Qactus
Romani ite domum
My first thought was "Not another one of these threads", but there is just so much good information on that first page, wow. Kudos to everyone for these contributions. I won't make another list which would be quite similar to the ones provided anyway. Let's just say, after reading everything, my valuation of CHA went up a little while I'll definitely question EXP much more in the future.
Regarding SPI, I think it's a wonderful trait, because it completely depends on what you're doing with it. I feel I can measure my civ progress from the beginning to now (which is being quite comfortable on Imm) by the degree I was able to use SPI.
In the very beginning my favorite leader was Hatshepsut, and not because of War Chariots which back then I didn't recognize as the game changer they are. I just loved CRE because it allowed easy city placement and SPI because I could freely try out all the civics and learn how and when to use them.
The next phase of my journey both of these traits felt almost obsolete for me. I thought, now that I know how to properly place cities and which civics are good at what point of the game, I can get more value from the other traits. The value of SPI seemed to be the sum of the minimum turns of anarchy saved for the most necessary civic switches.
Afterwards (where I am now) my regard of SPI rose again due to having learned how to do planned civic switches (mainly between caste and slavery, but also rep/police state, pacifism/organized religion etc.) and adjusting every city build to that plan. Plus being able to give in to demands for religion switches etc. is nice and otherwise not worth with the anarchy.
And the beautiful thing is, I know there is yet another level of using SPI which I haven't reached yet, but caught a glimpse when watching Seraiel's games back then. The ease of him planning ahead multiple religion and favorite civic switches to extract monopoly tech after monoply tech from a bunch of deity AIs on a large map was mind blowing. He bulbed some initial tech bargain and managed to leverage that into many times the beaker count.
Regarding SPI, I think it's a wonderful trait, because it completely depends on what you're doing with it. I feel I can measure my civ progress from the beginning to now (which is being quite comfortable on Imm) by the degree I was able to use SPI.
In the very beginning my favorite leader was Hatshepsut, and not because of War Chariots which back then I didn't recognize as the game changer they are. I just loved CRE because it allowed easy city placement and SPI because I could freely try out all the civics and learn how and when to use them.
The next phase of my journey both of these traits felt almost obsolete for me. I thought, now that I know how to properly place cities and which civics are good at what point of the game, I can get more value from the other traits. The value of SPI seemed to be the sum of the minimum turns of anarchy saved for the most necessary civic switches.
Afterwards (where I am now) my regard of SPI rose again due to having learned how to do planned civic switches (mainly between caste and slavery, but also rep/police state, pacifism/organized religion etc.) and adjusting every city build to that plan. Plus being able to give in to demands for religion switches etc. is nice and otherwise not worth with the anarchy.
And the beautiful thing is, I know there is yet another level of using SPI which I haven't reached yet, but caught a glimpse when watching Seraiel's games back then. The ease of him planning ahead multiple religion and favorite civic switches to extract monopoly tech after monoply tech from a bunch of deity AIs on a large map was mind blowing. He bulbed some initial tech bargain and managed to leverage that into many times the beaker count.
As far as I've seen the PHI math bulb in action, it's not Construction but Horse Archer rushes. You cultivate the GS while teching Horseback riding and bulb math right on time to chop out the army. It is situational, but think something like Suleiman with pigs start going AH first and discovering horses nearby with a bunch of forests....
Where's my breakdown in understanding the math bulb though? What are you teching after writing? I could accept such a cheap bulb if it meant getting construction 422 beakers earlier, but it's not really because we have to wait around for the scientist to build and whatever we're teching in the meantime is worse than math would be sans bulb.
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