Most poorly designed Civ?

Lord Olleus said:
I don't think any single civ is badly designed, but there are many civs that are far too similar. They should be designed so that each is as unique as possible to allow for as wide a range of play styles as possible.

For a start, this means that a couple of Civs should have 2UBs or a UB+UI rather than any UUs. Secondly, there are far far too many UUs in the early eras. There are only 4 which come later in the tech tree than rifleman. The chariot to itself has that many UUs. This is one of the reasons why the later eras are dull, all the civs being bland and almost identical by then. The UBs tell a similar story. And there are a lot of UAs that become weaker with time, almost none that become stronger.


Changes that could be made to remedy this.
USA: Get rid of minuteman (far to many musket UUs as it is), and give them a modern UB (Mall for example).

Russia: Get rid of the Krepost, give them a beefed up police station or a tank UU.

India: Replace Mughal Fort with a modern UB that somehow models how they became independent. Can't think of a name, something like Assembly Hall (but better). Replaces public school, gives an additional +0.5 culture per citizen.

Korea: Get rid of one UUs replace one with a "computer lab" which is a much much stronger research lab but comes later in the game (computers rather than plastics).

Polynesia: Get rid of Maori Warrior. Have a UB that replaces the sea port and have it give +1 food to all sea tiles (like a second lighthouse). Historically accurate? Not particularly, but more interesting game play.

Siam: Don't know much about them, but a possible candidate for a 2UB civ.

England: Replace longbowman with redcoat (rifleman UU).

Austria: Have the coffee house as a hospital UB rather than the windmill, beef it up a little.

Sweden: Replace Hakkaplaitaitae with a modern UU/UB. Can't think of anything, but this could be one civ that is made to really shine in the last 1/3 of the game.
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Great suggestions (some of them seem a little... familiar :crazyeye:).

I too would love to see more modern variety. Korea is a great candidate, as you said, for a fantastic late-era UB. PC Rooms litter that country- could be a great +Happy, +Science building (Maybe -population growth for realism ;)).
Maybe the Hakka gets replaced by an Ikea-esque UB? Maybe something that boosts late game trade routes (once BNW drops, of course) or boosts hammers.
 
I dont agree with some of those suggestions.

Moving the research lab to computers for Korea would be a negative, as they would have slower tech during that time.

England's longbows are one of, if not the most amazing UU in the game. I would rather keep this than have it changed to a redcoat.
 
Fair enough, keep the longbowman then, there are after all only 2 xbows UU. The problem really is that the archer, chariot, spearman, swordsman, knight, lancer and musketman all have a huge number of UUs. It's just really boring.

And Korea wouldn't be that disadvantaged if the Computer Lab literally gave double the science bonus of the research lab. Will help a lot in the tech race, as long as you beeline to it.
 
I think the mongols are pretty stupid myself. A great general UU? I guess it has synergy with keshiks. Keshiks are really awesome, but their unique ability sucks. I have never found a game where it's better to kill city states than to ally with them. Puppets hurt your happiness and remove bonuses from alliances, doesn't seem worth it, not to mention the diplomatic repercussions (everyone always hates when you invade city states).
 
In domination games everyone is going to hate you eventually anyway. In an ideal world every CS would be your permanent ally, but sometimes they just get in the way. And you do still get a bonus for puppeting: more GPT. I'd take the extra GPT over a minor faith bonus or a free combat every billion turns.

Understandable that the playstyle isn't going to appeal to many players, but one Civ needs to be the ultimate war-monger, and Mongols are it. The whole idea is to get Keshiks and destroy everything around you. For that, I think the AI is pretty well designed.
 
Lord Olleus said:
Korea: Get rid of one UUs replace one with a "computer lab" which is a much much stronger research lab but comes later in the game (computers rather than plastics).
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Give a modern building to a civ that fell in 1900. LOL! With your logic we can give the Celts a brewery or Polynesia a tourist resort.
 
Jerman said:
Give a modern building to a civ that fell in 1900. LOL! With your logic we can give the Celts a brewery or Polynesia a tourist resort.
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A civ that fell? What does that even mean? You do realize Korea is still a very real civilization and ethnicity, with one of the most developed economies in the world and a technology sector that produces a huge percentage of worldwide electronic components?

I assume you're referring to Japanese occupation, but that doesn't mean a civilization "fell." By that logic, Russia "fell" in 1922. Civ has never been shy about letting certain areas be lumped together (Iroquois), or extended before (Germany) or after (Siam) their actual existence for the sake of game play...
 
The problem with late game attributes is that they have to be killer or they are worthless. It's nice that Civ V avoided them. A strong bonus to the science race could very well be of use, but Korea's already a science powerhouse. And please never mention the Mall ever again. You may as well make the American unique ability obesity. Not only was the Mall a late bonus, it was a late game happiness bonus. By the late game you've got many ways to deal with happiness, you don't really need another.

Keshiks are so good that the Mongols could go without any UA and still be decent. Khans and the bonus against CS are just icing on a cake made of awesome.
 
[jQUOTE=Lord Olleus;12354954]Fair enough, keep the longbowman then, there are after all only 2 xbows UU. The problem really is that the archer, chariot, spearman, swordsman, knight, lancer and musketman all have a huge number of UUs. It's just really boring.

And Korea wouldn't be that disadvantaged if the Computer Lab literally gave double the science bonus of the research lab. Will help a lot in the tech race, as long as you beeline to it.[/QUOTE]

Korea seriously don't need any extra help with the tech race. Both their uus are strong and make them untouchablle for a very long time.

Just because you have an idea in your head, doesnt make it a good one. Koreas UUs are also among the more unique of the uniques, meaning there is very little else like them, so I dont get why you want to remove either one in favor of a UB which they dont even need.

I'll gues that you think turtle ships are bad, because surely youve never settled any coastal cities or had the AI attack you from the sea. Turtle ships sink almost anything up to oil based navies.
 
I'll drop my 2 cents and say Polynesia as well.

- Because City states often are placed on islands, few islands are available on standard maps. Furthermore, you tend to spawn on a large continent most of the time anyway, so the flavour the UA tries to achieve does not match with its execution.
- The maori warrior is hopeless in every way.
- The maoi statues inhibit growth or production. Because of that, you either lose population, which means science, gold and production, or you lost... production :). On most difficulties, you are better off simply growing/producing normally and try and gain some wonders if you need culture that much.
 
Also, coastal or island cities generally need every available land tile since the abundance of regular ocean tiles only give 2food/1gold. To give up a mine or farm for a small amount of culture makes coastal cities even more unattractive.
 
Oh yea, polynesia is completely rubbish imo.
 
siredgar said:
What Civ do you think is the most poorly designed?

In my opinion, it is the Huns. They are overpowered in the beginning with their UU, the Battery Ram. And WHY OH WHY do they have to copy names of other cities?!!
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The biggest problem with them is that they're not a real civ at all. They are a nomadic people which is a different basic human lifestyle. They never have built any cities. Just like the Mongols.

As far as i know there are three main types of basic human lifestyles:
- hunter-gatherer
- nomadic
- sedentary (civilized)

Civ developers should pay attention to include civs only from really civilized peoples. The others could do as barbarians or whatever...
 
Khagan Bek said:
Huns and Hungarians aren't same people. ("Hungary" word comes from Turkish word On-Ogur meaning "ten" Ogurs) Hungarians arrived modern day Hungary in 9th century with other Turks. but, you are right, borrowing City names from other in-game Civs sucks.
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Well said, man.
And On-Ogur means something like "alliance of ten tribes".
 
Biologist said:
Maybe, but that depends on what they were designed to do. Spain was specifically designed to be a civ reliant on exploration, expansion, and luck. They reflect this very well. India was designed to be a civ reliant on high population and tall cities with a culture focus, but they don't do any better at that than any other civ. Sometimes they are outright worse. Spain, on the other hand, at least benefits hugely when they do hit the natural wonder jackpot. Spain also has solid UUs. This makes them acceptable when they don't get lucky and incredibly good when they do.
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Ops I didn't see this, but I will elaborate on why Spain's design is terrible.

Randomness is an important factor in a game - this much is true. Having a random chance to get a "boost" for the player is also fine, but only when implemented correctly - and in civ 5 Spain is an example of how the "boost" is not implemented correctly.

When by random chance you can get a significant "boost", it has to be done in a way such that the player has at least some control over the random factors. In RPG games, it's usually in the form of being able to kill monsters over and over again to get a higher chance to receive certain powerful and rare loots (or improve the "MF" factor in the Diablo series). If the players do not have control over this, and if the "boost" is significant, for the player it will feel as if achieving certain goals depend on nothing but rolling a die or tossing a coin - it's not fun because the players won't have a sense of control over their fates.

Spain is badly designed because the Spanish player doesn't really have a lot of options to improve his chance of getting the 500g bonus. Sure, building an early scouts (per perhaps 2-3 scouts) helps, but ultimately whether or not you get 500g or 100g depends not only on finding wonders (something a player has some options to improve chances on by using early scouts), but also on whether or not the player is the one who found it first, which the player has basically no control over. It's just plain, dumb luck as to whether or not you get 500g or 100g, because as the player you have absolutely no control over how the AI scouts.
 
Juanholio said:
IMHO the most poorly designed civ for me has to be the Celts. Not from a game mechanic point of view, rather the non-existence of the 'Celts' as a people from history. I suppose nowadays the term is quite established now so that doesn't really bother me. What does is the ceilidh hall (Scottish spelling), Picts (a tribe associated with Scotland), Boudicca of the Iceni (from Eastern England) wearing tartan in a pose in which the whole aesthetic seems to have been stolen from the King Arthur movie (set nr Hadrian's Wall). It just seems like an unfocused mishmash of ideas.

I get they're trying to represent the non-Roman cultures of North-West Europe which makes them a good candidate - but the emphasis on Scotland vs the representation of French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English tribes and the awful overshadow of that movie makes me think it's pretty badly designed.
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I think I see where you're coming from. While I'd prefer the Celts to be in the game rather than not (because Ireland represent yo) I think the implementation of this version is somewhat poor. While any Celt civ is necessarily going to be a mish-mash it seems like this rendition is too motivated by a popular image of Scotland with some misc. elements of other insular celts thrown in. I was almost afraid they'd have Boudicca speak Scottish Gaelic. I'm not too fond of the city list either, which could have been better utilised to give at least some continental Celt representation. The theme also has questionable links to anything Celtic.

Though Ceilidh is usually how it's spelled in English to be fair. A Scottish spelling would require the grave accent.
 
Easy way to fix India would be to give them +10% population growth and 10% of food stores carries over after population growth. Keep the unhappiness penalties for more cities though so they cant abuse this with ICS.
 
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