Creative trait - needing a boost?

[Strategist83]

I just saw the 'creative' leader trait be called weak in another thread and I tend to agree: What good is a +2 to culture compared to some of the other traits like industrious (double wonder build speed) or aggressive (free combat promotion to melee and gunpowder units)?

Do you think the 'creative' leader trait needs beefing up?

[CreepyD]

Well you would expand much faster at the beginning, taking up more room per city, so in theory depending on the map should be able to get more cities built than other civs.
You could put a city right near someone who is 'non creative' and steal a lot of their squares for nothing.

Ofcourse +2 is nothing in the mid-later game, but very nice for starting out.

[GeoModder]

It's indeed a good starting trait. Your cities will expand borders the more quickly so the entire cityradius is "covered" in just a few turns, meaning all the goodies are available for terraforming.

[Blake]

Creative becomes Terminally weak in the mid game, really once you get the ability to rushbuy or you set some culture allocation it becomes worthless.

It is extremely strong in the early game, but it's strengths are mainly military - map control.

Prehaps it could have something like +1 happy every 20% culture alloaction, starting at 10%, so with colliseum it is +1 happy every 10%, not +2 happy every 20%, because that WOULD be useful later in the game, once the +2 culture has become truly marginal.

However.. if you want to appreciate creative, play with raging barbs on an all land map. Then you'll appreciate the free border expansions and cultural defenses. Or just play Kublai Khan, it is a good trait, just a little 1-dimensional, all horizontal growth benefits, no vertical growth benefits.

[Enigma_Nova]

I find it's an excellent way to spark border tensions and annoy people.

[Bhruic]

Personally, I'd rank Creative in the middle of the pack. Industrial and Financial are obviously the best. Organized and Expansive would probably be the worst, imo. I'd much rather see those two tweaked than Creative.

Bh

[Blake]

I'd rate Organized as stronger than Industrial.
I very much prefer Asoka to Ghandi.

The thing is, the strategic resources (stone, marble, copper) have MORE impact on the wonders you get than industrial, non-ind with stone will beat an ind without stone. In my experience with Asoka I'll certainly get the wonders that I have appropriate resources for.

My experience is also that with an Organized civ I can easily win without any wonders at all, just building more cities.

Industrial REALLY gets weak in the industrial era, i mean REALLY. This is because of the power of rushbuy especially combined with Kremlin.

The main problem with industrial is that to actually utilize it, you harm your expansion and military building, this is where "always on" traits like Financial and Organized are very, very nice.

Industrial is only really strong on prince and easier difficulties. It's seriously overrated for higher difficulty and multiplayer.

So I rank Financial and Organized as the strongest traits, since you can't help but benefit from them.
Creative is also extremely strong in some situations, but you must use it to gain a large territory early on, before it's bonuses die off, if you do this, and avoid crashing your economy, you're set.
Philo is great to okay, it kind of allows you to be lazy with Heroic Epic / Pacifism, and it lets you get great people much sooner, but it's kind of a niche trait - best used if you have a plan (like quickly generate GP's for lightbulbing).
Aggressive is great, especially when paired with Organized or Creative since they have strong synergies (both allow for low-expense conquest), but aggressive can be a bit weak at times.
Expansive can actually be almost an "always off" trait if you get a lot of food resources (like considerably more health than happy), before starting the game you can't know if it'll be truly useful; I don't like that.
And industrial can become just plain weak when the going gets tough, it's not the kind of trait that lets you prosper in the face of adversity. Well industrial can be useful for certain bootstrap strategies that rely on specific wonders, but I'd classify it more as a niche trait than staple.

That's my opinion on the traits, I think for the most part some of the traits are just more niche than others, it's not that they're weak - you just need to work harder to leverage them.

[baboon]

Creative is one of my favourite traits. If I don't have it, I really want Stonehenge, and therefore I can't build the 6 archers I can build when I'm Creative.

Well, the six archers make my neighbour's life hell and I'm off to a quick start.

(I did this with Catherine. If I took Qin, I should have build Stonehenge, so that's a drawback. The faster Wonders he builds? Well, I can usually build them anyway, so I'm not impressed. Maybe I like Organized better, but Creative is really an advantage in the very important early stage.)

[Kuciwalker]

I'd rather just build Stonehenge than be Creative. Granted it's only a +1 instead of +2 culture, but it does the job.

[Common Sensei]

Any leader can be pseudo-Creative with Code of Laws and the Caste System civic it allows. Forcing an artist specialist for three rounds upon city founding duplicates the initial effect. The only advantage Creative has over this is when a city is actually bordering a rival's city and there is culture conflict going on, and even that is minimal.

[Handel]

Creative effect is completely useless after the initial turns. The only way I see to make it usefull is to increase the effect according to the age. Say +3 in the classical, +4 etc... and something like +10 in the modern age.

[Riotamus]

Early turns are the most important ones, they'll resonate through the entire game. Ultra-cheap theaters and colosseums are also nice.

[Possibility]

Are you guys nuts? I think Creative is the most overpowered of all traits. I never have to build a stupid obelisk, which saves 10 turns of production in every city. And dont always count on getting stone henge. In most multiplayer games, every non-creative civ is shooting straight for that one, so the odds are you wont get it. And my civ trait is still twice as effective as it.

Plus, within 3 turns of founding a city, I can use all the 21 tiles in the city radius. This is a huge advantage. I can expand quickly, I dont waste time making dumb obelisks, and theathers are dirt cheap! This is the ultimate civ trait to keep your people happy and your empire growing.

Think about this, when you found a city, the first thing you have to build is a deffensive units, probably an archer, which takes I'd say on average 7 turns, then you make an obelisk or a worker and then an obelisk. Say you make the obelisk 2nd, thats another 10 turns. This whole time you can only use 8 tiles around your city, where as the creative civ is using all 21 tiles around his city. This gives you have a huge start, and it affects every single city, and a small bonus at the start equals a huge bonus later in the game.

Have you ever been in a situation where you founded a city, and quickly need to build a deffensive unit, to stop a barbarian or someone else from attack. But the forest on the plains on the hill (producing 3 hammers) is outside of your 8 tiles. If only you were able to work that tile right away you could get your warrior or archer done in time.

Or the 2 flood plain tiles are outside of the 8 initial tiles, if you had access to those right away, your city will grow much faster.

Possibility

[xxFlukexx]

No, I think Creative is in the middle of the pack, I think most of the traits are fairly balanced. Spiritual and Expansive are the worst imo, Expansive being good on Emperor+ games and Spiritual being only good in cultural victory games.

When I play with Creative I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I can build anything I desire in my cities without worrying about cultural borders or how I am going to get a resource a tile or two away. Excellent trait if you don't grab any religions early on and you don't want to build stonehenge. Actually you can build a settler and a warrior instead of stonehenge, I'd much rather be creative with 1 settler and 1 warrior than non-creative with stonehenge and no units. Creative is also sweet for conquering, you get your borders out asap, rushbuy a theatre and you have +5 culture lightning quick and that's only 20 turns until 100 culture which is 2 border expansions.

Creative starts you off with a big culture border lead, and once you have a good lead it is very easy to keep it and push into enemy territory via cultural borders.

Heck with Creative on I am reminded of Civ3 type strategies where I plant cities for the sole purpose of depriving the AI of a crucial resource like horses or iron, with creative you will always have the best borders and always snag that resource.

[Ecthy]

The thread creator's nickname is pretty much a ripoff off certain poster's past DL activities.