Favorite AI Civs to Play Against

Now that I've had some fun with BNW, I am thinking of eventually doing a Huge Marathon game with 21 AI civs (might wait till the fall patch comes out though). I like to hand pick my opponents, so I thought I'd compare notes to see which civs you enjoy playing against. Note that this is *not* about the strongest/weakest civ or the strongest/weakest civ in the hands of the AI. It's more about enjoyment and which ones you like playing against for whatever reason. Here are my thoughts:

Tier 1: Friends with Benefits

Indonesia (Gajah Mada)
Morocco (Ahmad al-Mansur)
Sweden (Gustavus Adolphus)

All three of these civs have UA's that can benefit other players. A DoF with Sweden gives you +10% Great Person generation. Morocco is a great trading party due to extra gold. And Indonesia introduces extra luxuries (whether you gain them by trade or conquest).

Tier 2: Warmongers

I actually LIKE playing against Warmonger civs since it makes things interesting. Plus, with the new Warmonger system in BNW, declaring war against other warmongers and runaways is the best strategy if you want to war but still maintain good diplomatic relations. Unfortunately, there probably won't be enough slots to include them all, but my favorites include:

Assyria (Ashurbanipal)
Aztecs (Montezuma)
Carthage (Dido)
France (Napoleon)
Huns (Attila)
Mongolia (Genghis Khan)
Songhai (Askia)
Zulus (Shaka)

Assyria is cool because of the Royal Library, which means Great Works are less likely to be destroyed. France builds chateaus (which I will get when I eventually take his lands). Songhai gets lots of gold (from barbarian camps) which I can get from him in trades. I like Dido so Carthage is in, and Montezuma is always hilarious.

Mongolia, Zulus, and Huns are the scariest and most effective. I'm a bit borderline on the Huns though. Part of me is worried that they will wipe out too many civs too early, and also the "take a random city name from a civ" makes the map look messy!

The other warmongers on my short list are:

Denmark (Harald Bluetooth)
Germany (Bismarck)
Japan (Oda Nobunaga)
Ottomans (Suleiman)
Rome (Augustus Caesar)

So out of the warmongers, which are the favorites you like to play against (and the ones you don't like)?

Tier 3: Future Citizens of My Empire

Brazil (Pedro)
Incans (Pachacuti)
Netherlands (William)
Polynesia (Kamehameha)

all have Unique Improvements. You can't build them yourself, but if/when you conquer their lands, the UI's do add to the geographic variety. Portugal has the Feitoria, but you don't benefit from it. And France is already included earlier as a warmonger.

Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar)
Korea (Sejong)
Mayans (Pacal)

along with Brazil, produce lots of Great People, which often means cities with awesome tile improvements or Great Works.

Byzantium (Theodora) and the Mayans will often found religion (good) but aren't so faith heavy to be annoying (like the Celts and Ethiopia).

I'm borderline on Spain (Isabella). The massive gold they can get from their UA can be helpful if you can trade for it. It was more useful to have them around in Vanilla and G&K when you didn't need a DoF for lump sum gold trades. Not sure if they make the cut in BNW. Also I am considering India. They have a low expansion flavor and focus on culture, making their cities good additions for the mid and end game.

Tier 4: Missed the Cut

America (Washington)
China (Wu Zetian)
England (Elizabeth)
Portugal (Maria)

Nothing especially good or bad about them. Just not notable enough to make the list.

Tier 5: Negative Play Experiences

Austria (Maria Theresa)
Venice (Enrico Dandolo)

Obliterating city states from the game is not very fun, m'okay?

Arabia (Harun al-Rashid)
Celts (Boudicca)
Ethiopia (Haile Selassie)

Too competitive in the religion war.

Egypt (Ramesses)
Greece (Alexander)
Siam (Ramkhamhaeng)

Don't like the extra competition over wonders and city states.

Iroquois (Hiawatha)
Persia (Darius)
Poland (Casimir)
Russia (Catherine)
Shohone (Pocatello)

The AI seems to do a little too well with these civs. Most of them are very expansive but are *not* overt warmongers. I am okay with expansive civs if they are warmongers, but am annoyed by the peaceful expansionists.

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So this is where I am right now in my deliberations. I will only get to select 21 of them to be my opponents. Which do you think would make a fun game?

Must say... I agree with you I usually set opponents if i just want a relaxed game and the top ones of your list usually are the ones i play against, and never against the bottom ones!

Yeah, pretty comprehensive list.

One problem, is Indonesia. Maybe its just me, but I find the AI just cannot succeed with this civ. They've appeared in about 90% of my games, and pretty much every game they get eliminated by someone in the first 150 turns.

Maybe they focus too much too early on getting to other continents and end up getting rolled over by other civs... I dunno, he seems really feeble to me.

Well done. I only disagree on venice. In all of the last four games I had Enrico on the map, and in every game I was able to kill his first Great Merchant. After crippling his forces I gave him peace, and he quickly offered me a DoF then. He is a good trading and RA partner due to his trade route income.

I almost always like playing against Greece. He's consistently one of the best AI out there and is able to pursue many types of victories because of his UU/UA. Always need to be careful when he is in the game.

I actually like Russia as a neighbor. Cathy guarantees years of friendship followed by centuries in a Cold War, and repeats the cycle. Pretty interesting for role-playing. Similarly, a runaway Poland or the Iroquois is someone to work against with their discontent neighbors to take down and keep up with.

EDIT: Forgot about friends!

I'll go with Ahmad al-Mansur. He's a good trading partner, relatively competent and just an overall friendly kind of guy.

kamikazees said:

I almost always like playing against Greece. He's consistently one of the best AI out there and is able to pursue many types of victories because of his UU/UA. Always need to be careful when he is in the game.

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I noticed that about Greece as well. It isn't a top-ranked civ from the human player perspective, but the AI handles it quite well. The same might be said of the Iriquois.

On the other hand, human players do great as Babylon, but I've seen a number of games where the AI Babylon is the first civ to bite the dust.

Venice (as a neighbor) no need to worry about getting forward-settled + expand all you want since you have enough room for two civs.

Genghis is always a nice guy to me. I've NEVER fought him and he's only been hostile to me in a couple of games. And be a couple I mean countable on one hand. Ramesses, Maria Theresa, Suleiman and Bismarck really annoy me though.

I gotta disagree with America missing the cut. I play a ton of hotseat, and every time I play with America on the other team they do the same thing: ICS spam the map up to your borders. Get mad. Attack.
I don't actually mind this, since it makes them pretty threatening if you let them build up to it and do it on their own terms, helps keep the games interesting. But Washington is a cold bastard!

TheGrandWazoo said:

One problem, is Indonesia. Maybe its just me, but I find the AI just cannot succeed with this civ. They've appeared in about 90% of my games, and pretty much every game they get eliminated by someone in the first 150 turns.

Maybe they focus too much too early on getting to other continents and end up getting rolled over by other civs... I dunno, he seems really feeble to me.

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Indonesia is a joke in the hands of the AI. They will try to settle first city the farther away from capitol they can, but on the same continent (too early to get optics). This means they will get everyone mad at them, and won't be able to defend.

Probably would only be working on large islands or similar map.

I enthusiastically agree with enjoying play against the warmongers. The game's AI is entirely too peaceful for my tastes right now, so anything that potentially spices things up is much appreciated. This whole "kumbaya-until-ideologies" routine is getting very old. What's the point of having war-related unique units or unique attributes if they don't get used for the first four eras of the game?

I also like unique improvements. If a civ has unique buildings on the landscape, it adds a bit more flavor to the game. I like.

But I love playing against the English. Elizabeth is such a fun villain to play against, and it seems like I can never, ever stay on her good side for an entire game. She's so snotty and dismissive that it's a real treat to bring her down in the end, hehe..

For now, Brazil is automatically included in all of my custom-made map games; his war theme music is too awesome to miss. I turn my speakers up when we finally start to fight.

And I tend to agree with you on Venice and Austria, but I'm much more willing to play Austria since there's a decent way to counter-act her city-state purchasing procedure. Still, she seldom makes it into my games.. I feel like I'm competing against some dowdy old Grandma every time she pops-up on my screen.

TheGrandWazoo said:

One problem, is Indonesia. Maybe its just me, but I find the AI just cannot succeed with this civ. They've appeared in about 90% of my games, and pretty much every game they get eliminated by someone in the first 150 turns.

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Well, Indonesia is a tough civ, even for human players.

The UA means that you need a special approach for expansion and settling. The UB is very cornercase (Garden requiring fresh water) and ideally requires very careful religion manipulation. And the UU is a crapshoot - in the hands of a player you can really farm out the Kris for the best promotions but I doubt the AI really understands it. So every single part of the civ - the UA, UB, and UU requires an advanced strategy, which means the AI is likely to fail.

Poopin Thelift said:

Well done. I only disagree on venice. In all of the last four games I had Enrico on the map, and in every game I was able to kill his first Great Merchant. After crippling his forces I gave him peace, and he quickly offered me a DoF then. He is a good trading and RA partner due to his trade route income.

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kb27787 said:

Venice (as a neighbor) no need to worry about getting forward-settled + expand all you want since you have enough room for two civs.

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Good points. I'm always concerned about Venice killing the City States but yeah, maybe I could focus on neutralizing his Great Merchants. I will have to give it a try.

What do you do about his second and third Great Merchants?

eewallace said:

I noticed that about Greece as well. It isn't a top-ranked civ from the human player perspective, but the AI handles it quite well. The same might be said of the Iriquois.

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Greece, Iroquois, Germany, America, Russia. None of these are top civs in the hands of the player, but they are top tier civs for the AI - mainly because of flavor values (particularly focuses on city spamming / expansion and production/science), as opposed to the actual strengths of the civilization (UA/UU/UB).

On the other hand, human players do great as Babylon, but I've seen a number of games where the AI Babylon is the first civ to bite the dust.

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AI sucks at Science victory. It doesn't do proper beelines. It has trouble building spaceship parts and even when those are done it doesn't always add them.

Lokos451 said:

I gotta disagree with America missing the cut. I play a ton of hotseat, and every time I play with America on the other team they do the same thing: ICS spam the map up to your borders. Get mad. Attack.
I don't actually mind this, since it makes them pretty threatening if you let them build up to it and do it on their own terms, helps keep the games interesting. But Washington is a cold bastard!

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Yes, America city spams, but I find that more annoying because it is stressful early on to get the good city spots. I don't mind warmongers who city spam (hello Shaka!). America is sometimes a warmonger, but isn't as consistent as the others.

tedoll78 said:

But I love playing against the English. Elizabeth is such a fun villain to play against, and it seems like I can never, ever stay on her good side for an entire game. She's so snotty and dismissive that it's a real treat to bring her down in the end, hehe..

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Elizabeth (and Ramesses) have attitude problems, being Hostile way too often. I feel like it probably hurts the AI. I strongly believe that due to the diplomacy system, AI's with higher friend willingness tend to do better....

I don't know that I have a favorite. I just dread games with a lineup of peaceful expanders, like was mentioned. A good mix really livens the game.

My most fun game of BNW to date was a small continents, low water with 10 civs 12 city states with:

Elizabeth
Dido
Maria Theresa
Pacal
Washington
Gaja
Darius
Ramses
Napoleon


It was a crazy experience. Dido was being Dido. She came after Elizabeth, then me, but I liberated Liz and knocked Dido down to one city. I framed her as the world villain and turned everyone against her for the kudos. Meanwhile Maria got a pact of friendship with the whole world except Washington (even Dido). I bribed Dido to backstab her, then one by one bribed Maria to backstab her allies until the whole world was at war. Meanwhile France and Egypt were caught in a game-long war while Washington, the loner throughout everything, had to endure me picking off his cities unnoticed because everyone else had their own drama.

In my last game featuring indonesia I had the exact opposite experience. His first 3 cities all got founded on the small continent he started on, Then later on he expanded to other islands and claimed his unique resources.Honestly you can use those any way you want, not getting them in your first 3 cities isnt "crippling" it just means youll benefit from them later instead of now. His 4 cities on his home island got out of control though and he got the hanging gardens. Turned in to quite a warmonger once he had the resources. I guess maybe he succeeded because the map was large islands and he lucked out and got his own