Hardest civilization to play as (and hardest victory condition to get)

Discuss which civilization you think it's the hardest civilization to play as and master? And which victory condition you think is the hardest victory to get?

For me, I think Venice is the hardest civilization to play as. First of all, you are literally a city-state with few extra perks and you cannot expand your borders whatsoever since you can't build any new cities (this is compensated with the Merchant of Venice where you can "deny" city states from other civilizations and make them puppets with the Merchant of Venice, but you literally have no control on what they build and may be a financial burden. It gets harder when you are trying to get the "One City to Rule Them All" achievement. And since they can only control one city, they are subjected to easy elimination by more aggressive civilizations like the Aztecs, Zulus, Greeks, France, and Japan.

Luckily I manage to win diplomatic victory as Venice AND get the "One City to Rule Them All" achievement. This is mainly because the AI I picked as opponents are those who are relatively easy to befriend (Ram Khamhaeng, Kamehameha, Hiawatha, and Gandhi). Although for one reason or another, Hiawatha AI manages to piss off Ram Khamhaeng AI to the point Ram Khamhaeng occasionally asking me to side with him and declare war on Hiawatha. Luckily, I declined his offer without any diplomatic penalty. In fact, I usually get several problems with Hiawatha when I'm trying to be friendly with every civilization in the game despite being able to befriend Hiawatha.

For victory condition, I'd say domination victory is the hardest. It's more of a high-risk/high-reward type of thing. You need to rapidly expand your borders and claim every strategic resource to get the edge over everyone else. Even so, domination victory becomes less and less relevant when World Congress comes into play and such as you will suffer a lot of diplomatic penalties and a lot of civilizations denouncing you as a warmonger and embargoing you, thus losing your gold advantage. Even if you try to mitigate the diplomatic disadvantage by befriending other AI warmongers, they still going to declare war on you anyways since they are designed to have the lowest loyalty rating. And gold and unhappiness will be the biggest issues for late game domination victory as well. And I have no idea of domination victory is easier or harder if you have "rampaging barbarians" on.

Dark Paladin X said:

Even if you try to mitigate the diplomatic disadvantage by befriending other AI warmongers, they still going to declare war on you anyways since they are designed to have the lowest loyalty rating.

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There is one exception to this, Shaka has the highest loyalty rating in the game (8) while also being a huge warmonger and not minding other warmongers. All the others like Alex, Napoleon and Monty are indeed backstabbers. So the Zulu are probably the best allies to have if you're going for domination. Genghis and Harald are other good battle buddies with loyalties of 7.

Alzadar said:

There is one exception to this, Shaka has the highest loyalty rating in the game (8) while also being a huge warmonger and not minding other warmongers. All the others like Alex, Napoleon and Monty are indeed backstabbers. So the Zulu are probably the best allies to have if you're going for domination.

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Lol, I almost forget about Shaka. Even so, I heard he's one of the hardest AI to befriend. If I have a larger military and manage to conquer a weaker civilization like Venice, will I get support from Shaka from that.

Culture victory is still the hardest. Only because it takes a lot of balancing out in terms of tech order/social policy order/wonder order to win. It may also force you to declare war on other civs.

Hard civ wise, I would put the weakest up there - which I still say it's India. Though you have a point with Venice.

Dark Paladin X said:

Lol, I almost forget about Shaka. Even so, I heard he's one of the hardest AI to befriend. If I have a larger military and manage to conquer a weaker civilization like Venice, will I get support from Shaka from that.

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Hmm, Friendship Willingness 4, that is pretty low. Only Attila and Monty are less friendly.

I'm not great at this game, and I haven't played all the civs yet.... But Venice is the EASIEST civ I've tried so far. Maybe it's harder on Pangea, but if you have an island start of any sort, you can just sit and mint money until you buy the game late. No one bothers you, because you don't expand and piss them off. Puppet a couple of city states just so you can send food ships home, but beyond that you can mostly just build wonders and buy everything else, at least at Emperor level.

Also, for hardest victory condition, I would put cultural right there with domination, only because the foundation for cultural victory needs to be built early. Science victory seems hard because you can almost certainly win some other way first. Diplomatic is too easy.

Genghis has never backstabbed me and he's been in a lot of my games.

That guy is as loyal as they come.

Also I find domination victories have more gold than non-domination victories, even when embargoed since each puppet will have a gold focus and you can just spam trading posts for your huge puppet empire to work.

I haven't played as all the Civs yet, but I think the most difficult civs to play are the ones that impose a negative trait upon the player, such as India. In fact I think they may be the only civ that has a negative trait to balance out its positive trait. This would probably make them more difficult for players that want to expand early on in the game since the AI gets happiness bonuses that makes their expansion just a matter of time. By the time you have enough happiness to support a new city as India, you're not going to have the best pick of the land. They're definitely tailor-made for more tall-empire oriented players, but I think Ethiopia does this better.

Other civs that may be tough are ones that you will personally not get much use of their UA from. This could be any of them depending on what you prefer to play like. If you're not going to be a warmonger, The Huns, Mongolians, and Aztecs will probably not help you in any situation. Really situational UAs like Spain's and Denmarks are also tough to use since Spain relies on the chances of finding and settling by a natwonder and Denmark's Viking Fury is only helpful if you're going for a dom win on a naval map.

Victory conditions all have to be planned from the start, but much more so Cultural victory. It can be near impossible to win a culture victory if you don't start gaining influence quickly. If someone has built more culture than you, you will be very hard-pressed trying to overcome them and getting the win before someone else gets science or diplo victories. Domination victory now also requires you to capture all the capitals in the world rather than just holding onto your own, so that can be tough depending on many you have to go out and conquer.

It's very conditional, that. If you're in a duel, it's probably the most straightforward path to victory. If you have over 20 civs on a huge map, you're going to have a hell of a time winning. Still, Cultural is probably the most difficult of the two, since you can at some point, probably plan a surgical strike on any remaining capitals in the world and take them for yourself in a few turns for a dom win. You can't do that with great musicians if you're at the bottom rung of cultural influence.

Hardest Civ imo is Japan. But that may change once the Fall patch comes out and makes changes to them.

Hardest victory condition is probably domination. Just because it can be a real hassle to capture all those capitals in some games.

Cultural victory + high diff + 1-2+ cultural AIs. Have fun outclassing their culture. Bonus points if you loose in race for Louvre and not gotten any Renaissance wonders either. Add world congress voting for International Games/Worlds Fair and one of cultural ais is runaway with tons of hammers in his cities.

Second hardest would be Domination with multiple continents, with bigger than standard map.

The bigger the map, the harder cultural, dom and diplo victories become, while Science gets easier. On standard map, I'd say diplo is easiest (my first deity win was as that as Venice, +Dark Horse achie, while being behind everything and having terrible start location). Anything bigger and Science is most straightforward.

Since you can win w/o problems with a blank Civ, I don't think there is any hardest to play. Maybe Venice if you set your goal as winning Cultural.

Domination as India obviously... (thanks to the penalty for # of cities, this requires you to be constantly razing non-capitols and city states)

Hardest in general (with 8+ player map) is domination. (I simply don't have the patience for that many clicks/micromanagement, where one turn you take care of 40 units and their promotions... god...)

kb27787 said:

Domination as India obviously... (thanks to the penalty for # of cities, this requires you to be constantly razing non-capitols and city states)

Hardest in general (with 8+ player map) is domination. (I simply don't have the patience for that many clicks/micromanagement, where one turn you take care of 40 units and their promotions... god...)

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I would beg to differ. You don't want many cities in a domination game anyways; India allows you to keep all the capitals (which have very high pop) without dragging you down.

Denmark.
Any map, VC, etc.

For me Sweden is obviously the worst civilization in this game. Their bonus is stupid and benefits the opponent, it's good to say that friendships don't last forever and your best friend can be in the next turn your enemy. Playing with Sweden in Deity without many resources it's always difficult when in comparison with another civilizations, it's a challenge for every player.

Dark Paladin X said:

Lol, I almost forget about Shaka. Even so, I heard he's one of the hardest AI to befriend. If I have a larger military and manage to conquer a weaker civilization like Venice, will I get support from Shaka from that.

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I finally befriended Shaka in my last game for the first time ever. Basically, I bribed him repeatedly to attack other AIs, so everyone hated him, leaving me as his only trading partner. We were peaceful the whole time, while he dismantled 2 other AI and I just built up my culture. He doesn't like to sign DOF though...that didn't happen until we picked the same ideology.

Dark Paladin X said:

For victory condition, I'd say domination victory is the hardest.

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Domination victory isn't really that hard unless you are on immortal or diety, where the AI spams a lot of units. It just requires you to move a lot of units each turn. I finish domination games faster than other victory conditions.

Cultural victory is really the hardest. The typical 6 or 8 player game usually has at least 2 AIs who are spamming wonders and culture. Overcoming them before the information era is really, really hard unless you kill them. And if you do kill them, you tick everyone off, so why not go Domination!

Denmark is the most useless, no question. It's ONLY good when you are attacking, and it's main melee unit is a gamble for iron, and the majority of it's UA (expend one movement point to embark) is ONLY useful on coastlines. Sweden has economic and diplomatic benefits, but denmark is the bottom of the barrel.

Hardest victory condition depends on the map and difficulty. Bigger maps + higher difficulty + quick speed means domination is hardest, followed by culture, then science, then diplo. Small map + lower difficulty + marathon speed means that culture is the hardest, followed by domination, then science, then diplomatic.

kamikazees said:

Domination victory isn't really that hard unless you are on immortal or diety, where the AI spams a lot of units. It just requires you to move a lot of units each turn. I finish domination games faster than other victory conditions.

Cultural victory is really the hardest. The typical 6 or 8 player game usually has at least 2 AIs who are spamming wonders and culture. Overcoming them before the information era is really, really hard unless you kill them. And if you do kill them, you tick everyone off, so why not go Domination!

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Faster measured in turns or in actual time? I can finish a 300 turn science game in one night after work but it would take me three days to finish a 250 turn domination game.