Share your thoughts on each Civ Unique strengths

[rexco]

In terms of city state civs:
Siam>Greece.
I would much rather get extra culture and food than have a slower decay. Not comparable IMO.

Also, we can all agree that Suleiman is the worst.

 

[Ahriman]

Also, we can all agree that Suleiman is the worst.

Only if you ignore his fantastic UUs.
I think Suleiman is superior to Washington in terms of civ power.

 

[Thalassicus]

The irony about Washington's unique unit is the penalty far outweighs the +1 movement in rough terrain, by removing the movement bonuses from roads or railroads. I think it's one of the only unique units that has such a steep penalty, and to top it off you can't upgrade to it, and Riflemen are just 2 techs later.

 

[rune42]

Arabia's Bazaar looks amazing on paper, until you realize that on higher difficulty levels, you'll never have enough military power to dissuade the AI from attacking you. Thus, you'll end up having to take down one AI after another, making the Bazaar worthless by the time you gain access to it.

 

[Druin]

Arabia's Bazaar looks amazing on paper, until you realize that on higher difficulty levels, you'll never have enough military power to dissuade the AI from attacking you. Thus, you'll end up having to take down one AI after another, making the Bazaar worthless by the time you gain access to it.

It is possible to defend against AI assaults, without taking the war to them, sue for peace and reap a nice gold reward while "peacefully" teching to the future! You don't get diplo demerits for being declared on, so you can easily sell excess lux resources to civs that you just made peace with.

Not really the same "peaceful" empire type as Civ IV, but defending a mountain pass is a different war strategy than organizing a city razing squad.

 

[rune42]

Turns out, Aztec culture gain per kill does scale. They gain +3 for killing a warrior, +5 for swordsmen, +9 for longswordsmen, etc, etc. Pretty average, but not laughably bad as I once thought. Combined with their other bonuses, theyre pretty well-rounded. Only problem with them is that I need to set rainfall to wet when generating a map to start in a region with jungles.

 

[Syiss_]

Turns out, Aztec culture gain per kill does scale. They gain +3 for killing a warrior, +5 for swordsmen, +9 for longswordsmen, etc, etc. Pretty average, but not laughably bad as I once thought. Combined with their other bonuses, theyre pretty well-rounded. Only problem with them is that I need to set rainfall to wet when generating a map to start in a region with jungles.

I wonder how plausible it would be to win a culture victory off staying constantly at war with multiple civs in deity, just letting them throw units at you non stop (you would of course need some defensible choke points). Seeing some pics people have posted about how many units deity AI builds, it almost seems like it could work.

 

[Zenstrive]

Just got a domination victory using Arab on Prince, Continents. Got big empire on one and half continent. Make cities connected by road, said cities generate nothing but wealth until they reach 6 in size. Able to have 400+ gold when on Golden Age. Got lotsa Golden age from getting lotsa great generals and great artists. Picked pious, patronage, and commerce. Pious able to reduce the unhappiness. Patronage makes city states manageable. Nurtured maritime and military city states earlier, and cultural ones in the last leg. I buy their allegiances during golden ages.

In the end is only me and Georgie. I declared war on him once I got my stealth bomber. Golden ages make me able to buy four Big Daddy Missile Spamming Laser Bots that simply trounces their puny infantries and cities. Georgie bent over and I got domination.

Got Augustus Caesar level.

Not bad for a civilization everyone thinks puny, eh?

The secret? Crossbow after two ruins and warrior and archer spammings. And oh, Arab commerce per city bonus.

 

[delra]

Songhai seems excellent all around. Huge culture in all cities thanks to UB, huge account thanks to farming Barbs with Cavalry, great unique knights who are expert city plunderers, finally if everything else fails you can run to boats and sail away because your units can actually defend at sea so no barb galley can stop your invasion.

I don't think they are stronger than Greece or China - but they aren't far behind.

 

[Dai]

Thoughts on the civs I've played at least once. For reference, I play on the medium difficulty settings - I'm just not that good - and am attempting to adjust my impressions of strength for the difficulty.

Iroquois - The UA is sort of marginal-feeling, even if you're in a heavily forested area. (And you typically will be because the game attempts to start you in one.) It's probably actually pretty decent, since it saves you a few gold a turn, but the movement aspect of it is pretty unimpressive-feeling. The UU is only very marginally better than what it replaces. The Longhouse is decent, allowing you to get 1/2/2 out of forest tiles (with a trading post). Overall the package seems pretty weak, but I like that the bonuses are focused in a way that encourages approaching the game a little differently.

India - Hot dang. The reduction in unhappiness from size is so much larger than the increase from number of cities that I was able to basically blow off happiness improvements and was still regularly getting happiness golden ages. You don't have to twist your normal play mode at all to get a huge benefit from the UA, unless your normal play mode is "tons of size two cities" or something. A "normal" empire with a fair number of cities of different sizes still is massively more happy as India. The UB is pretty nice (I was only on Prince this game, so defending myself was less of a priority, but post-flight the buildings are all upside), although I never used the unique unit.

China - Other people have said this, but the great general bonus is just silly powerful. Even if you only engage in a moderate amount of conflict, the extra number of them you get is quite noticeable, and as other people have said, the extra power makes it as though all your units are UU. Paper maker is an amazing unique building as well, taking something you already want to build and making it give you three gold instead of costing one. Cho-Ko-Nu are okay; one thing I appreciated about them that I hadn't thought about was the ability of a single Cho-Ko-Nu to "mop up" multiple heavily injured enemy units in a single turn. I believe China to be a top flight Civ.

Ottoman - I took the Ottomans for a spin (on a continents map, no less) precisely because their UA is so narrow. Not only is it narrow, however, but even when it's good, it's not that good. If you can steal galleys, you definitionally have better boats available. I managed to get four of them quite early, but (and some of this was the properties of my map, which had no shallow channel between the continents), having a navy of that size was mostly just draining my resources, and the galleys were just worse than the triremes I built to capture them. After a while, I stopped trying, since the galleys were worth more sunk as XP than as my own ships. The ability is a lot of fun, but "large early navy" is of only moderate utility. I think that if I had been much more aggressive or on an archipelago map, I would have appreciated them more. Janissary is an above-average unique unit. Sipahi isn't, although I only built one, and mostly for its own sake.

Russia - Opinions seem mixed on Russia, and I can see why. I actually got fairly lucky with having strategic resources in my territory, so I was able to reap the production bonuses, which were more significant early on, especially coupled with the game's attempts to start you near tundra, which indirectly dumps you near more plains. The doubled available Horses/Iron/Uranium was never relevant even though I went out of my way to try to take advantage. I can see iron being relevant if you only get a little, but I had several and was prioritizing extra anyway because of the production bonus the tile gives. Krepost, like most "do something good to a building you want anyway" buildings, is a good - maybe great, although I ended up buying a lot of tiles that game anyway because I had a bunch of gold and was competing with the AI for them. Cossack is not a good UU.

Siam - Yeah, Maritime city states are probably too good right now because the AI won't wipe out ones you're benefiting from and the bonus is crazy disproportionate to the cost as the game progresses. Yeah, making that bonus much larger is stupid powerful, and tacking on a huge culture boost isn't slouchy at all. Siam is nuts. Even if you're only allied with one cultural or maritime city state, by mid game (and even earlier) the bonus blows that most civs get out of the water. The Wat, at +3 Culture, +1 Gold over the building it replaces (a good building to begin with), is a nice bonus on top of the best UA in the game for anyone who's not going all-in on conflict. (And maybe even for people who are -- growing your cities crazy fast and picking up social policies is good for any strategy.)

 

[aimlessgun]

Playing Iroquois atm, bonuses don't feel all that strong. I guess I didn't get enough forest in my start (wth river/floodplain so I took it...).

 

[aznin]

I usually play my first handful of games with completely random settings. Thanks to this, I can now report that the Ottoman's "barbarian corsair" special ability, especially on a Pangaea map, is UTTERLY USELESS.

That is all.

 

[CannonballJack]

I have to defend the Aztecs here. The UA really is mediocre - even with constant war and barb-hunting, you'd be lucky to get the equivalent of a free temple - but the UB is much better than it looks. The Floating Garden doesn't just make lake tiles more productive. It also has all the benefits of a Water Mill with less maintenance (1 g/turn instead of 2; it adds up!) and it boosts food production by 15%. That appears to include food from maritime city-states, so it scales.

The Jaguar isn't that great, but it keeps its laughably-specific jungle boost and its heal-on-kill abilities when upgraded, at least to Longswordsmen. I haven't tested whether you can make vampiric Mech Infantry yet, but if you can, it'll be nice for the endgame. The heal kicks in even when they're defending, so it's a nice hedge against attrition.

I'd still rather play Songhai for a warmonger, or Siam for a peacenik, but Aztecs aren't as bad as they look.

 

[Syiss_]

Russia - Opinions seem mixed on Russia, and I can see why. I actually got fairly lucky with having strategic resources in my territory, so I was able to reap the production bonuses, which were more significant early on, especially coupled with the game's attempts to start you near tundra, which indirectly dumps you near more plains. The doubled available Horses/Iron/Uranium was never relevant even though I went out of my way to try to take advantage. I can see iron being relevant if you only get a little, but I had several and was prioritizing extra anyway because of the production bonus the tile gives. Krepost, like most "do something good to a building you want anyway" buildings, is a good - maybe great, although I ended up buying a lot of tiles that game anyway because I had a bunch of gold and was competing with the AI for them. Cossack is not a good UU.

The double horse/iron is rarely going to be useful for the purpose of fielding a military except in the rare instances where you really do get unlucky and there is very little iron or horses. What you can do with it is use the extras to sell off to AI's for their gold. This may be considered cheesy by some, since the AI for the most part wont take advantage of the extra resources you sell them, so make your own judgment on whether or not you are okay with it. I do agree that the extra production does come in very handy in my few games with Russia, especially early on.

 

[Lyoncet]

I just tested out the gold boost from Trade Caravans on a Future-era quick start game. I grew Medina to size 8 and hooked it up to Mecca. Only got 11 gpt from the route, so no, it's just 1gpt extra, not +50% trade route yield. Not sure where whoever posted that got that idea. Even the manual, which granted has it wrong, only said +2 gold per trade route.

 

[CornPlanter]

Turns out, Aztec culture gain per kill does scale. They gain +3 for killing a warrior, +5 for swordsmen, +9 for longswordsmen, etc, etc. Pretty average, but not laughably bad as I once thought. Combined with their other bonuses, theyre pretty well-rounded. Only problem with them is that I need to set rainfall to wet when generating a map to start in a region with jungles.

I tell you what. After I finished the game with Aztecs, I started a new one with Rome and I did feel like I'm missing something, in terms of culture. Aztec special ability definitely helps. But it's not nowhere near overpowered compared to some other civs. Thats why I like them most so far

 

[Pizzaspy]

What do you guys think about the Iroquois? I personally find them kind of weak.

Sure, the movement through forests/jungles as if they were roads in your own territory allows you to quicky defend your borders if need be, but perhaps the bigger benefit is moving workers around your empire. You save a few turns, but maybe it's the Civ4 player in me... I can't seem to keep many forests around, they're usually chopped.

Also the Mohawk (sp?) Warrior unit is just basically a swordsman with the rough terrain promotion (except they don't get the bonus when fighting in hills that the promotion grants you). I think they still require iron, right?

And the longhouse... again, if you have a heavily forested city ...maybe. But even if you have 3-4 forested tiles (that you're WORKING actively??), you're still gaining +3 or +4 production a turn. Chopping those trees would give you 90 - 120 production immediately, it'd take quite a while to break even (and seriously, besides camps and logging camps, why are you working so many forested tiles??).


What are your opinions on the Iroquois?

Played these guys for the first time today...and IMO they are one of the worst. Their abilities aren't very useful and on top of that are very situational. Too bad because I like the idea of playing a native american civ.

 

[Vordeo]

Turns out, Aztec culture gain per kill does scale. They gain +3 for killing a warrior, +5 for swordsmen, +9 for longswordsmen, etc, etc. Pretty average, but not laughably bad as I once thought. Combined with their other bonuses, theyre pretty well-rounded. Only problem with them is that I need to set rainfall to wet when generating a map to start in a region with jungles.

Ah really? Good to hear, that. I played a quick game, teching to Medieval ASAP just to find out if those scaled, didn't think to check if they gave you increased culture against upgraded enemies. I take back whatever I said about them then, sounds good.

The Floating Garden doesn't just make lake tiles more productive. It also has all the benefits of a Water Mill with less maintenance (1 g/turn instead of 2; it adds up!) and it boosts food production by 15%. That appears to include food from maritime city-states, so it scales.

Yeah, I've read on here that the Aztecs just might be the best choice if you want an empire with few cities and high pops, thanks solely to the excellent UB. Could be a decent culture win, even though their UA still isn't too good.

 

[Vordeo]

Incorrect. It still has 1 maintenance.
Still, it's 5 gold by the time you get a market in the city too, increasing again with bank etc.

Huh, I remember them being free. I stand corrected. Regardless, still a very good building.

I actually think it needs to be toned down a bit, somewhat unbalanced coupled with their already very powerful UA and UU - they have the best complete 'set' of uniques in the game imo.

Agreed. When the Chu-ko-nu is probably their worst unique, you know the civ is bloody good.

Just got a domination victory using Arab on Prince, Continents. Got big empire on one and half continent. Make cities connected by road, said cities generate nothing but wealth until they reach 6 in size. Able to have 400+ gold when on Golden Age.

Wait, I was under the impression that the Arab UA didn't scale? Trade routes already give a significant amount of gold on their own, one extra gpt for each city won't do much.

The secret? Crossbow after two ruins and warrior and archer spammings. And oh, Arab commerce per city bonus.

Uh, that might've helped. Alot.

 

[aimlessgun]

I wonder how plausible it would be to win a culture victory off staying constantly at war with multiple civs in deity, just letting them throw units at you non stop (you would of course need some defensible choke points). Seeing some pics people have posted about how many units deity AI builds, it almost seems like it could work.

I'm going to try this if my "Alamo" style game with China doesn't work out. Running it on Highlands mapscript. If China doesn't do the trick though, doubt the Aztecs will, considering how ridiculous China is so far.