Corbeau
Jack of All Trades
Well, I think that I have finally come to a conclusion: George Washington is my favorite leader in Civ4.
Now, I realize that some of the first responses would be along the lines of "so what?" so I figure that I should state my reasons. The answer is simple, but lies at the core of all the Civ games past: expansion, and the early settler rush. Washington can expand like no one else, almost at Civ3-like level with a good start and good play.
No longer is food the measure of power as in games past. Now it is cold hard cash that determines your expansion. In the Civ games of the past, expansion has always been overwhelmingly key in the early game. Settler spamming was quite the rage in Civ3, the game I best remember besides Alpha Centauri (where colony pod spamming was also a winner, IIRC). To tone down this one-dimensional early game, Civ4 introduced the new city maintenance system where you paid more for every city whenever you founded a new one. You now must have an economy before you build more cities.
Washington has the best combination of traits for generating a huge empire, and doing it quickly. The financial trait is one of the best in the game, giving an extra commerce on every tile that already generates two commerce. The organized trait reduces upkeep on civics, which get worse as you add more cities (I'm not quite sure how it works between civic upkeep and city upkeep, but organized helps your finances when you have many cities). But key is that organized also halves the price of Courthouses and Lighthouses.
Washington's traits combined with America's techs work very well at expanding. A fishing village with a cheap Lighthouse will quickly be an economic powerhouse due to the financial trait, allowing for better research and quicker expansion (which gets insane if you have a lot of places that you can place fishing villages). Even better is that America starts with Fishing and Agriculture, meaning that food resources can be improved early for maximum growth and worker/settler construction.
The thing you have to watch out for is military production, since shields may not always be easy to come by. Personally, I recommend going for Bronze Working and using strategic forest chops to build buildings and defenses. I can vouch that even with raging barbs and aggressive AI, that this strategy will work (on Noble, anyway - haven't gotten past that, but considering the ease that I won early wars it should still be possible to run a defensive military on a higher difficulty with this strategy). A side benefit is that by pumping settlers, you avoid having to worry about happiness buildings or resources as early as usual.
The result is that you will quickly out-expand the AI and will generate a lead in the tech race once you focus on infrastructure. I think Epic One players understand how good Washington can be with cottage spamming, and this is simply cottaging on a massive scale (though don't give up common sense about maintaining some production!). That is the reason why Washington is my favorite leader.
Now, I realize that some of the first responses would be along the lines of "so what?" so I figure that I should state my reasons. The answer is simple, but lies at the core of all the Civ games past: expansion, and the early settler rush. Washington can expand like no one else, almost at Civ3-like level with a good start and good play.
No longer is food the measure of power as in games past. Now it is cold hard cash that determines your expansion. In the Civ games of the past, expansion has always been overwhelmingly key in the early game. Settler spamming was quite the rage in Civ3, the game I best remember besides Alpha Centauri (where colony pod spamming was also a winner, IIRC). To tone down this one-dimensional early game, Civ4 introduced the new city maintenance system where you paid more for every city whenever you founded a new one. You now must have an economy before you build more cities.
Washington has the best combination of traits for generating a huge empire, and doing it quickly. The financial trait is one of the best in the game, giving an extra commerce on every tile that already generates two commerce. The organized trait reduces upkeep on civics, which get worse as you add more cities (I'm not quite sure how it works between civic upkeep and city upkeep, but organized helps your finances when you have many cities). But key is that organized also halves the price of Courthouses and Lighthouses.
Washington's traits combined with America's techs work very well at expanding. A fishing village with a cheap Lighthouse will quickly be an economic powerhouse due to the financial trait, allowing for better research and quicker expansion (which gets insane if you have a lot of places that you can place fishing villages). Even better is that America starts with Fishing and Agriculture, meaning that food resources can be improved early for maximum growth and worker/settler construction.
The thing you have to watch out for is military production, since shields may not always be easy to come by. Personally, I recommend going for Bronze Working and using strategic forest chops to build buildings and defenses. I can vouch that even with raging barbs and aggressive AI, that this strategy will work (on Noble, anyway - haven't gotten past that, but considering the ease that I won early wars it should still be possible to run a defensive military on a higher difficulty with this strategy). A side benefit is that by pumping settlers, you avoid having to worry about happiness buildings or resources as early as usual.
The result is that you will quickly out-expand the AI and will generate a lead in the tech race once you focus on infrastructure. I think Epic One players understand how good Washington can be with cottage spamming, and this is simply cottaging on a massive scale (though don't give up common sense about maintaining some production!). That is the reason why Washington is my favorite leader.
