What's your favourite civ?

Though Maya is both agricultural and industrious, and I love to enslave tons of units, you still can get lots of slaves from captured cities and settler. So I have to go with the Byzantines:

* Theodora is a beautiful woman.
* She has seafaring for early currah contacts.
* 40 shield libraries instead of worthless 30/60 shield temples.
* Dromons with lethal bombardment. Position 3-4 of them between your and your enemys island, and sink 50-60 shields every 3-4 turn. That's about eight of a great wonder each time Dromond also arrive nice in time for a GA when you've changed government.
* And I like the red color.

Merry christmas.

Netherlands for the agri and sea traits. Poor uu... but alright.

I like the incas. Dunno why. Chinese are kinda awesome.
And the vikings are a riot by the time the middle ages roll around.

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Love the Mayas. They are Agri which means more food. They are Ind, so faster workers and more shields. And they have a nice UU.

Hmmm, tough question. Never played the Byzantines or the Netherlands. Right now, I'm in a German Period but favourite (not best) ... Gotta be Rome. There's nothing quite like a Roman sword rush, even if it's a tiny bit primitive.

Other Civs never played:

Egypt
Spain
America
Scandinavia

Hardly ever played/never won with:

Inca
Aztecs
India
France

Theov said:

Netherlands for the agri and sea traits. Poor uu... but alright.

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This is an extremely efficient defensive unit, more shieldefficient than infantry 1.5 eras later. If you need to actually use the defensive value on a big scale you will be greatful to essentially get muscets for half the price.

The swiss mercanaries are not good at offensive, but combined with catapults it does suffice to trigger the golden age in the early middle age. That is a quite convenient timing.

justanick said:

This is an extremely efficient defensive unit, more shieldefficient than infantry 1.5 eras later. If you need to actually use the defensive value on a big scale you will be greatful to essentially get muscets for half the price.

The swiss mercanaries are not good at offensive, but combined with catapults it does suffice to trigger the golden age in the early middle age. That is a quite convenient timing.

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that's true, i like UUs to be in that era. I'm not a big defender, but it's nice to send them with an invasion force.

My favorite civilization depends on the version of the game that I am playing.

If playing the basic Vanilla version, then the Americans for the Industrious and Exspansionist traits.

If playing Play the World, I generally play the Test of Time scenario, so like the Israelis and the English.

For the Conquest version, I prefer Sea-Faring civilizations, but I also mod the game to make them more effective.

My normal punching bags when I am testing something are the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. That does depend on the scenario however.

I don't really have a favorite civilization and what I like to play with depends on the victory condition I pursue. But there's a thing about Persians which makes me enjoy them the most. Their UU, the immortal, is just amazing. Build a dozen or so of those and you can go all the way to the neighbor civs capital, cutting through defences like hot knife through butter. It just feels nice to be killing all those pesky Spearmen with minimal casualties. Plus, they terrify the AI with an Attack strength of 4.

Back when I had a computer that would run C3C . . . It depended on the game I was playing. Arch with lots of water? Byzantines. AW? Probably the Chinese. If I wanted Agri, the Iroquois.

Persians. Their immortals hit like trucks and are so easy to produce making them the best soliders in the ancient times and they even fit in the middle ages for most of it.

Tough question. I enjoy quite a few of them. But I guess I most frequently play as the Germans or Russians, followed by the Greeks, Spain, and England. And then...

Gah, tough question.

The Iroquois and the Celts if Pangaea or continents, Byzantines and the Vikings if on archipelago. Babylon and the Maya are great too.

If I had to chose one, it would be the Iroquois.

My favorite are the Germans. They are flexible and allow you to play as a warmonger and a builder, with the added bonus of a free tech at the start of new eras. The Panzer is an excellent UU and allows you to dominate the late IA. The only downside is that the Germans tend to start slow.

My second favorite are the Celts. I love the Gallic Swordsman UU- it's borderline over powered. Although I prefer the Scientific trait, the Religious trait is good for cheap temples to grow your borders and consolidate your GS driven conquests. I've had my highest scoring games using the Celts, thanks to their ability to conquest entire continents with the GS.

I like the French right now, the Industrious trait is a must for me, building roads to all the towns and essential resources, and Commercial to reduce Corruption a little cuz i HATE corruption - the worst problem programmers have saddled us with, but don't get me started. If i could just TURN IT DOWN A BIT... sigh... (In the Editor? I know.)
And the UU, the delicious Mousketeers! Nobody seems to want to attack them, with their defense of 5..... Invincible on a Mtn. Which makes war a breeze, all my fighting units hide with my Mouseketeers, soon the enemy's mostly dead, and i can usually win a lot of the untaken towns in a Peace Deal. So again, As long as i have Iron, or some combat edge to win towns, I'm good. But I've been playing on Regent level because i really don't like the fierce competition for good land in the Settlement phase; when an enemy Settler approaches a resource or place i need, my blood boils... I usually try the Hannah moveTM, where i build a cordon of towns to define my area, and hope to fill in the middle at my liesure. But often have to make an annoying fence of units to keep the damn settlers out.

I play Celts most often; I like the UU, Gallic Sword units work very well for me for pointy stick expansion (okay, sharpened blade expansion). Egyptians come a close second; they're the first civ that I tried, and I remain fond of them as a civ. Also high on my list are Byzantines, Germans and Aztecs.

Immortal7777 said:

Persians. Their immortals hit like trucks and are so easy to produce making them the best soliders in the ancient times and they even fit in the middle ages for most of it.

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Yes, the Persian UU does look nice on paper, and it is fierce in reality, but, like the Legionary, it's stuck at a movement of one, which is painfully slow compared to the Iroquois or Celtic UU for early battling, which I'm not at all surprised all get mentioned quickly after your post. Speed of movement is everything in Civ III as far as I can tell, which is why most action on bigger worlds tends to wait for Cavalry or Modern Armour.

I mean, it's great slowly moving your line forward, but one small break in the road and your like a snail approaching a lettuce leaf. Its not that slowness is bad, it's that speed is so good that it's difficult to go back to slow once you've tasted fast.

Speed is essential, but it is also expensive. The persian UU has attack 4 for 30 shields, the chinese UU has the same attack value and is 3 times faster, but it costs 70 shields. You do need fast units once the bulk of the enemy military is eradicated. But before that you need cost effective solutions that do naturally include lots of slow artillery units rendering the slowness of the immortals near irrelevant. At the higher diffuculty levels the immortals are an excellent UU.

justanick said:

Speed is essential, but it is also expensive. The persian UU has attack 4 for 30 shields, the chinese UU has the same attack value and is 3 times faster, but it costs 70 shields. You do need fast units once the bulk of the enemy military is eradicated. But before that you need cost effective solutions that do naturally include lots of slow artillery units rendering the slowness of the immortals near irrelevant. At the higher diffuculty levels the immortals are an excellent UU.

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psst. Don't tell anyone, but I made the Cavalry 10 shields more expensive for this reason in my mod. I didn't really like the "get Military Tradition asap and do your best Cavalry bulldoze blitzkrieg impression" anymore. They are fast to be that cheap.

justanick said:

Speed is essential, but it is also expensive. The persian UU has attack 4 for 30 shields, the chinese UU has the same attack value and is 3 times faster, but it costs 70 shields. You do need fast units once the bulk of the enemy military is eradicated. But before that you need cost effective solutions that do naturally include lots of slow artillery units rendering the slowness of the immortals near irrelevant. At the higher diffuculty levels the immortals are an excellent UU.

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Why are you comparing a Unit which requires Iron Working with a Unit that requires Chivalry? And I never mentioned China...

Buttercup said:

Why are you comparing a Unit which requires Iron Working with a Unit that requires Chivalry? And I never mentioned China...

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Both have the same attack value. Immortals have a very long era of usefulness. They start in the early ancient age, but they can still be very useful when cavalry is around. There is good reason to consider them the best UU.

Ok, I guess you're convinced about this from a specific angle, so I've done some research.

Looking at the Hall of Fame top 10s for all difficulties and world sizes for both the Domination and Conquest victory conditions Persia does not rank higher than either Iroquois, Celts or China in virtually any category. Whatever category of HoF result you look at in these criteria one of the other 3 will always be ranked higher, because the HoF bases its result on speed. If you have a different 'quality' criteria than speed then you need to declare it. The only micro-section where Persia figure in any form of superiority is on Small Conquest results, Tiny Dominations and Cheiftan Standard Dominations. That's all very specific and not at all generalist with both the Iroquois and Celts appearing across the board barring the usual Aztec domination of Tiny and Small.

In terms of Shields, you forget that a Knight, while costing 70, also has a defence value of 3, so with a Knight you don't need to build Pikemen for your stacks, even if you do, the Knight will still be attacked first. An Immortal + Pikeman is 60 shields. Because Shields don't carry over, if your city is producing 20 Shields per turn, the most common total for a pre-industrial core city then:

2 Units @ 30 Shields each = 4 turns (Immortal + Pikeman)
1 Unit @ 70 Shields each = 4 turns (Knight)

And then on top of that, 1 Unit is half the price of 2 Units. On top of that The Knight is quicker.

Similarly, you can apply the same mathematical logic to Gallic Swordsmen, which cost 50 Shields - 1 Unit @ 30 Shields = 2 turns, 1 Unit at 50 Shields = 3 turns, so you're taking 1.5 the amount of time but you're creating something that is 2.0 quicker. Mounted Warriors cost the same as Immortals but are 2.0 quicker. Both Mounted Warriors and Gallic Swordsmen have the chance to retreat which negates their likelihood of dying more by having an attack of 3 instead of 4 (which, as we all know, doesn't count for a huge amount when killing Spearmen).