No messin' around, Who's the BEST leader?

[Ijuin]

Oh yes, in the player's hands, Lal completely dominates the Planetary Council. With his double votes, relaxed population caps, and free Talents, Lal can get enough population to elect himself Planetary Governor even if all the other nations are against him once he has the Secret Project that gives him an extra 50% votes. One time I managed to elect myself Supreme Leader (3/4 of population votes) while ALL of the other factions were voting for Zhakarov.

[NTJedi]

Well it appears Catherine is the most popular as being the most powerful... Gandhi and Caesar being second.

[Blaupanzer]

Catherine is easily the most effective AI civ in single player. Big, well-armed empires with a tight race in techs AND everybody likes her. She is more fun as an opponent than she would be to play I suspect.

I have been playing as Hatshepsut lately and like the creative/spiritual combo. When I go random, the only one I throw away is Frederick -- I cannot figure out how to play those traits/late unit as a winning combo.

[CarnalCanaan]

Fredrick is a culture-whore, pure and simple. Build lots of theaters, get big time Great Artists and just overwhelm your enemies' pathetic cultural output. He is the ONLY leader that can beat Hatsepshut at her own game.

The Panzer is really only useful if you are behind in tech, because its advantage is against other Armor-type units--that is, tanks--so if you beeline for it you simply have an awesome unit that can't take advantage of it's unique capability. In other words, if you fall behind in tech as Frederick, it doesn't matter as much in the late game.

If you can find marble and/or stone as Frederick, you've got the game.

[Dis]

I know the Indians can be good in the hands of a human player, but the Indians (asoka primarily) gets their ass raped every single game without fail.

I'm convinced they are the worst civ to play.

[Nikolai]

Asoka has been the AI world leader several times when I have played.

[uberfish]

Elizabeth - Her traits are always useful to give you more research, and tech is still king. Or queen in this case, I guess! Plus the redcoat is the Praetorian of its age, nothing beats it or even breaks even.

I didn't consider the aggressive/early UU leaders as 'no contact until Optics/Astronomy' and 'no resource to build your UU' happen quite a bit.

[couerdelion]

Hmm.. well I tend to rate Financial, Philosophical and Organised as the strongest traits with the latter probably weakest because it sort of requires a large expansive empire to be a strong trait. Spiritual sits a little below these three.

Very surprised with the poll numbers of Cathy. While Creative is not a bad trait, you can easily get cheap culture in other ways – chopping an early Theatre once you have Drama while Spiritual can run four turns with on Caste System to get the initial border expansion. Then there’s religion to get the initial expansion (only half the time as creative bonus but with extra gold/production bonuses) and if you happen to have Sistine Chapel, any specialist run in a captured city will give you the same bonus as Creative. For me it’s a second tier trait.

[Ming]

Like many traits, there are other ways to gain similar effects... But I kind of like creative in the early part of the game. No need to waste early builds in the city on culture oriented projects. When you are trying to grab some of the key resourses (or maintain them), creative can be a good thing.

Later in the game... yeah... who cares

[padillah]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Hmm.. well I tend to rate Financial, Philosophical and Organised as the strongest traits with the latter probably weakest because it sort of requires a large expansive empire to be a strong trait. Spiritual sits a little below these three.

Very surprised with the poll numbers of Cathy. While Creative is not a bad trait, you can easily get cheap culture in other ways – chopping an early Theatre once you have Drama while Spiritual can run four turns with on Caste System to get the initial border expansion.

I don't know how "early" you get theatres but by that time my smallest city has 6000-8000 culture and is still on it's way up!

With Creative yoor initial border expansion happens in 3500BC, not 1100AD.

I have always dominated the culture in any game I've played... of course, it goes without saying, I've never won once.

But I refuse to admit I'm doing something wrong. That would be like admitting defeat, and I am not defeated.

Tom P.

[Azuarc]

Pad...6000-8000 culture by the time you get to Drama? Do you take 3000 turns to get there? =p

Maybe my culture victory game sucks, but it seems like I don't have a decent third city for culture - meaning over 5000 - until much later.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Azuarc
Pad...6000-8000 culture by the time you get to Drama? Do you take 3000 turns to get there? =p

Note that I said smallest city.

And I guess I do tend to down-play Drama cause I have tons of culture without.

Now that I think about it I should probably stop doing that. I think I need to pick a theme for my game and try and follow the theme, if I'm going for culture I should GO FOR CULTURE. Hmm, thanks for that.

As bad as I am I'll take advice where ever I can find it.

Tom P.

[Azuarc]

So...if you have 10 cities, they ALL have that much culture?

[padillah]

Originally posted by Azuarc
So...if you have 10 cities, they ALL have that much culture?

No, most all of them have more. My capitol can hae as much as 25000 by then.

Like I said, I'm a culture whore, I'm just not good at it.

Tom P.

[Qwertqwert]

How do you get that much culture? Please explain how that's done. You must be on Marathon but still, how do you do it?