Worst Leader?

[Pangur Bán]

Here's another supporter of creative - building stonehenge or monuments is a hammer sink, and stonehenge can cripple your early expansion, costing you a prime city site that the AI settles while you're building it. The cheap library is also a huge bonus for CRE civs - you can whip them cheaply in 3-4 different cities and run scientists to quickly get great people. Try Pericles with 3-4 decent early food sites and you'll see exactly how awesome CRE can be.

I'd still like to see the math. I think I'll schedule a game with Catherine though rather than Pericles, as I would otherwise attribute all success to the phil trait.

I would much prefer an early academy, or to bulb philosophy for a powerful trade chip (and also religion).

Even if you started as Gandhi?

 

[mechaerik]

Creative is easily one of my favorite traits. In my current game as Cathy, I had my entire continent (Standard Hemispheres, 4 Continents, I started with Shaka on my border) under my control. After I got CoL from the Oracle, I whipped/built courthouse and my tech rate skyrocketed.

I had completely underrated Imperialistic, but now I really like it.

As for Creative, it's always been one of my favorite traits.

 

[Lansky]

Even if you started as Gandhi?

Especially as Ghandi. With a solid start you can have 6+ GS before 1000AD easily. Add in some spiritual civic swaps for whipping of Universities and Trebs along with these GS's and bam! - Academy up in the future bureaucracy capital pre 1000BC, lib to steel, invade your neighbor with cannons, and have Oxford up by 1000AD. Prophets are nice, and even have their purpose, but give me a basket full of GS in the early game any day.*

*Play styles may vary, however the religious route is just not as strong for a well rounded game with options.

 

[cracked]

I don't understand how anyone can regard imperialistic and creative combined as poor traits. They are awesome. Cathy is great at chariot rushes because of her traits, can quickly hem in other civs, doesn't require monuments to expand borders and can tech quickly during the early game. She's good in either tight or open spaces and has the added benefit of being able to develop technologically very quickly in the early game if played right. (using cottage or specialist econmies).

I would regard two traits as the best: Organised, Creative.

Any civ with one of these traits is going to be pretty good in most situations.

In truth, I wouldn't expect to lose with a leader who has either one of these traits regardless of what it's paired with.

 

[Kanzera]

My favorite traits are:

Creative (because of the early culture, and I don't have to worry about building Stonehenge)
Imperialistic (because of the faster settler production)
Spiritual (no anarchy!)

But that's just me...never played higher than Prince...so what do I know?

 

[Pangur Bán]

Especially as Ghandi. With a solid start you can have 6+ GS before 1000AD easily. Add in some spiritual civic swaps for whipping of Universities and Trebs along with these GS's and bam! - Academy up in the future bureaucracy capital pre 1000BC, lib to steel, invade your neighbor with cannons, and have Oxford up by 1000AD. Prophets are nice, and even have their purpose, but give me a basket full of GS in the early game any day.*

*Play styles may vary, however the religious route is just not as strong for a well rounded game with options.

Fast workers, starting with mysticism and mining, you have no excuse for not chopping Stonehenge and getting that GP that bulbs Code of Laws and what not. It's not necessarily a religious route.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Fast workers, starting with mysticism and mining, you have no excuse for not chopping Stonehenge and getting that GP that bulbs Code of Laws and what not. It's not necessarily a religious route.

If stonehenge costs you a good city site, it fails. That's a pretty good excuse.

CoL is a relatively low-cost tech that, while nice to have, probably isn't worth burning an entire GP. Since you're Gandhi and whatnot maybe an oracle run for that would be better anyway, if you have room to expand. After all, if early CoL is a target you have the opportunity to use caste system for border pops (which are faster than monuments), and spiritual makes popping back into slavery not very costly. Burning a prophet would be iffy, and the effects of stonehenge in such a scenario are somewhat minimized. I guess your caste artist could pop a normal speed fat cross one turn faster :/.

 

[Pangur Bán]

If stonehenge costs you a good city site, it fails. That's a pretty good excuse.

CoL is a relatively low-cost tech that, while nice to have, probably isn't worth burning an entire GP. Since you're Gandhi and whatnot maybe an oracle run for that would be better anyway, if you have room to expand. After all, if early CoL is a target you have the opportunity to use caste system for border pops (which are faster than monuments), and spiritual makes popping back into slavery not very costly. Burning a prophet would be iffy, and the effects of stonehenge in such a scenario are somewhat minimized. I guess your caste artist could pop a normal speed fat cross one turn faster :/.

You can get Stonehenge on like 10 turns on normal (probably less if you're better than I). That's a lot of saved monuments for a non-creative leader. On a large or huge map, it makes even more sense. Code of Laws is more appealing if you have heavily expanded and your tech rate is down (and you aren't organised or Shaka or Gilgamesh). 30 saved turns + from bulbing CoL (let's ignore Confucianism) enables researching everything else more quickly (not that that's the only thing you can do with an early GP). Getting SH as Gandhi is really not the huge distraction it's being made out here.

PS, I noticed your youtube tutorial games on Saladin. Am watching with interest! Thanks for putting them up, been looking for that kind of thing for ages.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can get Stonehenge on like 10 turns on normal (probably less if you're better than I). That's a lot of saved monuments for a non-creative leader. On a large or huge map, it makes even more sense. Code of Laws is more appealing if you have heavily expanded and your tech rate is down (and you aren't organised or Shaka or Gilgamesh). 30 saved turns + from bulbing CoL (let's ignore Confucianism) enables researching everything else more quickly (not that that's the only thing you can do with an early GP). Getting SH as Gandhi is really not the huge distraction it's being made out here.

PS, I noticed your youtube tutorial games on Saladin. Am watching with interest! Thanks for putting them up, been looking for that kind of thing for ages.

My point is that if you are going to get a prophet wonder and CoL, oracle makes a lot more sense. You don't need culture buildings if you have access to BOTH spiritual AND caste system! And what does Gandhi have? SPI. Screw the "free" (but potentially high cost depending on the game) monument, you can get a border pop in 3 turns with an artist in new cities. And with SPI, you can flip back to slavery later with minimal opportunity cost if you need to whip anything in the future.

Glad you're enjoying the videos .

 

[sakhmet]

Glad you're enjoying the videos .

- Yeah, we need a new one. Two new preferably
It's educational, but also relaxing and cozy. The way you sit and talk to yourself, explaining etc. Love it.

 

[Lansky]

Fast workers, starting with mysticism and mining, you have no excuse for not chopping Stonehenge and getting that GP that bulbs Code of Laws and what not. It's not necessarily a religious route.

I don't remember the last time I built Stonehenge. 10 turns are huge. That's a settler or a couple workers if we are chopping that aggressively. Give me the expansion any day. Additionally, I prefer my first great person to be a Scientist or maybe an Engineer. Prophets are a mid/late game commodity for me.

I very very rarely find CoL useful that early in the game unless I am religion starved in isolation or something weird. Population is not high enough to abuse Caste yet, I am still whipping heavily anyway, Courthouses cost too much and give little return this early, and Chicken Useless is a horrible wonder. So CoL does what for you outside of the religion this early in the game?

So I guess bulbing CoL if you have a triple gem start and then getting CS really fast would be worthwhile maybe, but then that's what the Oracle is for.

 

[cracked]

The main bonus of cose of laws in the early game is:

The ability to assign scientist specialists without building libraries, allowing Gscientists to either bulb techs (alphabet is a very good tech to bulb early, for example) or build academies (settleing them is rarely useful early).

The ability to assign merchant specialists without markets etc. To bulb things like metal casting early and run trade missions against rivals. Merchants are quite good to settle as well.

The ability to pop borders very quickly with artists allowing you to build more useful infrastructure like libraries or courthouses (don't sniff at the espionage points you get from this).

Specialist assignment is only limited by population and not infrastructure as well.

In short, you can run a bulbing specialist economy at a time when you may not have the infrastructure to do so.

As such, COL early is handy for philospohical leaders like Gandhi as caste system allows you to take early advantage of that trait. The GP points from specialists become doubled (so your first gp is likely to come wihin 10 or 20 turns). it's also very handy when ran in conjunction with pacifism (on isolated starts). (it would work out as something like 18 GPP/turn with both philosophical and pacifism for two specialists).

 

[cracked]

I very rarely bother with stonhenge unless I'm in a situation where I can knock it out in ten turns or less within the first 50 turns. Monuments aren't so expensive to build if you have to. Oracle to code of laws (organised or philosphical or isolated) or metal casting (if your industrial) is better. Even if you don't run as caste system, the gp bulb can be usually applied to obtain theocracy early, typically allowing you to build AP in the early AD's.

Stonehenge has it's uses but that's dependant on the civ you're playing. (e.g ethiopeans for culture victory, Egyptians for priest economy, Native Americans for stonger archers). In most cases using that production to expand or build units is preferable.

 

[Dumanios]

I don't have a worst leader because I haven't played them all.

 

[cracked]

*Play styles may vary, however the religious route is just not as strong for a well rounded game with options.

That's the main problem with relgious tactics. They restrict the options you have later in the game psychologically. AP, uni of sangkore and spiral minaret are awesome and can allow for huge economies but ....

The latter two don't work with free religion,

all three are weakened by scientific method (the SM crash I nearly always get during the second half of the game),
and all three stop working with computers.

They also require pretty large empires with heavy infrastructure to ensure optimisation.

 

[Pangur Bán]

I very very rarely find CoL useful that early in the game unless I am religion starved in isolation or something weird. Population is not high enough to abuse Caste yet, I am still whipping heavily anyway, Courthouses cost too much and give little return this early, and Chicken Useless is a horrible wonder. So CoL does what for you outside of the religion this early in the game?

CoL gives courthouses, which are certainly more useful than that. In a typical game for me they are the difference between being an overexpanded backwater and superpower military machine. And let's not forget it has a high trade value, to get you a bunch of other techs from the AI.

I will normally be spammed with Great Scientists by the Middles Ages from all the CS scientist specialists I run. I don't think a GS is more advantageous the early stage of the game than a GPr, but I'd agree that a GE is. Things were much simpler when the Great Wall gave its GE bonus.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

CoL gives courthouses, which are certainly more useful than that. In a typical game for me they are the difference between being an overexpanded backwater and superpower military machine. And let's not forget it has a high trade value, to get you a bunch of other techs from the AI.

I will normally be spammed with Great Scientists by the Middles Ages from all the CS scientist specialists I run. I don't think a GS is more advantageous the early stage of the game than a GPr, but I'd agree that a GE is. Things were much simpler when the Great Wall gave its GE bonus.

Courthouses are good but are slower returns than currency trade routes, and in many cases even working cottage tiles. Sometimes 10-12 cities peacefully by 1 AD can be financed comfortably w/o CoL OR currency.

For heavy military campaigns, you can see 15+, although one has to time it correctly, banking some gold before going to war, extorting techs (at least alphabet), and grabbing currency (for wealth and trade routes) and CoL via deficit research, building research, running scientists where cottages aren't viable, etc. A lot of rookie players bankrupt themselves by not having enough gold stores initially, not shutting down the slider, or extorting/researching the wrong techs. Once you know what you're doing you can pay for way more maintenance than the game lets on initially.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Courthouses are good but are slower returns than currency trade routes, and in many cases even working cottage tiles. Sometimes 10-12 cities peacefully by 1 AD can be financed comfortably w/o CoL OR currency.

For heavy military campaigns, you can see 15+, although one has to time it correctly, banking some gold before going to war, extorting techs (at least alphabet), and grabbing currency (for wealth and trade routes) and CoL via deficit research, building research, running scientists where cottages aren't viable, etc. A lot of rookie players bankrupt themselves by not having enough gold stores initially, not shutting down the slider, or extorting/researching the wrong techs. Once you know what you're doing you can pay for way more maintenance than the game lets on initially.

I saw in your games how you play around with the slider like that. Interesting pointer I'm gonna try. Though I don't usually build many cottages until I start preparing for a US switch in the late Middle Ages. I can always get more research by farming specialists.

 

[Lansky]

Even if your specialists are fueling your research *something* has to pay the bills. That something, unless you are swimming in commerce luxuries, are cottages. A bureaucracy cottaged capital can foot the bill for a very very large empire without any courthouses for much longer than you seem to think.

 

[sydhe]

You can whip a monument if you build it for one turn first. This can be useful if you're charismatic.