This is a reply to several people who gave some pretty compelling arguments about HC. My response... Really?
REALLLLLY???
I mean, honestly, the very first time I played him, I thought "Wow!!! This is, like, the best combination of traits EVARRRR!!!" and was super excited. After all, who wouldn't be excited about being able to spam wonders, make money, AND found Bud/Hin early on?
But then I played him. And ended up low-end of the totem pole, even on Prince (at the time I was still attempting Monarch sometimes, but since then, have gone back to Prince, since I have less time to micromanage since the boy was born).
The first track I tried was founding early religion, like Buddism and without Spiritual, it sorta hindered all my civics switches. So I had to be really judicious on when I'd switch civics. Fair enough, but then I either lose literal turns from the anarchy every time I want to make an effective switch (like slavery, or organized religion, etc), or I have to lose several turns worth of "effectiveness" by witholding the benefit of such a switch. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that when you're ALSO pumping turn after turn into religious tech, it really hampers your research in other areas. And by the time you manage to score "writing", competing religions have already spread about and your diplomatic relations start off in the red without so much as a "how's yer father". Normally the cons of a religious track are at least offset by the civic versatility that comes with the Spiritual trait, but when you lose those revolution turns, those cons really bite deep.
So I gave up on the religion track with HC. So instead, I tried game where I'd use my UB terrace for an early advantage, and research Pottery first. Seemed a natural fit. Pottery would give me access to Terraces AND Cottages, and I could use the Granary to expand my fat cross. Then I realized that you really not efficient to build a Granary till you hit around a size 4+ city, and I really need access to my fat cross before that point. So I either have to waste time building a monument in new cities (which defeats the whole purpose of getting border expansion from Granary culture), or I have to put everything in the entire city on hold (including workers, walls, barracks, libraries, etc) while I build a terrace, which takes FOREVER at lower populations. So the whole idea that "you get the benefit of the creative trait" is bollocks. The creative trait has at LEAST a 15-30 turn advantage (5 turns from city founding till culture expands to fat cross access) over terraces (Something like a 15 turn minimum build time starting at 1 population for a civ with Expansive trait as far as I know, plus 5 turns culture build before border expansion), which is significant. And of course, I can't lay the bloody cottages because instead of a worker, I'm churning out a granary. And even if I have a worker, I'm having to mine rather than lay cottages, to speed up the granary, or if I happen to have cottages, I still have to place pop on the mines, rather than the cottages, if I want that granary to be there in any sort of timely fahsion. Result, the Terrace really, really sucks, unless my goal is to spread my culture beyond the fat cross rapidly, which is not typically my goal.
So I decided to break with tradition and chase Wonders with the Industrial trait. Most of the time, I don't mess with Wonders, unless they are critical to my strategy or something I think would really put me ahead in an existing game, there's just too many other things I can do with those turns. But I figured with Industrial, maybe it'd be worth it. Problem one... in the dozen or so games I played, stone and marble were ALWAYS on a different continent from me. ALWAYS. This was in Warlords, granted, so this might have changed, but I began to go off the assumption that HC would always start away from any good wonder-fodder resource. Most of the time, I couldn't even get copper. Needless to say, this state of affairs alone put a sour taste in my mouth. Add to it that I'm not real up on Wonder strategies, since I hardly ever mess with them, so I couldn't min/max my returns as efficiently as perhaps I could have if I was used to seeing each wonder's effect in-game. If I wanted to produce a wonder, without any resource-fodder, that meant popping my population on mines, not cottages, which means the benefit from financial was minimal at best. End result, my tech, population, AND gold would suffer every time I wanted to build a wonder, and often a civ with access to the complimentary resource in "a far away land" would build it sooner than I would, which would give me some gold, but certainly less gold than I could have produced if I'd just focused on the financial trait.
So I gave up on the Wonder building, and tried Financial and did "meh" with it. The lack of a complimentary UB, the lack of a complimentary trait, the slow start towards pottery (aka no roads or agriculture as starting techs), no fast-workers, meant that I would, from the get-go, be less effective taking the financial high-road than other, better suited candidates. I mean, lots of gold is always nice, but when no other aspect of your civ really meshes with it, unless you start near some good commerce-producing resources, then you're just another fat wallet for some other civ to come in and steal your chickens. Game after game, I ended up just barely clinging to 2nd or 3rd place, while some other, better situate civ would just increase the gap between 2nd and 1st till it was in the hundreds.
I haven't tried Quechua rushing, but frankly, rushing isn't really my style. If I wanted to play a game like that, I'd just play Age of Empires.
So, perhaps I'm just playing Civ "wrong", but the above is why I still feel that HC is the worst Leader in the game.
. and i'd not feel castrated 
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