Seeding options - best colonist

[RedRover57]

The reason that Artists is by far the best pick is because ICS is the best strategy, and the +2 culture per city helps to offset the increased culture requirements for increased city numbers. The increased tech costs per city can be easily offset by trade routes, making Scientists less needed.

If a small/tall strategy ever becomes viable after a future patch then Artists will not be as critical. Currently it's like vanilla Civ 5 France where you could ICS to a cultural victory due to the +2 culture per city. In the current incarnation of BE there is no reason to not just spam cities for the entire game.

 

[Resipsa]

Wow 5 options and all 42 votes for artists, just throwing this out there.
I have played with aristocrats on when I went full industry/domination with Humata and it wasn't horrible. The Industry opener combined with the Tech for Trading Hub and view of Coastlines means that you can get you hub up a few turns faster as well as your OER. You don't get the savings on trading vessels but as soon as those are done you get the additional hammers on your fence. All those saved hammers go into building a first and buying your second colonist. Clearly you can't get the virtues as fast but you can afford to buy things that are needed and with the cost reduction on units from the industry policy makes your warring come a bit quicker.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The even bigger part is that artists are perfect to counter the culture penalty from negative health. By default you only get 1 culture from the Old Earth Relic during the early game due to the rounding stuff, but with artists you still get 3, so the actual loss from negative health is much lower.

 

[akjone02]

OK, so I'm clearly in the minority here, but I like aristocrats quite a bit. I think it's all a matter of how you use them.

First, my strategies tend to revolve pretty heavily around getting populations as high as I can, so the extra health helps a lot for that.

Second, I know that late-game the extra energy isn't that helpful, but in the early stages the +3 can make a really big difference. That extra energy allows me to build a couple more buildings and leverage farms and mines where I might otherwise need generators or energy-specific squares. I generally look at that +3 as extra food from a maintenance free vivarium, or extra food from more farm squares, etc.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Remove the +1 health from the colonist options. Unless there is a colonist option that just gives health and only health, I don't feel the other's should be giving it as a secondary effect.

Don't think that makes much of a difference tbh. The big thing is the +2 culture, and the +1 health is just a little cherry on the top.

+1 culture and +1 health is a more balanced option, but it still doesn't help refugees since +2 food isnt as big as a deal. Cities starting at 2 population might be too overpowered, maybe 2x quicker growth to pop 2 (or 3)? Dunno.

 

[Soffacet]

OK, so I'm clearly in the minority here, but I like aristocrats quite a bit. I think it's all a matter of how you use them.

First, my strategies tend to revolve pretty heavily around getting populations as high as I can, so the extra health helps a lot for that.

Second, I know that late-game the extra energy isn't that helpful, but in the early stages the +3 can make a really big difference. That extra energy allows me to build a couple more buildings and leverage farms and mines where I might otherwise need generators or energy-specific squares. I generally look at that +3 as extra food from a maintenance free vivarium, or extra food from more farm squares, etc.

If you're going to argue about early %-increases, culture is a far more scarce yield. And hammers are far more efficient. There's no reason why you would ever be forced to pick maintenance quests or work generators just to offset a lack of aristocrats. Energy is a weak early yield.

 

[Gokudo01]

I wont repeat myself so i will only comment about people saying :

"Culture is harder to get."
Yes and no. it's later, not harder.
When you get dome, you've got the possibility to spam +2 culture( and +1 energy) on tiles. Moreover you can get it from terraforming too.

Holomatrix is really good too, +2 culture.

 

[Bandobras Took]

And another point that hasn't been mentioned -- Artists are helping you grab tiles in the early game. Forget about winning, I can't stand slow border expansion.

 

[Resipsa]

If you're going to argue about early %-increases, culture is a far more scarce yield. And hammers are far more efficient. There's no reason why you would ever be forced to pick maintenance quests or work generators just to offset a lack of aristocrats. Energy is a weak early yield.

While +3 energy is weaker than +2 culture or +2 hammers it is the most flexible. I don't hate it, I don't think its better than the +2Artist+1health but if you were going industry first you really only benefit from the middle 2 policies early on then you sort of have a lul where you are waiting on your outposts to develop. I think in those case aristocrats can be taken. Trade routes and quests and pods really mess the numbers up on it though you can hit 2 or 3 culture pods or excavations early and you'll wish you had opened prosperity for the free settler.

 

[Xenotitan]

LOL 62 to 1

 

[Rakshasa72]

Just want to point out that Aristocrats can help you grab early tiles too. They can also allow you to buy colonists which leaves your cities free to grow and produce other things. the once an outpost turns to a city you can use the income to buy your depots to get you trade routes up and running faster.

That being said I still voted for Artist.

 

[m15a]

3 ept is not enough for an early settler purchase and you could spend extra culture to get a virtue that gives a flat +7 ept or +1 energy per basic resource. So, it's still a tough sell.

 

[Rakshasa72]

The 3 ept by itself is not enough but, the extra boost on top of what your already earning help a lot. In a marathon game with Aristocrats I started at about 8 ept. Hit an early pod with a Solar Sat for 12 ept. That's a bit over 100 turns to get colonist. You can get the first colonist faster going prosperity with Artist but, if you go Prosperity with engineers you'll get your 3rd colonist with energy sooner then you will with artists. Then it just snowballs from there. Every city is adding an extra 3e and, improve the liquidity of your empire.

Like I said. I still agree that Artist are Op but, Aristocrats are still pretty good.

 

[Tomice]

It's insane how one-sided this is! I really hope they do something about it in the first patch.

How about this:
Artists 2 culture only
Scientists 3 science
Engineers 3 production
Refugees 2 food 1 health

Not sure about Aristocrats. As Alpaca has pointed out in another thread, energy is worth only a fraction of the other ressources. So we would have to give them 5 or more energy to be competitive.
I don't see early rush-buying as justification for aristocrats in their current state, production fulfills the same purpose more efficiently.

 

[Acken]

It's insane how one-sided this is! I really hope they do something about it in the first patch.

How about this:
Artists 2 culture only
Scientists 3 science
Engineers 3 production
Refugees 2 food 1 health

Not sure about Aristocrats. As Alpaca has pointed out in another thread, energy is worth only a fraction of the other ressources. So we would have to give them 5 or more energy to be competitive.
I don't see early rush-buying as justification for aristocrats in their current state, production fulfills the same purpose more efficiently.

We also have to remember things do not work in a vacuum. The reason why engineers are weak isn't that 2 or 3 production is really bad, it's because trade route are so powerful that 2 or 3 production just isn't a big relative boost.

The same thing would happen with artists if trade routes were providing culture. The thing is that artist give a lot of culture relative to early culture yields.

Now imagine a game with no trade routes. New cities starting with +2 or +3 hammer would suddenly be way more attractive.

 

[Roxlimn]

Early trade routes generally give something like +3-5 outgoing. It's not supermagical. OER gives +3 culture per city. With Domes or Biowells, you could just spam culture generating tiles right on the map.

 

[Acken]

Early trade routes are closer to +6 than +3...
You still go from +3 to +5 culture it's a lot more interesting than going from +6 to +8 in production most of the time. Especially when you consider you can get multiple routes to the city and your production will quickly get even higher once you get some more pop and necessary buildings.

 

[Roxlimn]

I don't see what's interesting about it, honestly. It's a flat bonus, either way, and the hammer bonus gets you started on, well, everything quickly other than Virtues.

I usually also get Alien Preserve soonish, and Domes not further off, so I'm not starved for culture. Harmony players are even less starved with Xeno Sanctuaries and the like. Are you guys just flat-out ignoring the culture generators? Sometimes I feel like every building quest is presenting me with culture alternatives.

Artists is pretty much France and like France, its main advantage is tile claiming and early Virtues. +hammer Civs are considered competitive with that and good alternatives.

 

[Bandersnatching]

Artists have 94% of the vote so far... that seems to me like there is some serious rebalancing that needs doing.
I like Scientists and Engineers as they are, but Refugees doesn't seem very good as food isn't as important currently as it was in Civ 5. Aristocrats also give a really nice +1 health bonus, but the +3 energy does not compare to +2 culture. Culture is much harder to come by than energy in this game.

 

[kingsbury]

artists are currently up to 90... the closest one is 3. You would get less lopsided results if you asked people if they wanted to be kicked in the groin.