Siam vs Greece: Battle of the Diplomatic Civilizations.

I thought the flashy title would attract people!

Honestly speaking who is the superior Diplomatic civ? I personally believe that Siam is better because of their elephant and UA. But I do see the greek UA being very powerful in the early game.

please add your opinions and debate!

My vote goes for Siam. Stronger benefits from certain city-states, which can help your empire grow and make more money. Elephants are relevant for quite a long time and can be spammed. Greece does have the upside of slow decay and no trespassing penalty.

Though, how fast will this topic turn into a "Who's the biggest jerk?" contest.

OR what if it becomes a repeat of the awesome "Ashurbanipal vs Kamehameha" topic. Now that was a fun read.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

My vote goes for Siam. Stronger benefits from certain city-states, which can help your empire grow and make more money. Elephants are relevant for quite a long time and can be spammed. Greece does have the upside of slow decay and no trespassing penalty.

Though, how fast will this topic turn into a "Who's the biggest jerk?" contest.

OR what if it becomes a repeat of the awesome "Ashurbanipal vs Kamehameha" topic. Now that was a fun read.

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yeah rammy is kind of a jerk

ally a city state he wanted? DENOUNCED
get a wonder he wanted? DENOUNCED
settle 20 tiles away from his city? DENOUNCED
fighting back when someone DOW's you? You must be a war monger! DENOUNCED

Ai uses Greece better, siam is better for players

I personally prefer playing as Greece.

Siam gets the 50% benefit, but I find that I can ally with twice as many city states with Greece and keep them as my ally much easier (If you spread your religion to them, have the patronage opener and the Greece UA, your influence with city states never decreases) so I basically get a 100% benefit instead, as well has having more military allies, and more diplomatic votes when WC gets to that stage.

I play on King though, very probably different at higher levels.

x2 allies > x1,5 resources
Greece > Siam

Greece is redundant in the face of Venice, Morocco and Portugal, all of which do its job infinitely better. Siam wins, no question.

Merciorum said:

Greece is redundant in the face of Venice, Morocco and Portugal, all of which do its job infinitely better. Siam wins, no question.

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How so? With Venice, Morocco and Portugal you still have to spend cash on them. With Greece, no cash has to be spent at all. Just spread your religion, take patronage opener and do a couple of quests, most of which you end up doing naturally anyway by gaining city state allies (Like quests where they look for a certain resource or the ones like 'Whoever makes the most faith').


I've seen people say this before, but honestly I really don't see how. With Greece, I can spend my money on units to beat Barb camps, or on infrastructure.

Siam has no direct benefits as a "diplomatic civ"; it's the better civ overall, because its UA is very powerful (probably the strongest of any vanilla civ) and Greece's UA is nearly irrelevant past the early game (even without Patronage it's hard to lose CS allies unless someone else actively bribes/coups the CS, in which case Greece's ability won't help at all; losing CSes through natural decay, or even having influence decay enough for another civ to supplant you, is a very uncommon occurrence in my experience).

Greece is nonetheless better in theory as a diplo civ, because its ability (marginal as it is) does affect influence with city-states, while Siam's does not. In practice, Siam's benefits act indirectly to boost CS relations, because it's more likely to win CS quests for culture particularly (and without rival civs focused on science or faith, its boosts to food and faith gifts give it an edge here as well).

rawrtrav said:

How so? With Venice, Morocco and Portugal you still have to spend cash on them. With Greece, no cash has to be spent at all. Just spread your religion, take patronage opener and do a couple of quests, most of which you end up doing naturally anyway by gaining city state allies (Like quests where they look for a certain resource or the ones like 'Whoever makes the most faith').


I've seen people say this before, but honestly I really don't see how. With Greece, I can spend my money on units to beat Barb camps, or on infrastructure.

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Right. As an aside, one needs to push global scouting so as to meet a greater percentage of CSs early, but I imagine rawrtrav considered that a given. The "cascade" of influence modifiers, not only for religion but also many other quests' reqs. instantly fulfilled, perpetually "carry" Alex for the rest of the game with a very minimal need in gold expenditure for the process.

His UA is a particularly deceptively strong one, by the math. It nets the effect, "You're never so much expending energy to climb hills, but rather only to crest them" for the manner of CS diplomacy, which nets profound bonuses across the board from the obvious resources and culture/growth/faith/happiness "points" to strategic military positioning via "hedge walling".

Adjuvant said:

Right. As an aside, one needs to push global scouting so as to meet a greater percentage of CSs early, but I imagine rawrtrav considered that a given. The "cascade" of influence modifiers, not only for religion but also many other quests' reqs. instantly fulfilled, perpetually "carry" Alex for the rest of the game with a very minimal need in gold expenditure for the process.

His UA is a particularly deceptively strong one, by the math. It nets the effect, "You're never so much expending energy to climb hills, but rather only to crest them" for the manner of CS diplomacy, which nets profound bonuses across the board from the obvious resources and culture/growth/faith/happiness "points" to strategic military positioning via "hedge walling".

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Has Greece's UA been changed? Last time I checked, it reduced influence decay - it doesn't actually give you any influence, so you don't save any money because you still have to get good relations with the CS to begin with - and as above, it's not usual to need to spend money to keep CSes friendly (unless to fulfill a quest, when you'll want to spend money on the CS for the extra influence anyway).

Right, but by the nature "less negative is positive", the UA does in fact "give you points in retrospect". Once set in motion it's easily maintained, with far less demand on monetary resource. It is efficient in a manner few other UAs can compare.

rawrtrav said:

How so? With Venice, Morocco and Portugal you still have to spend cash on them. With Greece, no cash has to be spent at all. Just spread your religion, take patronage opener and do a couple of quests, most of which you end up doing naturally anyway by gaining city state allies (Like quests where they look for a certain resource or the ones like 'Whoever makes the most faith').

I've seen people say this before, but honestly I really don't see how. With Greece, I can spend my money on units to beat Barb camps, or on infrastructure.

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Because with those (certainly as Venice, to a lesser extent with the other two), you will have so much money that every CS in the world will be your ally by the time you discover them all. And they will always remain your allies. And you will have a large surplus. Greece will never match that.

Adjuvant said:

Right, but by the nature "less negative is positive", the UA does in fact "give you points in retrospect". Once set in motion it's easily maintained, with far less demand on monetary resource. It is efficient in a manner few other UAs can compare.

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Yet I just finished a game as England and had no trouble maintaining CS alliances with little or no monetary output - due to diminishing returns, money is a poor way to obtain or maintain influence, and the excessive numbers of barbarians in BNW make it easy to repeatedly fulfil barbarian quests to keep early-game influence high. By mid-game, there are regular "highest amount of X" quests that tend to be self-sustaining.

All Greece really does is free up spies from CS duty so that you can assign them as diplomats.

Greece can keep an ally more often than Siam, but Siam can get more numbers from the benefits that CSs give. Greece is most likely to keep a CS while Siam is less likely to keep a CS but obtain more numbers from what that CS gives (culture, faith or whatever that CS gives).

Wow the voting is neck and neck. I went with Greece for one reason. The question is "who is the superior diplomatic civ?" Siam's UA is great but Greece has a clear advantage for maintaining more CS allies for less money. I think Siam is better overall but Greece is the easy button for Diplo Vics. Siam's UA is strong and allows them to get more out of their allies but Greece can and will have more allies for very little effort.

Not sure why there's all the discussion about other civs since the poll only refers to those two.

PhilBowles said:

Yet I just finished a game as England and had no trouble maintaining CS alliances with little or no monetary output - due to diminishing returns, money is a poor way to obtain or maintain influence, and the excessive numbers of barbarians in BNW make it easy to repeatedly fulfil barbarian quests to keep early-game influence high. By mid-game, there are regular "highest amount of X" quests that tend to be self-sustaining.

All Greece really does is free up spies from CS duty so that you can assign them as diplomats.

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Yes, but in any given game, for whatever reason, sometimes AI simply are not that competitive for city states. While I personally feel they should prioritize this more, the danger is their potential over-zealousness, were they in a position they did care to prioritize it in a given game. Simply, it's difficult to cite "a game" or even "4 such games" as substantial evidence " ( x ) can be achieved just as easily ".

I feel you're arguing qualifying circumstances and I'm pointing at an "across the board mechanism". Of course the two "meet", but in more examples, for example had you "been Alex instead of Liz in that instance" certainly the math would lend more efficiency, and maybe in that case, in an "imbalancing" disproportion.

Between these two civs? Greece, but only barely. Though the UUs aren't especially good (Hoplites aren't really all that bad, but they come too early to be of much use), the UA helps more with a Diplo victory than Siam's.
In all honesty? Sweden trumps both these civs hands-down.

cpm4001 said:

Sweden trumps both these civs hands-down.

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Who doesn't love mass gifting great persons prior to UN vote? It's 5 turns prior to it, or is it 4?

Though risky, it can be fun to use the Swedish UA to steal the host seat of the World Congress, but it may be a waste of GPs. And if anyone wises up, just dance magic dance them with your Caroleans. I suppose it's VERY understandable Sweden doesn't get +% GP generation for being allied with city states, that'd escalate quickly.

cpm4001 said:

Between these two civs? Greece, but only barely. Though the UUs aren't especially good (Hoplites aren't really all that bad, but they come too early to be of much use),

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Completely unrelated to diplomacy, but Companion Cavalry are very strong as a unit - they're the fastest land unit in the game until tanks come along, making excellent explorers as well as being capable flanking units (the cleverest AI play in combat I've seen was with Companion Cavalry, both to flank and snipe workers, but AIs no longer seem to use cavalry much if at all). Mounted units don't see a lot of use because of their limited use in taking cities and the consequently limited importance of killing units in the open field (where they excel), but that's not a fault of CC as a unit.

The hoplite is mediocre at best, since it just offers a strength boost for a unit on a poor promotion path, and as of BNW with quicker Iron Working and bronze at iron, they're almost immediately obsolete for a player going domination. Unlike Persia's all-dominating Immortal it doesn't have additional abilities it keeps on promotion, and isn't supported by a UA that boosts its capabilities.

EDIT: Finally added my vote to the poll (I hadn't before), and after some deliberation went with Siam on the basis that the strongest diplo civ is generally going to be the strongest civ, and Siam's indirect boosts to science, culture and faith give it ever-renewing CS influence benefits through quests.