What does Creative do?

Ive read somewhere that crativity gives you a chance to get a free random technology, but im not sure how it works exactly luck is wierd ... i played about 30 games so far and never had any pirates, prison breakouts, i league, fundamentalist or whatever ... and i alywas picked luck in abilities

I've looked in the Invasion Tactics .xml file and for each entry there is a line called "luck factor" or something, so I'm guessing that "lucky" civs either suceed in invasions more often, or possibly are less likely to damage improvements.

Lucky seems to cause the random events to more often be in your favor, such as finding Ranger Class ships. Although, even without "Lucky" checked, you still have a chance of these events happening. MaverickMW is also correct that "Lucky" also helps in invasions and maybe even space battles. Your luck might affect the advantage role when invading/defending a planet, or maybe it helps determine who shoots first, I don't know, but it does seem to help.

As for Creative, in my opinion, it does absolutely nothing. It may do something, it may not, but I have yet to have it actually be benficial. I was originally thinking that it would give you the chance of being able to research some of those special techs, such as "Subspace Rebounder", without having to be aligned with good, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Also, even though you steal techs not related to your alignment, you still don't get to actually use them. Yes, it's a bummer...

I thought in the last GalCiv "Creative" meant you were more likely to find 25% of a technology when you went over an anomaly. I would even switch to Battleship Technology every time I went over an anomaly to try to get 25% of that hugely expensive tech. In this one neither Creative or Luck seem to do anything. I have never had a lucky event yet, unless you count the prison breakout, even playing with Universalist Altarians. I expect Luck to give me more as well as swingier random events so I can have a wild ride if I want one, but I'm not seeing that happen.

Being creative does help you randomly get a tech for free, from what iv had its the next tech in line from what you research and it happens just as you research that tech, I was researching mass drivers III and instantly got mass driver IV upon completion. I had this happen to a few more techs as well so i do assume thats creativity and not just random. As for luck I know it helps when the sides are close in a planetary invasion and other than that I have no idea

Being creative does help you randomly get a tech for free, from what iv had its the next tech in line from what you research and it happens just as you research that tech, I was researching mass drivers III and instantly got mass driver IV upon completion. I had this happen to a few more techs as well so i do assume thats creativity and not just random. As for luck I know it helps when the sides are close in a planetary invasion and other than that I have no idea

You sure you are getting the next tech not because of research points spending overflow carrying over? e.g. if you need 30 RP for Xeno Comm, and 25 RP for Univ Translator, if you spend 55 RP or more in one round, you can get both techs at once.

e.g. if you need 30 RP for Xeno Comm, and 25 RP for Univ Translator, if you spend 55 RP or more in one round, you can get both techs at once.

Which I love, by the way. In the first GC I went F4-F6 F4-F6 every single time until I had absolutely no waste overflow. Now I can just go full steam ahead unless I don't want to go any farther in that research branch.

Being creative does help you randomly get a tech for free, from what iv had its the next tech in line from what you research and it happens just as you research that tech, I was researching mass drivers III and instantly got mass driver IV upon completion. I had this happen to a few more techs as well so i do assume thats creativity and not just random. As for luck I know it helps when the sides are close in a planetary invasion and other than that I have no idea

I'd always assumed this was due to over-spend, but now you mention it, this happened in the game where I had the Creative ability...

You sure you are getting the next tech not because of research points spending overflow carrying over?

Also it could be that when you conquered one of your enemy's planets you got a tech in wich you havent researched the previous one to that, e.g. lets say you got Impulse Drive II from the planet, but you only have researched Ion Drive, when you research Impulse Drive I , you will automatically get the next 1 wich is Impulse Drive II.


Monc34

I don't know about creative.. however in games where i had ALOT of luck.. I found 10 "LUCKY RANGER" Ships. Not all at once mind you.. but I was still glad ot get the ships. It was funny to hear the terrians say.. HEY Our attacking you that was just a joke.. Haha I'm guessing that because i had the high luck i found ALOT of the lucky ranger ships..
And i also found ALot of good bonuses in anomolys.

I play with the Creative ability as well, and I get free techs from time to time so I think yes that's how it works (I think it even states it in the description?)

I play with the Creative ability as well, and I get free techs from time to time so I think yes that's how it works (I think it even states it in the description?)

Same hear My custom race has both luck and creativity and I find that at least with lower end techs I will often get a 2 for 1 and for higher its seem to be like finding that 25% database anomalie.

As for luck how this the Dregin decide to conquer me there is now way I can take defend my self from extreme superiority in ship and techs. Then a ramdon event pops saying I found a precursors corvettes on such an such planet.

This turns out to be 67 corvettes in the perfect location to ambush the Dregin.

After the dust settled I had lost every corvette (good thing since I went -200BC soon as I found them) and the Dregin were acting like a little boy caught raiding the cookie jar.

If you have the research ability you can get 4-5 in a single turn. Once you get a dozen or so NLC's that is quite common.
It is not a luck factor, it is research overflow.

Being creative does help you randomly get a tech for free, from what iv had its the next tech in line from what you research and it happens just as you research that tech, I was researching mass drivers III and instantly got mass driver IV upon completion

Happened to me too, when u complete research on 1 tech, gives u next 1 for free

In my current game, I have 4 class 18+ planets that have only NLCs. ONLY NLCs, nothing except for those.
So one turn I click to research Beam Weapon Theory and BAM! Goes all the way to Phasors III. Same thing happened with missles and cannons(the tech before Photonic Torps and Mass Driver II). Luck and Creativity have nothing to do with it.
I played an Altarian game once with Luck, and recieved 5 Precursor Corvettes after mabe a dozen turns. I wish I stayed with that game to see what Luck does, but it was a Gigantic map, and after 20 or so turns on that, it takes about 2 minutes to end the turn on my machine.
As for Creativity, I think the devs made it work exactly as it's described, a chance at making techs unavailable to other races like the galactic wonders. Then, they saw it to be too unbalancing, and just threw it out.

Hi!

So, after reading this thread and the one I started, I don't know what Lucky and Creative do.

Anecdote: Luck gives free ships as random event.

The multiple techs for creative seems to be ordinary research overflow.

*slow grin* Unless some gave developer decides to grant us a clue, I think I'll put my racial build points elsewhere... and create my own luck.

Anyway,

Ken

I agree Ken Kofman...

I don't like black box systems, when you don't know anything, but just feel how something works (while usually being totaly wrong).

Luck is huge, totally worth the point. Everything from better anomaly finds to Lucky Rangers and the Precursor Corvettes, to a small bonus in combat, and lets not forget the increased chance of avoiding bad random events and having good ones occur to you!! It is sooo totally worth that one point.

Creative, on the other hand, seems to either not be working or not have much of an impact compared to the point you spend on it.

Luck is worth the point, i.e. its not wasted. Creativity on the other hand... you should probably avoid putting points into this until a patch that specifically mentions a change.

hmm, yea, in the demo when I picked lucky, I seemed to have more planet events when I colonize planets.

I like to play with Human with 30% social production. (3 pts.)

Maybe I'll try one with 20% social prod and 1point in Luck instead (also 3 pts.)

Having had to back up once and research the crap out of missile defense I was glad I had creativity and had already had advanced research skills.

First time I got MD Theory all the way to ECM2 in one turn, one blast. Defintely can be a time saver for researching weaker areas in the mid game cycle.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

In a couple of games I was announced I had discovered a tech named Ultradrive that made all my ships go 50% faster. Maybe creative allows you to discover these awesome techs you wouldn't discover if you didn't spend a point in it?

I had Ultradrive in my last game. It's not a research, it's a galactic event. Constructors with 140 moves... ah, the memories.
No, I did not have Creative.

As for gaoing multiple techs in single turn, that has nothing with Creative, it's just that techs are so cheap you can didcover more then one with 1turn science spending.