Voted for France. Ancien Régime + two decent UUs makes for a pretty versatile Civ. I think they're one of the few who I've managed to win every victory type with.
a new poll after all the patches and DLC .
I presume you didn't get the Korean DLC!
Whoops i forgot about that one! my bad... Lets hope Mr.Mod fixes this !
hmm seems lots of people are picking Babylon? care to tell us why?
Well im having a hard time of picking what to play with: France - China - Babylon. Any help would be appreciated .
Thanks a lot for your input! but i forgot to mention Greece and Rome? how are these two?Those are all pretty powerful civilizations. I already covered Babylon so here are my thoughts on the rest.
China has a three pretty decent uniques. Paper maker is a nice upgrade to library and you want to build it in every city. Cho-ko-nu is a pretty nice ranged unit but it becomes obsolete relatively quickly and it upgrades to riflemen which means its ranged promotions become useless. Upgrading cho-ko-nus to riflemen keeps their 2 attacks per turn promotion though so it is not all that bad. Finally there is the unique ability which enhances your great generals which is another pretty decent ability. Also you get more great generals and you can use the extras for golden ages which is nice. Obviously China is a good warmonger civ but it does not mean you need to rush someone right out of the gate. Just wait for the right time to strike and take advantage of your chokus and great generals.
France has an excellent UA with its extra culture and you can get early social policies much faster than the rest. Liberty is a good choice for rapid expanding with every city producing 3 culture per turn right after the founding. UUs are decent but not that crucial. Foreign legion gives a nice boost for your melee units in the late game but it does not matter that much for the major part of the game. Musketeers look good on the paper but you have to remember that you can't upgrade earlier units to musketeers so you have to hard build them. Given that next tier (riflemen) comes so soon after gunpowder musketeer do not usually see much play. Frances main advantage is to abuse super fast social policies which may snowball into a major advantage later in the game.
Both France and Babylon have powerful early game advantages (academy + bowmen and extra culture) so getting too used to them can "spoil" you and make other civs seem too weak. I think China is a good civ for a beginner and can help you better learn the game.
Thanks a lot for your input! but i forgot to mention Greece and Rome? how are these two?
I think they both are pretty average civilizations.
Rome can be powerful but they depend so much on iron that if you don't have any iron deposits near you when you discover iron working you might as well start a new game. With a good Rome start you can wipe out your neighbours with legions/ballistas and later take advantage of their UA for a peaceful building game. I personally don't like Rome that much but each to their own.
Greece was once the best civilization before it was nerfed to oblivion with patches. Now it has 2 early units which are not that good at taking cities but maybe can be used for super early all in rush for the enemy capital. Greece's UA is decent if you want to make allies with a lot of city states but obviously useless otherwise. It may be fun to take full Patronage social policy tree with Greece and ally with every city state in the map but that is hardly optimal play nowadays.