Philosophical Trait is mostly Useless...

[ranathari]

Philosophical & Industrious would be an almighty ass-kick in the opening stages of the game, allowing a player to get wonders up faster along with GPs to tech rush - you could out-pace everyone very early on like that. I remember editing Roosevelt to be Philosophical instead of Organised and I just pissed all over the other civs, finishing a full three eras ahead of them (on a spaceship victory, Monarch level).

Creative is the over-looked trait IMO: it allows you to expand and consolidate your borders at an earlier stage in the game without having to get Oblisks/Stonehenge up and running. I find Frederick to be great for this.

 

[Artanis]

Philosophical & Industrious would be an almighty ass-kick in the opening stages of the game, allowing a player to get wonders up faster along with GPs to tech rush - you could out-pace everyone very early on like that. I remember editing Roosevelt to be Philosophical instead of Organised and I just pissed all over the other civs, finishing a full three eras ahead of them (on a spaceship victory, Monarch level).

Creative is the over-looked trait IMO: it allows you to expand and consolidate your borders at an earlier stage in the game without having to get Oblisks/Stonehenge up and running. I find Frederick to be great for this.

I love Creative! Creative lets you claim HUGE swathes of territory with disturbingly few cities, and those cheap Theatres come in really handy more often than you'd think. Not having to spend time on an Obelisk also lets you build more useful stuff - like soldiers - when a city starts out

My last game with Catherine, I had 7 AIs on the continent and maybe one or two more cities than the average...but controlled as much land area as any three of them combined because my quick-popping borders let two cities seal off a third of the continent all for myself

 

[anton_z1]

Industrious is better then phylosofical for one simple reason. Chop rushed forges. I mean 2 forest in a new city instantly boosts its production. The second thing is choprushed stonehedge. (which is equivalent basically to cultural). So organised = Cultural + phylosophical. do the math .

 

[Dairuka]

Pyramids + Forge + Mercantilism + Representation = Insane Great Engineer output.

The trick is to build non-engineer based wonders in your secondary city.

 

[Lucas87]

wow, I find Philosphical to be the best trait. Either it or financial, but the strats for the two are fairly different. (Massing farms vs. cottages) Great People make a huge difference in the early game and having more of them is huge. Obviously philosophical works best if you can somehow grab the pyramids for representation despite not having industrious. I guess philosphical's strength is grealty enhanced by certain wonders, so if you don't get them it's not as good. However if you get out to the right start, phil is easily the best in my opinion. Also, I find financial to be way better than organised. Organised gives you gold and financial gives you commerce. Commerce is better than gold and financial gives you a lot more of it. If you build near water of any kind, financial is huge and can put you in a tech lead fairly quickly. I guess you can tell I like to be peaceful and tech up. To me its like playing one difficulty higher in terms of tech if I can't get one of these two and exploit their corresponding strategy.

 

[Dairuka]

The strategies for Financial and Philosophy are not too different.

You only need mass-farms in two cities to be your specialist farmers.

The rest of the cities can be cottage filled then.

 

[carn]

About organized, it's quite simple to say, when organized helps the most and therefore name the situation, when organized could be better than other traits:

1. lot of cities

2. often new cities beyond the optimal upkeep point in an area, where chop rushing is difficult

3. the following choice of civics(in brackets partly profiting choices):

-police state(hereditary rule, universal suffrage)
-vassalege(bureaucracy)
-(caste system)
-enviromentalism(mercantilism)
-organized religion(theocracy)



When do this situations appear?

1.when you are a sucessful warmonger

2.when you are a sucessful warmonger, as conquered enemy cities often lack forests, still have enemy units around threatening workers, but need a courthouse asap

3.when you are a warmonger, especially one who is allergic to long times of peace, then your civic choice will be from early on till late police state(pyramids), vassalege and theocracy. Caste system could also be useful if cities near enemy high culture cities are captured and need culture quickly and mercantilism is for a warmonger more interesting, as the disadvantage hurts less, though state properity sounds better due to large empire.

So organized is, if for anyone, the choice for a warmonger. As the prime choice for a warmonger is aggressive, the best test, whether financial is always better than organized would be Tokuwaga vs Huayna Capac, though i do not know whther the UU gives one of them an edge.

Carn