weakest triats

[jimbob27]

Creative is my worst. I don't need the extra 2 culture, because I'm going to build other useful things anyway (such as libraries or temples), which give culture as a side-effect.

Cheap theatres and colleseums? Well, colleseums are rubbish whatever they cost, and theatres are only really useful when you've just conquered a city, and you're not creative...... so useless for the creative leaders.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

^^Well, if you get +2 culture for free, and you build a theater double-time, then wouldn't you be building +5 culture in that newly captured city in a very short period of time? I think that Cultural trait can be harnessed by a warmongerer in a big way. By far one of my least fav traits, but I think expansive is far less useful.

 

[Meatbuster]

Isn't there still a limit to civic switches for Spiritual civs? You can't, say switch to vassalage for 1 turn, and then switch out?

Yep, but I don't think a backstabbing neighbor will declare peace in 1 turn anyhow... ...so a 5 turn delay before switching back won't hurt too much. But having to go into 2-4 turns of anarchy will...

 

[Bast]

It depends on how you play. Financial is the worst if you don't have any cottages. Haha.

 

[Antilogic]

If you play Financial and don't use a cottage economy, you deserve to be penalized.

And the whole point of Spiritual is that you switch without receiving the anarchy penalty. You could change every 5 turns, if you wanted to, at no loss of production or commerce accumulation (although the effects might be a little different based on what civics you switch from/to).

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

If you play Financial and don't use a cottage economy, you deserve to be penalized.

I disagree. I use a hybrid economy combining a scientist-specialist city, a couple merchant-specialist cities, and some hybrid between cottage-merchant specialist cities. Having the increase for financial helps the science output in a big way. Especially if you have a decent amount of coast cities. I play a very strange strat, tho.

 

[drkodos]

^^Well, if you get +2 culture for free, and you build a theater double-time, then wouldn't you be building +5 culture in that newly captured city in a very short period of time? I think that Cultural trait can be harnessed by a warmongerer in a big way. By far one of my least fav traits, but I think expansive is far less useful.

Creative can be leveraged in mid to late-game warmongering situations on smaller maps because it will always pop out quicker Fat-crosses than non-creative. I agree that the Theatre/Colosseum bonus is mostly uni8mpressive, but I enjoy using the trait nonetheless. On large maps with a lot of terrain, the trait loses some steam as the game progresses, but can still be helpful to grab some tiles a bit sooner.

As for Expansive, I feel it is a misunderstood trait. I find it to be a very worthwhile trait to build large empire. One of its real strengths is the tremendous amount of free hammers it gives for Granaries (one of the most important buildings, IMO ) & Harbors. With the added Health synergies, it is good for about 2 extra pop per city, empire wide, if leveraged properly. (It basically gives about 3 extra food per city with the 3x Health ( +1.5 population), but both Granary and Harbor give Health bonus as well and you get online much quicker).

If one has a empire with 20 cities, 8 coastal, the hammer bonus could be as large as free 920 hammers. The more coastal cities, the higher the percentage of free hammers (Harbors).


When Expansive is combined with Organized, the hammer bonus skyrockets.

Between the two, Creative vs Expansive, I enjoy Expansive better.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

^^A very interesting point you bring up. Hmm... Perhaps I will give it a try in the future when I'm goin for a non-aggressive style of vic.

 

[Antilogic]

I disagree. I use a hybrid economy combining a scientist-specialist city, a couple merchant-specialist cities, and some hybrid between cottage-merchant specialist cities. Having the increase for financial helps the science output in a big way. Especially if you have a decent amount of coast cities. I play a very strange strat, tho.

Actually, my point was that if you refuse to build cottages, the vast majority of the Financial benefit is lost. Your hybrid cottage-merchant cities, for example, take advantage of cottages and thus the financial bonus. The sea tiles benefit as well, but nothing compares to a floodplain cottage--initially at 3 food, 3 commerce, and going up from there.

I'm saying if you don't build a single cottage ever, than you are really missing out on the benefit of the financial trait.

 

[Stexe]

Here is how I justify that Creative is a horrible trait: It is granted that Creative helps at the start, but all the other traits help pretty much throughout the entire game. +2 culture a turn is EXTREMELY small late game, especially when you're going for a culture victory and you're getting easily 300+ culture a turn. I just think that it needs something else to justify using it. Think of Creative this way: it gives you two free monuments (obelisks) per city, which is equal to 60 hammers (30*2). While Expansive (+3 health) is even greater than an Aqueduct, which is 100 hammers for +2 health (thus Expansive would be "worth" about 150 hammers). This isn't even counting the fact that Expansive helps in production of Granary and Harbors (much more useful than a Theater and Coliseum). Sure if you plan to build a Coliseum and a Theater in EVERY city then it saves you some hammers. Hammer wise, Creative saves you 85 hammers of production (60 from Coliseum and 25 from Theater) while Expansive ONLY saves you 70 hammers (30 from Granary and 40 from Harbor). So if you calculate it only by the fact of hammers you're saving, you get 220 for Expansive and 145 for Creative. Which is a significant difference, especially considering that more people build Granarys and Harbors than Coliseums and Theaters.

 

[Stexe]

Harbours are laughable - useless building with useless bonus.

I don't know what game you're playing, but I'm playing Civilization IV: Warlords, and increased trade routes means more gold to fund both scientific research, culture, civic upkeep, and unit cost. Also it gives additional health bonuses that are nice. Sure happiness is usually the limiting factor for a city as lack of Health only gives minus food, but Expansive helps a lot. Overall I think Creative is the worst as noted above and I still think Organized could use a little more. Sure you'll be saving 20ish gold a turn through civics, but it needs something else to be worthy in my opinion. Imperialistic would be better if it wasn't double production of settlers but half revolution time for newly captured cities. Other than that they are pretty balanced. I would like to see Spirtual get double production on Monastaries too.

 

[Arlborn]

I loove cultural, protective and industrial trait, and dont see enough useness for spiritual trait to be used..Actually cultural trait already saved my buts a lot of times(I almost always go for cultural or diplomatic victory, Im not good in the military aspect ) when I actually won cultural victory with like 20 or less turns to the end of the game and I wasent the first in score

But this kind of thing is personal you know ^^ Each one has their own opnion and arguments!

 

[phungus420]

Whoever picked spiritual is smoking crack. I cannot win a monarch game without it (also I'm playing 18 player games on standard map, and only have played that, might be different with a more "standard" set up), hell, someone tell me how to do it, i can do fine with any other trait with it, but without the ability to switch on a dime, I die.

Yeah, Creative or Organized would be my pick, but I kind of think I'm being like one of the people who picked spiritual, and just don't understand thier usefullness. As for the flip side, I think spiritual and financial are the strongest traits, although, I can handle any trait except Organized and Creative as long as I'm spiritual.

Still trying to get a win (on monarch) out of Carthage, because I love financial and charismatic, but loosing spritual gets me every time.

 

[Thedrin]

While creative is one of the worst traits when going for a cultural victory it is one of my favourites for just about any other style of play. The cheap buildings aren't great but the quick border expansion gives huge benefits early in the game and the earlier a bonus arrives the more powerful its effect. I would justify choosing it as my favourite by noting that whenever I play a series of games with any given trait there is always a "hangover effect" when I pick a leader without that trait and have to get used to playing without said trait. This effect is toughest to overcome when I take a break from playing with a creative leader.

Expansive ain't one of my favourites but it's certainly underrated. It's harder to raise the health cap than the happiness cap and I more often find in the mid to late game that my cities are limited by unhealthiness than unhappiness. Expansive can allow cities to grow two population points larger than they normally would. Across your core cities, 2 extra population is a huge bonus to have from researching calender to the late industrial/early modern eras. Expansive doesn't provide a huge early game boost (granaries and slavery aside) and can look pretty bad early on but unless you get really unlucky with luxury resources it can transform into huge advantages later on.

When I play random leaders, I always restart if I get industrious. For each strategy that I use there are very few wonders that I try to build and fewer that border on essential. The extra hammers aren't worth it. Cheap forges are nice but since I don't rate engineer specialists or great engineers (which would further reduce the industrious traits usefullness) it's not enough for me to play with this trait.

 

[Stexe]

I loove cultural, protective and industrial trait, and dont see enough useness for spiritual trait to be used..Actually cultural trait already saved my buts a lot of times(I almost always go for cultural or diplomatic victory, Im not good in the military aspect ) when I actually won cultural victory with like 20 or less turns to the end of the game and I wasent the first in score

But this kind of thing is personal you know ^^ Each one has their own opnion and arguments!

It is "Creative" not "Cultural," and +2 culture a turn only gives 920 more culture in your starting city, a lot less in cities you get later on. Creative is actually one of the WORST to go for a culture win, Philosophical or Industrious is much more efficent. Even if Philosophical only gives you one more Great Artist, that is +12 culture a turn or a +4,000 culture "bomb," a lot more than Creative can ever give you.

For all those who want expanded boarders quickly, you do realize that if you simply go Caste System and put one of the population to specialize as an Artist (+4 culture) you get a boarder expansion to the fat cross in 3 turns? With Spiritual you could go to Caste System right after taking over a place, put some Artists to expand boarders to 100 after a few turns and then switch back to your previous Civic with no difficulty?

 

[Thedrin]

Yep. spiritual is better than creative also for cultural wins (and better than industrious too I'd wager) due to its cheap temples and - consequently - its cheaper cathedrals.

 

[MrCynical]

If I had to pick one trait as worse I'd go with Imperialistic, but Creative and Expansive aren't much better.

With Imperialistic you get slightly faster settler production (incidentally the bonus doesn't seem to apply properly to food that's going towards building the settler, greatly weakening the effect), which becomes near useless very early in the game, especially at high difficulty levels. The great general bonus, while nice, isn't enough to make up the the near total absence of other benefits from this trait.

Creative is also very weak once you're out of the ancient age. Early border expansion is handy, but can be mimicked with stonehenge, or whipping libraries/monuments. Theatre's are dirt cheap to begin with so few hammers are saved there, and colusseums are an improvement of last resort. As others have pointed out the net contribution to culture is not that large, and Creative is a poor trait for a cultural victory. Philosophical, Financial and Industrious are all vastly superior for culture.

Expansive is a very unpopular trait, and with quite good reason. The 3 health is only of use if your cities' health cap is falling behind the happiness cap, which is hardly ever the case, especially at high difficulty levels. Even if this is the case the maximum bonus is 3 food, and hence a maximum of 1.5 population per city, not 2 or 3 as some make the mistake of thinking. Cheap granaries are a help, but you're only saving 30 hammers there. Cheap Harbours are something of a boost, but they aren't that urgent a city improvement compared to for example a forge or a lighthouse.

 

[Thedrin]

I stated up to 2 extra population since a city may naturally have 1 extra food. It's not difficult to exploit tile improvements to get that second extra citizen.

 

[Kain3]

I said that Protective is a bad trait in the past, but I'm starting to have second thougts about it, it's not that bad at all..

There are many things to consider:

-Even without a Barrack, you can have a strong defense VERY early just by pumping out City Garrison I + Drill I Archers. Good in MP againt early rushes, or against Barbarians in Single Player. A much safer expansion in the early turns..

-Later when you do have Barracks and start to build very cheap Walls (and Castles) that come with the Protective trait, you simply become invincible in the ancient and middle ages. It's not just about the buildings, the Archers themselves instantly have City Garrison II + Drill which make them damn hard to break. And those Archers are really cheap to reproduce if the enemy somehow manages to weaken your city defence..

-The Castle adds +1 trade route to your city in Civ IV Warlords. This makes the Castle a valuable building since commerce is the driving factor in Civ IV.

-Also the trait does have its uses when conquering, the key word is "staying power". In later eras and especially in higher difficulty levels the AI always counterattacks with a force when you capture his cities. However with Protective you just need a city close to the front pumping out archers and the enemy will hardly recapture or destroy your newly conquered cities.

I do agree that the trait becomes less useful when the game reaches the age of gunpowder since the Wall and the Castle doesn't give the bonus anymore, but the units still get the City Garrison, and all Gunpowder units get the Drill!

 

[drkodos]

For all those who want expanded boarders quickly, you do realize that if you simply go Caste System and put one of the population to specialize as an Artist (+4 culture) you get a boarder expansion to the fat cross in 3 turns? With Spiritual you could go to Caste System right after taking over a place, put some Artists to expand boarders to 100 after a few turns and then switch back to your previous Civic with no difficulty?

It's a great tactic and I use it whenever feasible. Caste system is a nice civic with many subtle uses that are not-so-obvious upon first inspection. I find that in the above scenario, as soon as I get my desired border pop, I switch Artists to Merchants and the city immediately runs in the black without having to build courthouses or other money multipliers. Excellent for keeping the invasion rolling and supply lines flowing.