weakest triats

[budweiser]

Creative is good. The half priced library lets you put one in every city during the expansion phase. Thats a good science boost. Combine that with a half priced theatre before say 800AD and 1000 years later your cities will be putting out nice double culture in the 1800s or before. Finally, add a half priced colleseum to let your cites grow one more size in pop.

In my last game, I was going for a cultural win. One of my proposed legendaries was on the HRE border. By the end of the game, my culture from that city had taken half the tiles in the BFC from two HRE cities (this included resource tiles) and was even pressing right next to the Aachen the HRE capital. At any time, I could have moved troops right next to those cities and taken them on the first turn of a DoW. I think there is some unexplored territory for cultural agression right there.

 

[Silence101]

Creative gives a half priced library, theatre and colosseum - three buildings which are reletively cheap to build anyway (library = 90 / colosseum = 80 / theatre = 50), and I don't usually put a theatre and colosseum in every city anyway, so I can't really justify it by that... and the +2 culture per city is virtually useless after to opening minutes of the game.

I can see some value with half-priced libraries maybe, but I'd rather have half-priced courthouses or forges... and it seems to me that Creative really looses its steam early on. It probably has a lot to do with my play style (I'm a warmonger usually), but I think it's one of the weaker traits.

 

[JujuLautre]

Creative is perhaps useless for many people, but we cannot deny its benefits:
- Allows you to grab the best stops in the early game without worrying about culture
- Allows you to forget about monument/stonehenge/mysticism, thus to begin to build/research more important things earlier
- Always gives advantage in cultural-battle (for ressource for example) against non-cultural leaders (cheap theatre helps even more)
- Allows you not to worry about building a culture-related building in a conquered city; this + cheap theatre also helps to reduce revolt risk quicker
- Cheap libraries are always good

Imho, this trait's two main benefits are:
- Allows you to start at full speed
- Win culture battle, and culture pressure for captured cities

I would really not say it's the less usefull trait; I'm always happy to have it

 

[Silence101]

Creative is perhaps useless for many people, but we cannot deny its benefits:
- Allows you to grab the best stops in the early game without worrying about culture
- Allows you to forget about monument/stonehenge/mysticism, thus to begin to build/research more important things earlier
- Always gives advantage in cultural-battle (for ressource for example) against non-cultural leaders (cheap theatre helps even more)
- Allows you not to worry about building a culture-related building in a conquered city; this + cheap theatre also helps to reduce revolt risk quicker
- Cheap libraries are always good

Imho, this trait's two main benefits are:
- Allows you to start at full speed
- Win culture battle, and culture pressure for captured cities

I would really not say it's the less usefull trait; I'm always happy to have it

I don't think any trait is "useless" - every trait adds some value, and I think there's validity to all of the points that were made. I think the cheaper libraries are probably Creative's strongest point - personally, I like to go for the Oracle, so I have to go the mysticism route anyway at some point earlier on.

Maybe creative initially helps you win the cultural boarder battle, but a don't really see the +2 culture being that significant long-term. After drama, you can build culture in a new city for a few turns to get the boarders to expand while you're waiting for the city to grow. By mid game, my boarder cities are pumping out loads of culture anyway, so not a big deal.

I'm not really sure how Creative "allows you to start at full speed", or what is meant by that. I would think starting at full speed would be getting a grainery up as soon as possible to promote city growth, and you can whip anything else you need.

 

[fed1943]

Creative gives full radius to every built or conquered city in 5 turns,
without need of any building or tech.
So, a fast start for each city, while non-creatives only get this on the
capital city.
Best regards,

 

[Silence101]

Creative gives full radius to every built or conquered city in 5 turns,
without need of any building or tech.
So, a fast start for each city, while non-creatives only get this on the
capital city.
Best regards,

Building culture (converting production to culture) does the same thing, and it's available fairly early.

 

[Silence101]

The first few turns in a new or conquered city are fairly unproductive anyway... I can't see spending those first few turns building culture putting you at a significant disadvantage. If I understand correctly, you're saying you get a head start by building infrastructure right off, instead of building culture - but the production value of the first five turns of a pop 1 city is what, like 10 total maybe? (It depends on resources, I know.) That's not a significant head start.

 

[JujuLautre]

I'm talking about "starting", so the beginning of the game; not the time when you have music

 

[Silence101]

I find for the most part that at the beginning of the game, even after you've established a few cities, you're still mainly in the exporitory phase. I tend to expand rapidly at first... so maybe it varies by style. But, by the time things start getting crowded on the map, my established cities are usually pumping culture on their own and their boarders are already expanded. In the event the AI does start taking the land that I want, I usually prioritize them for war. That's not to say that the +2 culture from Creative wouldn't be somewhat helpful at the very start - I agree, it does make things a bit smoother at the very beginning, helps hook up resources, etc, but I think my main gripe with it is that I don't see any real significant long-term advantage. Of all the traits, I think it fizzles the earliest. (Or maybe IMP - depending on the situation.)

 

[JujuLautre]

I think the long term advantage is all about leveraging a good and quickerstart for the rest of the game
Even if it's not as powerful and obvious as other traits, I agree.

And also, it depends of the leader: I had a game with Louis building pyramids where the libraries where the main advantage of cultural, and one other with hatty where the quick and natural border pop was the way to war chariots

 

[Bjorn190]

Culture is really really good when you are playing on the edge of the blade of your skill.. but, culture lies in wonders and religion.. +10 for a wonder blows libraries, theathres and colosseum + the bonus out of the water with just ONE wonder lol..

religion gives 5 which roughly equals the cre bonus + a monument.

The true culture trait is IND

 

[Silence101]

Oops... double post.

 

[Silence101]

I think the long term advantage is all about leveraging a good and quickerstart for the rest of the game
Even if it's not as powerful and obvious as other traits, I agree.

And also, it depends of the leader: I had a game with Louis building pyramids where the libraries where the main advantage of cultural, and one other with hatty where the quick and natural border pop was the way to war chariots

Creative is not completely without value.

Culture is really really good when you are playing on the edge of the blade of your skill.. but, culture lies in wonders and religion.. +10 for a wonder blows libraries, theathres and colosseum + the bonus out of the water with just ONE wonder lol..

religion gives 5 which roughly equals the cre bonus + a monument.

The true culture trait is IND

I agree... though admittedly, I'm kind of a wonder junky sometimes.

 

[JujuLautre]

Culture is really really good when you are playing on the edge of the blade of your skill.. but, culture lies in wonders and religion.. +10 for a wonder blows libraries, theathres and colosseum + the bonus out of the water with just ONE wonder lol..

religion gives 5 which roughly equals the cre bonus + a monument.

The true culture trait is IND

I'm reaaaly not sure it's possible to compare a cheap theatre or a free +2 culture with a wonder or a religion founding... Religion founding is (somehow) random, and wonder building is highly expensive. I would never rely on building a wonder to win cultural battles, except for always peace domination I think
(Btw, in my current game I just won a culture battle over marble with cultural + theatre when my opponent had a wonder and was established for longer )

Creative is not completely without value.

Yep, I think we agree on that
But I still think that, even with such a name, creative is an agressive trait

 

[Antilogic]

I don't think any trait is "useless" - every trait adds some value, and I think there's validity to all of the points that were made. I think the cheaper libraries are probably Creative's strongest point - personally, I like to go for the Oracle, so I have to go the mysticism route anyway at some point earlier on.

Bingo! Being able to get a library up quickly is the amazing new benefit of Creative that makes it a half-decent trait.

 

[Silence101]

Bingo! Being able to get a library up quickly is the amazing new benefit of Creative that makes it a half-decent trait.

But libraries arn't that expensive at full price. I'd rather have cheaper universities (PHI) or forges (IND). Half priced libraries are admittedly better, but I don't think that's enough of an advantage to warrent Creative... granted, Creative has other things offer as well. But personally, it's one of the last traits I'd look for in a leader.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

I think creative is the best trait for early warmongerers, because they don't have to worry about culture, and can start cranking out their armies. No sidetracking ffor stonhenge or monuments.

 

[CivDude86]

I think making Stonehenge last until astromony weakens creative. I get about half the benefit of creative for half the game by building a cheap wonder.

 

[azzaman333]

Creative is definately the most annoying trait, as you can literally build a city regardless of other civs borders as you can be fairly confident that you'll be able to out-culture them fairly easily.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Creative. Good for a quick border expansion, then useless.

Oh, come now, brotha, that border expansion can be very OP in early wars and land rush. Simply due to the 2 culture points, I no longer need to build Stonehenge or any monuments when taking over my neighbor in early game. I can go straight into infrastructure, or defense if necessary. Plus, I've been able to claim resources that the foolish AI thought it owned because my borders popped before his even tho he settled near the resource long before I did. 8 turns is all it takes on Epic. I love creative, It's perfect for warmongering (ironically)