Creative trait - needing a boost?

[Mujadaddy]

I "cannot" play without Creative. It might only be in the middle of the pack, but I have to have it... and half-price Theaters & colosseums rule, as well...

[Enigma_Nova]

When playing as Bismarck, my greatest problem is always Culture, so having extra Culture is potentially a good thing.
You people make good points about Industrial being weak just for the Wonders - but it also allows Cheap forges and Cheap Engineer specialists.

And for those who think Financial is an 'always on' trait - no, you have to first build +2 gold tiles then work them. That comes at a price of lower hammers and/or food (specialists) compared to other improvements.

[Saurus]

I'm mostly playing on Pangea and have noted that the fight for the limited space available on those maps is intense throughout a large potion of the game! Creative really is an intresting choise here. There are in fact instances where I have been compleatly "surrounded" by the time I have barely founded my second city. The extra culture is vital for expansion during maps with limited space.

[Handel]

Creative is extremely important for short games on small maps. But for a long games it is a wasted trait.

[Bluefusion]

I've rarely had a use for creative other than small pangea maps. But unless you're playing with 15 AIs on a small pangea (which I often do, and man is it fun) you'll find yourself wasting a trait. In later eras, culture becomes easy to produce should you need to, and the +2 becomes rather insignificant...

Expansive on later difficulty levels is very nice when you start running into unhealthiness at progressively lower populations. I also find financial very helpful on monarch, as a means to keep me up there with the AIs in scientific research.

Why don't people like Spiritual? I find the ability to shift civics in the same term very handy. Many times people have declared war on me, only to have me switch to nationhood and pump out units at nearby cities to reinforce the vulnerable one.

Plus I'm constantly shifting between theocracy, organized religion, and pacifism, just to make sure I get that +2 xp for my units, or that +25% building.

During the early turns, when you have to switch to slavery and bereaucracy (sp), you lose vital hammers without spiritual.

I guess the key point is that if you often just settle for one civic, you won't do yourself much good. But if you switch often for short-run reasons, you're in good shape.

[korn469]

I think creative should give you +1 culture for all cities and +1 culture for each specialist (including supers)

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Mujadaddy
I "cannot" play without Creative. It might only be in the middle of the pack, but I have to have it... and half-price Theaters & colosseums rule, as well...

Same for me.
Creative is extremly important for my early landgrabs. Especially as I normally tend to be rather peaceful and not try to take all other cities on my continent by force (with exceptions of course, if it seems to be strategically important).

After my first leader (Fredrick) I chose Catherine just for the reason, that she has creative as one of her traits (combined with financial, which IMHO is a better combination to create large empires than the creative/philosophical traits of Fredrick).

And as Riotamus said, especially the first turns, are important. Those turns where large parts of the map aren´t settled yet (not only on small maps, but also on the large/huge maps I prefer [along with epic setting]).

Creative can be very useful to play Civ as a builder.
Except of course, if you want to have more fights in the game because, as you lack the rapid border expansion you have with creative, the neighboring AI players are able to claim more territory for themselves.

[Crossfire]

I think Creative is just as important if you want to war monger. You can build cities and immediately start pumping troops. Playing harder difficulties, I can never get Stonehenge anyway so that forces me to build obelisks instead of troops. If I am city building then I am chopping more settlers or workers out instead of obelisks. Either way, I get more cities, faster with creative than without.

I have been playing as Louis just for his ability to have creative and build fast wonders.

[Kimbal]

I think we can all agree that financial is the best trait, it gives a huge boost to trade, and trade is essential.

Creative is not bad, good at the beginning and mostly if you don't go for stonhenge, it could be improved abit though.

Expansive is not bad at all, try playing at emperor+ without it, you won't cease to see the diseased face until the modern age

[Mujadaddy]

Hmm...I've never played with Financial... I wonder if it's any good...

[Blake]

Financial best trait? Bleh.

I have much fun with Asoka, Spiritual and Organized is a wonderful combo. Organized makes all the civics viable options. Spiritual is best for a "happening" game, like lots of conquest and expansion and war and stuff, as it happens Organized is also good for the games with lots of expansion and war.

I think the main thing is some traits just combine badly... like Industrial only really goes well with Financial, and the special case of Ghandi - fast workers and spiritual to use pyramids better. Combine Industrial with creative or aggressive (ie french) and it doesn't work well as you're too far behind in tech to build the darn wonders.

Aggressive/Organized is a great example of great synergy, Aggressive to conquer a large empire, Organized to make it profitable.

Granted Financial is probably the most universally useful trait. If you don't bother leveraging them the other traits can be as useful as tits on a bull. Organized is nearly as easy to use as long as you expand. And something like Spi/Philo are always going to give small "passive" bonuses with "normal" play, but you get 10x the advantage if you really (ab)use the trait. Financial otoh can't really be (ab)used to extra special advantage, but since all leaders have two traits that's okay, it combines well with all sorts of traits. You can play the second trait to the max while financial helps you out.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Bluefusion

Why don't people like Spiritual? I find the ability to shift civics in the same term very handy. Many times people have declared war on me, only to have me switch to nationhood and pump out units at nearby cities to reinforce the vulnerable one.

Plus I'm constantly shifting between theocracy, organized religion, and pacifism, just to make sure I get that +2 xp for my units, or that +25% building.

During the early turns, when you have to switch to slavery and bereaucracy (sp), you lose vital hammers without spiritual.

I guess the key point is that if you often just settle for one civic, you won't do yourself much good. But if you switch often for short-run reasons, you're in good shape.

When calculating raw numbers, the Spiritual trait in fact contributes a whole lot! In fact the spirtial palayer have some extra 20 turns of more production and research per game since other civilizations lose this to Anarchy.
The problem with this trait according to my experience is that there are no real strategies involved in using it and no strategy it directly supports.
You´ll get an "extra" turn here and there but it does not directly support any certain type of strategy as you'll still get more money out for beeing Financial, you'll still produce wonders quicker if you are Industrious and your army is still stronger if you have the Agressive trait and so on ...

If you have a certain goal in the game, and almost everyone does, then you probably should choose a trait that give you a more direct bonus to support your style of play.

[EscapedGoat]

Creative is the ultimate trait for peaceful builder types on small-standard maps. Sure, the culture is in itself quite insignificant, but the land grab and defense bonus is not!

With proper placing of your first cities, you might never have to wage an aggressive war for land and resources. It's a trait that goes extremely well with fast chopped settlers. Block the AI, get the good spots and the important resources, etc. The small AI cities will not ever catch up to the borders of a creative builder city, unless they get some wonders in that city.

[Diadem]

Spiritual is probably the best overall trait. It's useful in every game, regardless of precise circumstances.

And though you can't build a game around it, you can certainly optimize its effects. If I play a spiritual civ and some AI demands I adopt his favorite civic, I always accept. No anarchy, and 4 turns later I switch back again, without a penalty. That's an almost free point on diplomacy. You can switch to Theocracy and Vassalage while producing a lot of units, for example, then flawlessly switch back again. You can switch to Police State in the middle of a war without loosing time.

Say you are playing a normal game, finished in 1950. That's 340 turns total. You can easily spend 20 of those in anarchy. That's 5% of your total gold, beakers, production, everything, lost. I daresay that's a bigger bonus then a trait like financial gives you.

[Proteus_MST]

You might be correct, that you loose 5% of your income due to anarchy if you have around 20 revolutions during your game (i.e. without spiritual) but as all of the costs also don´t apply during anarchy, a revolution with 1 turn duration might not be the worst thing, especially if you´re running a deficit (for example due to rapid expansion of your realm (i.e. building much cities in short time).
Also (if you don´t switch to every civic as soon as it becomes available) xpiritual is more usefuul during the later stages of the game then early in the game, whereas financial is useful from the start on (and because from the beginning on it allows you to expand more rapidly without having a deficit you might end with a much larger empire [much more cities and therefore probably much more income and locations for production] than with spiritual)

Just my opinion, which is why I rather choose financial than spiritual (and think that spiritual is nice to have whereas financial is really useful [especially as I normally have less than 10 revolutions during my games])