very few percentage multipliers to gold in a single city, hopefully there will be more in the future. But applying this type of bonus to this city will yield a lot.
The second great bonus is the UI, the mekewap. First and foremost, an improvement that adds hammers to a flat tile? Yes please. I think it's only them and Austalia that can do this. And it's two hammers pretty early. And adding just a few of these gets you housing levels that everyone except for Kongo (and Indonesia but only on their ideal map) have to wait until the industrial age to get.
So between the tradehub yields and the mekewap, Cree cities will have lots of high production tiles in almost all cities and a strong baseline production. They also have two of the three things needed for very large cities - nearly limitless housing and abundant food. If they just prioritize amenities they can have very large cities working almost exclusively mid to high production tiles.
The complaints that I hear:
-"Mekewaps interfere with farming adjacencies and district adjacencies" - then don't build them there. Having a prerequisite of just any luxury or bonus resource means that they can be built in many locations, and while the restriction of not being next to each other may make you want to place them in spots where they get the biggest bonus, I prefer to try to place them so flat tiles have MW and hill tiles have mines.
"the trader comes too early, you don't have another city yet" - like I said, trade with a city state or another civ then. Even if you can't use this for the ancient era suzerein, it's still bonus gold and other yields. By the time that route finishes, you'll have your second city,.
"Right before R&F came out, we realized just how powerful chopping/harvesting was, and now it's even better with Magnus. The Cree make you either decide between using this power or getting the Cree bonus." - there is some truth to this, but tile feature chops (forest, rainforest, marsh) are still on the table, and some bonus resources can still be harvested with little to no impact on the Cree bonuses (namely food-based resources, minable resources and resources that are adjacent.) This leaves quite a bit to please the chop happy and still take full or nearly full advantage of the Cree ability.
"They don't have any bonus that helps a specific victory condition." - This one confuses me because most tier lists have the S tier as civs that have major advantages towards multiple VCs, the A tier as civs that have major bonuses towards just one VC, and the B tier as civs that have minor bonuses towards multiple VCs (which is where most list the Cree, although some rank them lower.) From my experience, there are two major yields, science and production, and one minor yield, gold, that allow you to rofl-stomp through the game if you can amass sick amounts of them. Science means you can win a space game for obvious reasons, dom games because you have more powerful units, culture games for earlier access to key techs (which are arguably more impactful than key civics) and religion because, well, you just can. extreme levels of production mean you can build more stuff for... whatever you need to win. Gold means you can buy whatever you need to win ( a similar but IMO weaker arguement could be made for faith.) Looking at them independently and nearly exclusive of each other - very high science with little gold or production is a rough time, you can access stronger stuff but can't get it out quickly enough and are vulnerable to someone you're way ahead of swooping in and taking what you have. Very high production or gold but very low science means your units (or buildings, etc.) will be outclassed but can still win through attrition, which is why I value hammers more than any other yield. The Cree have the ability to make very high production and supplement it with very high gold which allows you to build and buy whatever you need to win.Civs like Rome and Australia also don't get much in the way of bonuses that are specific to the victory conditions, but its acknowledged that their bonuses help them win any VC, and I feel similarly about the Cree.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're the best civ in the game. That distinction is quite debatable and I feel that either Aztec Nubia, Persia or Australia get that nod, unless you allow specific map conditions to be selected for the game in which Indonesia on islands with abundant resources is unequaled. But seeing where most people rank them, among civs that they are much better than and behind civs that you could make the argument of at least being their equal, I think some people may need to boot up a game with them.