What is the best "worst" civ in the game?

Nah, the best culture civ, I'd say is Persia with Egypt as a close second. This is not counting civs that have science bonuses, ala Korea, Babylon, and Mayans.

How in the world is Persia particularly good at culture victory? The only non-combat bonuses they get are longer golden ages and more happiness from banks.

And the only real benefit Egypt has is faster wonder production...but what wonders are you going to get with Egypt that you can't get otherwise? Even if you got one "extra" wonder what would it even be to actual help a cultural victory more than the three I mentioned?
 
How in the world is Persia particularly good at culture victory? The only non-combat bonuses they get are longer golden ages and more happiness from banks.

And the only real benefit Egypt has is faster wonder production...but what wonders are you going to get with Egypt that you can't get otherwise? Even if you got one "extra" wonder what would it even be to actual help a cultural victory more than the three I mentioned?

Persia is fantastic at culture victories. I've never won a peaceful culture victory since BNW, but with Persia, it is crazy how good they are with going that victory.
 
...you didn't actually list a single benefit Persia gives for a cultural victory. Why are they crazy good?

I mean, I could just as accurately claim that the Huns are fantastic at cultural victories. Persia might have 3 more happiness per city but Attila has more production and can produce culture buildings much faster earlier on to leap ahead!
 
...you didn't actually list a single benefit Persia gives for a cultural victory. Why are they crazy good?

I mean, I could just as accurately claim that the Huns are fantastic at cultural victories. Persia might have 3 more happiness per city but Attila has more production and can produce culture buildings much faster earlier on to leap ahead!

culture victories tend to be won with military and musicians in my games and much less with the raw culture. I would build up an empire and attack the civ that builds Chitzen Itza while going freedom. That is endless golden ages. That is artillery that can move, setup, and fire on the same turn. That is every unit as a +1 movement. I've had an emperor game where I had a golden age last from turn like 130 to literally the end of the game. That is 20% more production, 20% more gold, 20% more culture, and 1 extra movement. That is insanely powerful, especially because culture is used to fill up the trees but (late game) tourism tends to win the culture victories.

I consider Persia a top 5 civ. I'm trying to find another that isn't as good as them honestly, that I could still use well.
 
culture victories tend to be won with military and musicians in my games and much less with the raw culture.

Then you could/should argue that Attila or Ghengis are both amazing because you can clear your section of the map (or whole continent) and get an amazing lead with tons of museum/landmarks/etc for end-game tourism. As soon as you start taking cities and/or wiping cultural leaders out then you're no longer talking about a pure cultural victory.

I mean, you might as well argue that England is the best cultural civ on an archipelago map because you can capture every capital and thus 90% of wonders with Ships of the Line. Completely cripple Civs and make it super easy to bust through their culture with Tourism.
 
How in the world is Persia particularly good at culture victory? The only non-combat bonuses they get are longer golden ages and more happiness from banks.

And the only real benefit Egypt has is faster wonder production...but what wonders are you going to get with Egypt that you can't get otherwise? Even if you got one "extra" wonder what would it even be to actual help a cultural victory more than the three I mentioned?

Golden ages=+20% more culture, that equals more policies, allowing you to get Aesthetics sooner, more production and gold allowing faster building of relevant cultural stuff and bribing valuable CS.

Egypt is not just about winning the wonder race, it's about freeing that production for other things (or more wonders). For example, early on...for a time it takes a different civilization to produce Stonehenge, Egypt will do the same and pop an extra scout.
 
OP, I want to suggest Morocco or Portugal. Both UA are mostly about gold, which is always useful, but not strong VC bias. Both offer a unique terrain improvements, so you will be doing something different with them.
 
Craigmak, are you by any chance talking about multiplayer? That is a single player Deity tier list if I understand it correctly. Venice is pretty strong in SP.

CraigMak has made it clear in the past he plays multiplayer exclusively. The fact the first sentence in the deity tier list OP explicitly states it is talking about single player completely invalidates any multiplayer arguments such as how terrible Venice is.
 
CraigMak has made it clear in the past he plays multiplayer exclusively. The fact the first sentence in the deity tier list OP explicitly states it is talking about single player completely invalidates any multiplayer arguments such as how terrible Venice is.

Yes, my opinions on the matter are biased towards multiplayer where you have to be weary of people thinking and using reason to defeat you. A good player will just pillage all of Venice's trade routes and render them floundering.

Multiplayer favors civs with strong special units and science bonuses as well as the ability to grow rapidly and/or get high production.

Civs with gimmicky abilities like Venice get destroyed. You simply can't outproduce a 4 city civ that's attacking you with 1 city making units and a fist full of cash to buy a few.
 
I dunno how they ranked Japan but it was considered one of the worse civs after GnK came out. They are one of my favorite ones to play, even with the new changes. They aren't OP except for the UA but that UA is really fun to war with.
 
I dunno how they ranked Japan but it was considered one of the worse civs after GnK came out. They are one of my favorite ones to play, even with the new changes. They aren't OP except for the UA but that UA is really fun to war with.

Ive used japan uu nicely. Units with bushido works so well against nuclear attacks.
 
Ive used japan uu nicely. Units with bushido works so well against nuclear attacks.

i like the new samurai too. i keep one around always for late game puppet luxes for long after their combat use. zero is still meh to me but the samurai i like.
 
I would say Polynesia and Carthage are the best worst civs because the resulting affects from their benefits are difficult to enumerate and fully quantify. In my experience with them, I can usually get much more mileage than even I expect knowing this.

Maybe Sweden too, they have a weird play style though, which I'm not completely familiar with, but it seems as though they have some good unacknowledged potential.
 
For the way you asked this question, i'd have to answer Spain.

I play confidently at immortal, the more so if it's a civ that can follow a certain strategy easily. But Spain is the odd one out of all civs, it's bonus completly depending on luck or circumstances. And yet, this makes them very appealing to me whenever i wanna have a game just for fun. it's always a surprize what you are going to get, usually i manage to atleast settle one natural wonder with Spain, but often the specific wonder and time you get it can get it can have such an inpact on the game that it kinda asks for very circumstancial strategy's. With other words, Spain can be played in a lot of different ways depending on what happens, finding the production boost of Salomon's first might set you up for early conquest or say early wonder spaming. Fountain of youth will motivate you to quickly set up a large empire withough needing much workers in the expansion phase to keep control of the happyness, or say allow you to plant city's on very productive spots withought needing to care about the luxury's. Finding Mount Sinai can send you on diplo win route where you try to dominate with faith early.

Spain is just fun, it's strategy's usually highly circumstancial beyond the point of simply building sufficient scouts at start. The effects of double gains on natural wonders + double gain on faith from natural wonders is often somewhat OP but it takes addapted strategy's to make the most out of it, the more so because you lack advantage's beyond that.
 
For the way you asked this question, i'd have to answer Spain.

I play confidently at immortal, the more so if it's a civ that can follow a certain strategy easily. But Spain is the odd one out of all civs, it's bonus completly depending on luck or circumstances. And yet, this makes them very appealing to me whenever i wanna have a game just for fun. it's always a surprize what you are going to get, usually i manage to atleast settle one natural wonder with Spain, but often the specific wonder and time you get it can get it can have such an inpact on the game that it kinda asks for very circumstancial strategy's. With other words, Spain can be played in a lot of different ways depending on what happens, finding the production boost of Salomon's first might set you up for early conquest or say early wonder spaming. Fountain of youth will motivate you to quickly set up a large empire withough needing much workers in the expansion phase to keep control of the happyness, or say allow you to plant city's on very productive spots withought needing to care about the luxury's. Finding Mount Sinai can send you on diplo win route where you try to dominate with faith early.

Spain is just fun, it's strategy's usually highly circumstancial beyond the point of simply building sufficient scouts at start. The effects of double gains on natural wonders + double gain on faith from natural wonders is often somewhat OP but it takes addapted strategy's to make the most out of it, the more so because you lack advantage's beyond that.

Spain relies on natural wonders so much that when there aren't that many wonders around, Spain's ua loses its uniqueness. But when there's a natural wonder around then Spain can do some good starts.
 
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