The Worst Trait

[malekithe]

Car insurance has what exactly to do with strategy games... ?

Geico:Car Insurance::Organized:Civ Traits

 

[uberfish]

never heard of them

 

[Matskii]

You guys need to wake up whats wrong with expansive in my experience the extra three health towards the ind era when your citys are rated at 15/16 but still have land to yeild on the limit of health .!!! still got three health is priceless , going to out produce you all the way??? not to mention the scouts at the start of the game especially on large maps exploting villages and picking strategic positions to settle and of course on hills to stop pescy barbarians poping up too close to your yet undefended borders. expansive/industrial too best traits no dought...........

 

[BadHorsie]

I'm surprised Creative came second worst. I like it. I think it's pretty powerful for domination wins, fast expansion and grabbing land.

I voted for Organized, because I don't notice it. I think I should've voted expansive though. It's pretty lame.

 

[MrCynical]

You guys need to wake up whats wrong with expansive in my experience the extra three health towards the ind era when your citys are rated at 15/16 but still have land to yeild on the limit of health .!!! still got three health is priceless , going to out produce you all the way???

Fact is the vast majority of civ games are decided by the industrial age. The earlier a bonus kicks in the better, and the expansive health bonus rarely does anything until too late in the game to affect the outcome.

not to mention the scouts at the start of the game especially on large maps exploting villages and picking strategic positions to settle and of course on hills to stop pescy barbarians poping up too close to your yet undefended borders. expansive/industrial too best traits no dought...........

However scouts have the major disadvantage that they can't steal workers. I don't regard starting with them as beneficial (and anyway that's more to do with techs than traits and they don't always match up).

 

[Muki]

Organized. Usually civic upkeep is around what, 100 gold at the very maximum? Paying only half of that is not going to really change the game.

I am playing marathon/huge/fractal/emperor game as Napoleon, civic upkeep for me in industrial era is 400 gpt.. with organized I could save 200 gpt and combining that with my shrines I could keep my research at 100%.. but I am not organized and I cant keep my research at 100%..that means it takes extra few turns to get tanks..but when at war with Monty, Genghis and Alexander, every turn counts.. In most cases Financial can be pretty dam good, but still, there are situations for every trait where they prove to be better then the rest of the traits..

 

[InFlux5]

If games are decided by the Industrial era, and early game advantages are most important, then Creative certainly isn't the worst.

The bottom line with Creative is that all your borders are always expanding for the entire game, no matter what. That can hardly be considered the worst. Isn't the early game land grab one of the most important factors deciding victory?

Yeah, you can build obelisks to get a similar effect. But it's just plain silly to equate obelisks with a free +2 culture. Obelisks require you to have Mysticism, and to wait many turns (usually about 10, unless you are lucky with food) before you can rush them (which requires BW, meaning the whole process requires 2 techs.) And then, once you finally have it up, you only get +1 which means 10 more turns before an expansion.

All those hammers and population that you are using to get your obelisks up can be used for something else if you're Creative. The trait allows you to immediately start gobbling up land, and land is power. It gives you a strong foothold in the early game, and that is its strength, not to mention also allowing you to gobble up land through conquest much more quickly.

Any time you start with a cultural building you are just delaying something more useful. If you're Creative you can skip those buildings and get right to the good stuff.

 

[malekithe]

The trait allows you to immediately start gobbling up land, and land is power. It gives you a strong foothold in the early game, and that is its strength, not to mention also allowing you to gobble up land through conquest much more quickly.

Land is only power when you have the population to make use of that land. Land without populaton is useless.

Any time you start with a cultural building you are just delaying something more useful. If you're Creative you can skip those buildings and get right to the good stuff.

There are a number of times when this argument isn't true. Libraries are useful culture buildings. If you take care to spread a religion to new cities, being Creative doesn't make much difference. If you've built stonehenge, Creative doesn't make much difference. If you're running Caste system, Creative doesn't make much difference.

Creative is good because it allows you to place your first 3-5 cities without having to distinguish between adjacent tiles and those in the second ring. You have slightly more freedom in your placement. The bottom line is, when I'm creative, I can place cities a bit easier; getting more resources in a city's fat cross, without sacrificing short-term growth. Creative allows for optimal city placement. Often, though, sub-optimal isn't much worse, especially when you can just build another city to work those tiles you missed.

Once every couple of games, the ability to expand a city's borders very quickly has some sort of strategic or military value. That's a fairly rare occurence, and more luck-driven than anything else.

 

[naterator]

not to mention the scouts at the start of the game especially on large maps exploting villages and picking strategic positions to settle

that's civ III, in civ IV expansive has nothing to do with scouts, hunting as a starting tech determines if you start with a scout.

 

[MikeEdward]

I'd like to use my stupid question of the week: why do people say that spirituality is particularly useful at the end of a game?

 

[acidsatyr]

because it is. Being able to switch between u. suffrage, police state, rpresentation, nationhood, theocracy when you want instantlly is very powerfull tool at the end of the game. Its useless before CS however.

 

[zenspiderz]

A trait is never used alone. It must be considered in conjunction with the other trait with which it is paired. For example in this poll expansive has come out as the most despised yet in conjunction with industrious as with Bismarck you have a very synergistic combination. Cheap granaries and forges in every city combined with a wonder building bonus and a +3 health bonus mitigating productive buildings demerits (forges, factories, airports) yeilds cheap buildings that enhance everything...... Libraries for science .. temples/temples for happiness etc.

Another synergistic combination is philosophical + spiritual as in saladin. Given a gold (research) gold rich start the majority of the 7 religions can be founded + with philosphical you can get the GPs necessary to either build a shrine and rush found a religion.

No doubt there are others.

My point is only that traits do not exist in isolation but are paired with another...

Therefore you can not consider the merits or demerits of a trait without considering the trait with which it is paired.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

Land is only power when you have the population to make use of that land. Land without populaton is useless.

Hardly. Empty land is valuable in shaping your borders, denying other civs resources/land, saving resources for yourself (grabbing an oil before combustion), setting up choke points, and iirc more land is more points.

 

[malekithe]

Hardly. Empty land is valuable in shaping your borders, denying other civs resources/land, saving resources for yourself (grabbing an oil before combustion), setting up choke points, and iirc more land is more points.

The original argument I was refuting was that land has economic value in and of itself. That is simply not true. Absent population to work it, or an enemy whose population could be working it, land is of no economic value. Resources without population are valuable in an economic sense; empty land is not. I'll make no argument regarding the strategic value of land, though.

Of course, this argument assumes you're not trying to meet some victory condition that attributes an arbitrary value to empty space.

 

[vormuir]

<i>Its useless before CS however.</i>

Nonsense.

Spiritual saves you a turn when you switch to Slavery, saves you a turn when you adopt a religion, then saves you a third turn when you adopt either Organized Religion or Hereditary Rule.

Usually those three things will happen in the first 50-100 turns. So, Spiritual is giving you between 3% and 6% more hammers and beakers than you'd get otherwise.

Then there's switching civics because of the Pyramids; switching civics or religions to stay friends with someone; going to Theocracy for war... all things that can easily happen long before you get CS.

Spiritual rocks. It's good at the beginning of the game, it's good late in the game, it's just good.


Waldo

 

[acidsatyr]

<i>Its useless before CS however.</i>

Nonsense.

Spiritual saves you a turn when you switch to Slavery, saves you a turn when you adopt a religion, then saves you a third turn when you adopt either Organized Religion or Hereditary Rule.

Usually those three things will happen in the first 50-100 turns. So, Spiritual is giving you between 3% and 6% more hammers and beakers than you'd get otherwise.

Then there's switching civics because of the Pyramids; switching civics or religions to stay friends with someone; going to Theocracy for war... all things that can easily happen long before you get CS.

Spiritual rocks. It's good at the beginning of the game, it's good late in the game, it's just good.


Waldo

nonsense.

saving 1-3 turns in that time period is negligible advantage when compared to advantage of any other trait at that stage.

 

[PeteJ]

I would say that expansive can be very powerful if you start in the middle of a bunch of floodplains. A capital with 12 floodplain squares can easily turn your civ into a monster.

 

[carl corey]

1) Expansive

Once I started alone on a Nordic continent. Few food (so health) resources, few rivers, so most of my cities had growth problems - no farms AND no health from resources. And being alone meant no trade so it took me a lot to get off the continent and find other civs with which to trade for health.

Oh, and in another game Kyoto was in the middle of floodplains. As PeteJ put it, it would have been a real monster city with Expansive.

2) Creative

You CAN "become" creative with the Stonehenge, but... only for a while. It saves you time from building it or the Obelisks that will become obsolete quite fast anyway. What if you're in a territory full of Calendar enabled resources? Do you bother to go for the Stonehenge or not?
Others have posted other good reasons before.

3) Organized

Oh, where do I start? I know, my last game! Cyrus's Immortals are like a blessing to the warring heart. Since the computer mostly has archers, your Immortals can crush them like bugs. That meant a fast early expansion. What I would have loved was to have those cheap Courthouses in every city faster so that my economy would be back on track. (2 dead civs and 1 with 2 cities leave a lot of juicy empty space)

I'm not going to list reasons for the other traits since it seems more of us seem they are good/better anyway. So you see, any trait can have it's benefits. Likewise, I can think that it's possible for every trait to be less useful than another in a given situation. Oh well. Just play with what you have.


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Oh, and I vote for Expansive. Really, really weak one.

 

[yavoon]

creative is the worst, some ppl need to start voting creative so we can get it to pass expansive!

 

[Beamup]

3) Organized

Oh, where do I start? I know, my last game! Cyrus's Immortals are like a blessing to the warring heart. Since the computer mostly has archers, your Immortals can crush them like bugs. That meant a fast early expansion. What I would have loved was to have those cheap Courthouses in every city faster so that my economy would be back on track. (2 dead civs and 1 with 2 cities leave a lot of juicy empty space)

Oh, where do I start? Possibly with the fact that this has exactly and precisely nothing whatsoever to do with the trait.