I know what ya mean actually, +xp point civics r not the most useful but can give you an advantage, especially if your spiritual and able to switch back and forth. On the war front I thought of a tip I found out about the hard way!! When fighting someone about equal to you, always have 3 or 4 City Defenders in your stack, so when you finally sack that stubborn city, you'll have a few units which can effectively defend it and ideally you'll need them to be at lvl 3 City Defense. I destroyed a primary stack of Alexanders which was defending a city once and his secondary stack came along and crippled my primary stack, I reloaded, stuck a few City Defenders in there and generally made my stack larger and he didn't attack. I also pulled everything out of that city and moved to a hill, he retook the city, which now had 0 cultural defense and I went from the hill back into the city, denying his stack any kind of cover bonus and no fortification bonus.
Sax.