What are the 3 'worst' Civs

List the 3 civs you think are weakest and why, as related to a standard size Continents Map, normal speed, Immortal difficulty.. or whatever..

India (happiness change makes their ability much less efficient)
Denmark (mediocre all around, especially with the Beserker-Longswords-iron nerf)
Polynesia (too map dependent and generally mediocre)

Dreadnought said:

India (happiness change makes their ability much less efficient)
Denmark (mediocre all around, especially with the Beserker-Longswords-iron nerf)
Polynesia (too map dependent and generally mediocre)

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Denmark's useless for the AI, but it can be pretty strong in the hands of a human. It's very good for scouting and early settlement on island/continent maps, and the occasional surprise attack here or there can swing games. It's a mistake to pigeonhole a civ with a combat ability as a "warmonger civ" that has to be constantly fighting to succeed. Denmark can grab a key capital or Wonder city before the enemy can react - they don't need to carry on the war if they've already got what they came for. The Berserker is still stronger than a knight with 3 movement on land and more if disembarking.

I'd have to agree with the others, though. India never struck me as particularly strong in vanilla, and Polynesia is both very map dependent and without anything very much that allows it to capitalise on its advantages in early exploration. Moai are an interesting idea, but on the maps Polynesia's designed for you don't really have enough land in one place to use them to best effect (just as in the related scenario).

America, India and Polynesia.

Polynesia are nice at scouting but thats it. I play most of the time on Pangea and Continents. Maybe thats the reason why.

Indias Happiness-bonus isn't that bad but i found my way to get around that and the rest is really crap.

And America ... never understood this Civ. Don't care about their UUs, not strong at all. Their UA isn't anything i worry about when playing. I'm afraid of Bushido, the reduced Maintenance of Germany or the strong UUs of Spain, Sweden or Rome. And what does Washington got? A lame ass Bomber, a Rifleman who can move just like all Incan units and +1 sight which doesn't work if you have a lot of trees and hills around?

America is pretty good if you know what you're doing.

+1 sight is excellent for warfare. Buying tiles cheaply is pretty good. And the B17 is certainly not "lame ass". That thing wins wars.

America only seems bad until you play them and realize you can go nuts on people constantly from Renaissance onward (generally the period in high level play when you can "get ahead" of the AI enough to go on the offense anyway).

Minuteman w/ cover (easy to get since they start w/ Drill I) almost never die (since they easily get out of harm's way), your artillery almost always has sight, and B17s get a good headstart w/ proper experience buildings towards unstoppable logistics+air repair bombers.

They aren't quite equal to The Azetcs on the "tall warmonger Civ" , but they aren't nearly so far behind that they are one of the worst Civs.

I'll agree with India and Polynesia. Denmark is not terrible but not so bad it is with those two. I think Japan is also pretty down the list as well.

Honestly mate there's no such thing as worse civ, simply civ's you can't play properly.

For my worse civ's they're probably some of the strongest when used correctly, thing i can't seem to do.

France = 2 military UU's and +2 culture per city till x tech. So.... how am i supposed to play this?

Greece = I hate early wars, and even if my economy is great austria will simply Oink all CS's at a certain point.

And to all people saying India is weaker now, try ics'ing with a happiness focused religion.

All you cities can get to size 9+ without having negative happiness.

Castle's (UB) are maintenance free and if you get to flight they produce gold, and with Neushowtheheckit'sspelled castle they even produce happyness and culture. And your UU isn't half bad on top of that.

VikingHaag said:

France = 2 military UU's and +2 culture per city till x tech. So.... how am i supposed to play this?

Greece = I hate early wars, and even if my economy is great austria will simply Oink all CS's at a certain point.

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France, finish liberty tree right away, rex like crazy, get musketeers and kill everyone, upgrade to foreign legions and kill anyone left standing.

Greece, Austria has to be allied to 'oink' a citystate, something they'll have a hard time doing with Greece following patronage tree, giving you an easy monopoly on citystates and all the advantages that brings (lots).


I'd have to agree about Polynesia being very weak, except on a very specific type of island map, where you could leverage an advantage out of their UA. Their UU is pretty underwhelming tho and the moai's don't seem to be that great.

Japan is sadly very weak to play, I've never found that much of an advantage through bushido and the Samurai has always been kind of 'meh' while the zero is almost universally considered the worst UU.

Sweden sucks, I don't like a UA that's tied in to making multiple friendship pacts, it feels too limiting on the diplomatic front and gifting great people for some city state influence isn't something that I'm going to want to do with the majority of great people I generate.

Dreadnought said:

America is pretty good if you know what you're doing.

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I don't want to be nitpicking but every Civ can be pretty good if you know what you are doing.

+1 sight is excellent for warfare. Buying tiles cheaply is pretty good. And the B17 is certainly not "lame ass". That thing wins wars.

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I don't argue that +1 Sight is nice for warfare but you don't need it on all units. Cheaper tiles are ... well ... like Ankor Wat? Its one of the worst wonder ingame for a reason.

Fragamemnon said:

Minuteman w/ cover (easy to get since they start w/ Drill I) almost never die (since they easily get out of harm's way), your artillery almost always has sight, and B17s get a good headstart w/ proper experience buildings towards unstoppable logistics+air repair bombers.

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Drill I isn't an argument because you can get if for free with Alhambra. If you can't build it, conquer it. Its the same. The only great thing about Minutemen is are the "always 1 Movement". But you can get around that. And you can grant your Artillery vision with f.e. a Lancier.

I'll agree with India and Polynesia. Denmark is not terrible but not so bad it is with those two. I think Japan is also pretty down the list as well.

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I think Japan is quite nice. They have the great Samurai (which btw have a Combat Promotion like the Minutemen) and their UA is just awesome. Ever saw a japanese unit with 1 HP kill a 60 HP attacker? You would be suprised


BTW: Please be reminded, that this is just my personal opinion.

1. Polynesia
2. Germany
3. India

Denmark is still amazing in the hands of a Human. Some of the fastest and favorite domination wins in multi have been at my hands under Denmark's rule .

But I admit - I would keep the +1 movement for Berserkers on upgrade if I had to change Denmark a bit.

The hell? Polynesia? There UA is completely OP on any kind of map where water matters, especially archaepolago.

Esperr said:

The hell? Polynesia? There UA is completely OP on any kind of map where water matters, especially archaepolago.

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Read the OP.

Dreadnought said:

America is pretty good if you know what you're doing.

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Just want to +1 this. Absolutely true.

Esperr said:

The hell? Polynesia? There UA is completely OP on any kind of map where water matters, especially archaepolago.

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Playing on an archipelago map is OP for the human player with any kind of civ at any difficulty level

India - I never get to use the damned War Elephants, and I'm not much excited about it. The Mughal Fort is nice, but I dislike going wide with India to build it anywhere - although the N. Castle + Mughal Forts everywhere is a pretty great combo. Then, we have the UA... I really dislike this UA. I don't know, I have already won with India, but they don't fit my style of play.

America - I partially like the UA. +1 sight is nice, but cheaper tiles... seems lackluster. The Minuteman is nice too, but also not thaaaat cool. I don't fear them like I fear the Janissaries, the Jaguars, Battering Rams, Immortals/Hoplites or Legions: its something kind of easy to deal with. Maybe it's because I don't like the flavour of the Civ, but America is probably the one I hate the most to play with. The B17 comes too late. By that time I'm usually a few turns about to win the game. Seriously, they seem one of the worst civs.

Polynesia - A waste for a CONTINENTS map type. Their UA is good for archipelagos, their UI is based on coastal lines, leaving the civ only 33% of its bonuses. The Maori Warrior is meh... -10% strenght to enemy units, ok, but, seriously... meh. At least it keeps its bonus while upgrading.

Dreadnought said:

Read the OP.

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Play online? Even on continents anybody who starts coastal has to worry about getting ship rushed by poly, and getting all the city states absorbed by them.

woodshadows said:

Japan is sadly very weak to play, I've never found that much of an advantage through bushido and the Samurai has always been kind of 'meh' while the zero is almost universally considered the worst UU.

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I think people just tend not to use fighters much - I'm not very sure why not.

The Samurai doesn't impress, I admit - it's formidable with the AI because of Bushido (which is far less valuable for players), but as a UU it's not terribly impressive (try using it as a non-Japan civ with Samurai UU gifts from city-states) and comes at a time when you'll normally have that promotion on the units you upgrade; the 'free promotion' UUs worth using are generally the ones with higher-level promotions (like the Carolean).

The main advice I've seen with Japan is to use Samurai in combination with military buildings so that you can rush to higher-level promotions than you would otherwise. Still, this is a moderate bonus and relies on training longswords from scratch (and so not using your already-promoted units and upgrading).

Sweden sucks, I don't like a UA that's tied in to making multiple friendship pacts, it feels too limiting on the diplomatic front and gifting great people for some city state influence isn't something that I'm going to want to do with the majority of great people I generate.

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I'm playing my first game as Sweden at the moment to see how this pans out. From my perspective:

- 10% across all GPs compares favourably with 50% on a specific type, as Babylon's UA provides, let alone "one free GG" (China). You only need 1 DoF for the benefits to accumulate, especially since you can usually keep a DoF going game-long. Being able to double up (or more) is a very powerful bonus, but it's not essential to make the UA worthwhile. And since DoFs can come very early you can get a very good shot at early religion if you go down that path - just 1 DoF cuts the faith cost of your first Great Prophet by 10%.

- Normally you wouldn't, but if you're generating them much more quickly, why not? You don't have to be a warmonger to generate excess Great Generals or Admirals, you normally only need a few Great Engineers during a game, you effectively treble your influence gain from Great Merchants, and you can always faith-buy Prophets. 90 influence per GP expended is a big deal; if you're playing the CS game, you now have a new and powerful option to boost your influence. And with the Patronage finisher you can just be given GPs by CSes and send them straight back to boost your alliance further... I haven't got any GPs yet in my current game (still early turns), but I look forward to trying this.

- Carolean is late, so you may well already have March on your units, but if you do have to produce units from scratch there aren't many better promotions you could have.

I think Japan is quite nice. They have the great Samurai (which btw have a Combat Promotion like the Minutemen)

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Firstly, it's usually a less useful promotion because rough terrain is generally the norm, and secondly as above if you're upgrading units you already have this anyway (if you do want to fight in open terrain).

and their UA is just awesome. Ever saw a japanese unit with 1 HP kill a 60 HP attacker? You would be suprised

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It's awesome for the AI. The trouble is there's very little benefit for human to suicide units regardless of how much damage they do, and humans can usually get their units to safety to heal before attacking again. You always want to keep your units alive and attack at maximum health where possible as a result.

Esperr said:

The hell? Polynesia? There UA is completely OP on any kind of map where water matters, especially archaepolago.

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Exploring doesn't win you the game. Polynesia has nothing that helps it very much in terms of making use of what it learns. Its settlers still move at glacial embarked unit rates until you get the appropriate techs, so you can't colonise other continents/islands that quickly, for instance. You still have to land and disembark to explore the land you find, and Polynesia is as slow at that as everyone else. etc. etc. If you want early exploration on water maps you're usually better going with Denmark; they have +1 embarked movement from the start, scouts can disembark and pop ruins in the same turn (and often run away from barbarians they uncover in the same turn as well), and most water maps are actually designed so that the majority of the map is accessible through coastal exploration - ocean gives you a bit of a speed advantage, but it's not usually that critical.

PhilBowles said:

I'm playing my first game as Sweden at the moment to see how this pans out. From my perspective:

- 10% across all GPs compares favourably with 50% on a specific type, as Babylon's UA provides, let alone "one free GG" (China). You only need 1 DoF for the benefits to accumulate, especially since you can usually keep a DoF going game-long. Being able to double up (or more) is a very powerful bonus, but it's not essential to make the UA worthwhile. And since DoFs can come very early you can get a very good shot at early religion if you go down that path - just 1 DoF cuts the faith cost of your first Great Prophet by 10%.

- Normally you wouldn't, but if you're generating them much more quickly, why not? You don't have to be a warmonger to generate excess Great Generals or Admirals, you normally only need a few Great Engineers during a game, you effectively treble your influence gain from Great Merchants, and you can always faith-buy Prophets. 90 influence per GP expended is a big deal; if you're playing the CS game, you now have a new and powerful option to boost your influence. And with the Patronage finisher you can just be given GPs by CSes and send them straight back to boost your alliance further... I haven't got any GPs yet in my current game (still early turns), but I look forward to trying this.

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I've tried Sweden a couple times and I guess I had some bad luck because I was just rushed constantly and only got one person to DOF with me. I'm not entirely sure how the GP increase works either, but if it's 10% increase to the GP points generated in a city, then I'm not sure it even applies in cities that are generating below a certain level of GP points, since there aren't decimals (I think).. so for instance if i have a city generating 3 GS points a turn, a 10% increase won't have any effect upon that, as it would produce a decimal, .30, which I presume wouldn't be rounded up to tack on another point. I could be wrong and perhaps the way it works is to decrease the 'cost' of great people in which case I would have to reconsider this civ and maybe give them another whirl.

PhilBowles said:

Firstly, it's usually a less useful promotion because rough terrain is generally the norm, and secondly as above if you're upgrading units you already have this anyway (if you do want to fight in open terrain).

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True but most players and AIs tend to improve every tile within workable range of a city. That means there is a good chance that you can fight in flat non forest/jungle-terrain.

It's awesome for the AI. The trouble is there's very little benefit for human to suicide units regardless of how much damage they do, and humans can usually get their units to safety to heal before attacking again. You always want to keep your units alive and attack at maximum health where possible as a result.

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I don't tend to suicide my own units but it happens often, that they are attacked multiple times in one turn. You can't rescue them all the time.

The other thing is, that at least i don't build that many Warriors or Swordmen early on. I tend to focus on the Archer or Chariot Archer-line with Spearmen as Support if my enemy uses a lot of Horse-units (like the Huns, Carthage, Siam and so on) or stay purely on Archers with 3-4 Swords until i get the Arsenal.

So i think the "use" you can get of some things are really up to you. Maybe that's the reason i never get America working. Didn't knew how to play them with their UA because i always work around the limited sight.