An alternative Deity Tier List (a.k.a. 'Don't Forget About Conquest')

Right, or you could walk another archer to clear the empty camp. I think a player is almost better off not even bringing a scout. If the archers near-kill a brute (siting on a camp) down to 1 hp, the temptation is to clear the camp with any companion melee unit. But that spoils the spawn for the next camp!

consentient said:

Yes rating these advantages is extremely difficult, but I opted for the Neutrals as the method of comparison because I think it's even more difficult to be fair with direct comparisons. Quinquerems never come into play, but they are slightly better than Triremes. It's not a reason to play them. People can obviously play what they want. But if they do choose Carthage, the advantages won't be as big as if they choose Spain, on average.

If YOU are comparing the ratings I have given for Rome's UUs with the rating I've given for Harbors, you're missing the point. The point is not that I am saying Ballistas + Legions = Harbors. I'm saying that each civ has the chance to have its advantages over the Neutrals fairly rated on the same system. Only the overall ratings are compared, in order to rank them.

TLDR: I know there are difficulties in the approach I've chosen, but I think there is merit in a numerical comparison and I think it's better than the alternatives, which are sheer conjecture and direct comparison.

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But a ranking of overall ratings is civ-to-civ comparison, even if the ratings were originally generated based on value-over-vanilla-civ. Since it just sums all of the component traits, the system is inappropriately rating everything on the same scale. This is why one can infer from the ratings that, for example, the system thinks that Conquistadors offer Spain a larger advantage over vanilla civ, than say, Paper Makers offer China over neutral civ, which is absurd.

I think that you are consistently awarding points for weather or not a trait is better than vanilla civ, but inconsistently weighting those points to account for weather or not it matters. So yes maybe Quins should get a +1 base rating for being objectively better than Triremes, but it should also receive a x0.0 or x0.0001 modifier because that almost never converts into a real difference in a typical game. Same for Legions, Ballistas, etc.

My ears are open to a weighting system, if anyone should devise one, but quite how this could be done I can't even imagine.

I mean, I've instinctively weighted conquest and science boosts the most, and I've quite obviously weighted UAs that last all-game, like Alex's above those that are for a shorter period, like Pedro's, but beyond instinct and experience, any numerical system is going to be slightly imperfect.

As for Paper Makers, I really don't see why you picked this example. They are quite mediocre, AFAIC.

Paper Makers are +3 gold/city, effectively. I consider that pretty great. By the time you hit Universities, that typically adds up to a free University. There aren't that many early UBs that have a good impact. I mean sure, it's no stele or pyramid, but IMHO it's in the second tier of UBs. /shrug

Only talking tiers is too subjective and even deciding in advance how many tiers there are is arbitrary. The prior tier discussions are fun and passionate, but ultimately are structured so that they will be inconclusive.

consentient said:

My ears are open to a weighting system, if anyone should devise one, but quite how this could be done I can't even imagine.

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I think assigning points against the Neutrals is as an objective approach as one can hope for. As you point out, since UA is unbounded but UU/UB are 0-5, you have incorporated a weighting system already. Maybe someone could make the case that the UA point values should be doubled as compared to UU (or even a higher multiplier as Soffacet suggests), but that wouldn’t have much effect on the overall rankings.

The point system is something I have been thinking about since you started this thread, but I have been holding off asking until now. What is your intuitive sense for the point value of dirt and player skill? We all know that dirt is more important than civ choice and that player skill is much more important than both of those together.

On this scale, I think a lucky map could be as much as 25 points. So, for everyone, a very lucky start with a poor civ is still a much easier game than an average map with, say, Poland. Likewise, player skill is probably in the neighborhood of 50 points. So maybe with Poland and a lucky start I could take on consentient playing Venice with bad dirt?

Multipliers

OK, let's rank the starting region from 1-100 on a theoretical multiplier scale where the number represents the number of times easier it is to win.

The upper limit is probably above 10 but below 50, roughly.

Percentage

This creates a percentile which is, I think, impossible to square with any other system of rankings, such as for the civ advantages.

Player skill

The same scale for player skill is even more difficult because you could put the best Civ 5 player in the world in the seat and he would win at a rate more than 10,000 times the rate of a piss-poor player, even assuming that player did not have physical defects to his brain and/or neural system.

Log scale

So that makes these scales effectively logarithmic, and while I am poor at the execution (calculation) of mathematical systems, my training in formal logic gives me an understanding of how they actually work in theory.

So with a good player, you will see a greater share than even 98% player skill, 1.99% dirt and 0.01% chosen civ. For this reason, I understand why some posters think there is little value in a Tier list for civs.

Reflexive

But for a bad player, the player portion drops, and the dirt and chosen civ go up. So we have a reflexive scaling element, too.

It's like how the balance of what a person spends their money is affected on in a boom compared with a recession. In the worst depressions, people spent less than 1% of their money on rent and landlords understood because everything else was so expensive. [Darn those central bankers and what they did to countries like Zimbabwe, and what they are trying to do to the country in which I currently reside (the Czech Republic)!]

- - -

Also, much as I appreciate the gesture and compliments to my play skill, I am really not that great a player. The whole reason I post my thoughts on Deity play is to help others follow in my footsteps so they can learn how to beat the game consistently, but I do not wish to be held up as an effigy because there are players who are better than me by orders of magnitude. Also, I'd never play as Venice, even if you paid me.

[EDIT: I also think that something that people miss about this Tier list is that it also contains strategy advice, too! All the contributors to the discussion are pointing out how best to play each civ while they discuss them!]

consentient said:

2. Pictish warriors. A spearman (Lancer path) who gains faith from kills and has a wandering combat bonus. No movement cost to pillage, but how often do you pillage with spearmen anyway? One unit on its own is gonna get mashed by the 5 or 6 units at least the AI will have floating around their city. And why would you build a load of spearmen? How much better than a normal Spearman does this make it? UU rating = 2/5 (if I'm generous)

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I'm by no means an expert player, but I think that you aren't giving these guys as much as much credit as they deserve. For one thing, that extra faith synergizes well with the Celtic UA and can make a difference of several turns in getting early prophets/religious buildings if you use them to clear barbarian camps and finish off weakened units. Free pillaging can help get them into place in one piece and/or just to more quickly diminish the enemy's production/growth capabilities. And don't discount their combat bonus outside of friendly territory, which makes them almost as strong as swordsmen (edit: before promotions) but (a) capable of being produced earlier (b) at a lower hammer cost (c) without requiring iron, (d) while also being stronger against mounted units.

They also really shine when you upgrade them to lancers. Like you, I'm not a fan of lancers in ordinary circumstances, but one thing that they do have going for them is 4 move. PWs retain the no-movement pillaging and wandering combat bonus when you upgrade them, and as lancers they make a great force for wrecking the enemy's improvements while you get your main army into place. Between their strength against mounted units and combat bonus outside of friendly territory, anything that can reach them shouldn't be capable of doing any real damage if you're careful, and you can just pillage it away on the next turn anyway. By the time I'm taking a second city from an enemy civ as the Celts, their units will typically already be suffering from major penalties due to pillaging.

And it's a smaller consideration considering the high-level playstyle you're talking about, but they'll be indispensable if your game lasts long enough to see helicopter gunships in play. Six move + no terrain costs + no pillage cost = an empire in ruins before it knows what hit it.

I still wouldn't give them more than 3 out of 5 with the power of some of the other UUs in mind, but you certainly don't have to be generous to give them 2.

I think Moai should score higher. My reasoning is Polynesia, Brazil, and maybe France (I don't have the track record with them that I do the other two) are the civs that can win Deity culture victory without building a single Renaissance theming wonder. You don't build them everywhere right away, but a coastal cow with a Moai on it and one next to it is equivalent to Mt. Kilo. Since you get at least 2f or 1f1h under a Moai, working a single tile really helps border growth and is arguably equivalent to having an additional culture specialist slot in each expo.

Since the OP mentioned explainin the strategy behind the argument, I'll outline how I win with them. I'd imagine a really strong player who can get hotels up super early could post impressive win times using Moai for tourism. In essance, you play a fast science game through internet/airports. You build Moai out a little before you get hotels. If your science is strong, you go full out right then. If not, then keep valuable food tiles worked/improved until you're about to hit the internet. I use 3 cities/tradition/NC, looking for 3 coastal spots with good science potential. I use all the usual stuff, food ITRs etc, to grow them strong. I then try to find 1-2 more spots, sometimes settled in the awkward 1 tile off of the ocean location, where I can spam Moai on bumpy peninsulas. You do everything else you'd do for culture games, like go for a strong religion if you can get a strong pantheon, try to own culture city-states, pick Aesthetics and max out your tourism multipliers, and bomb musicians on the culture leader. Each GW gives 8 or 12 (edit: mistakenly had 16) tourism after all buildings are done, depending on location. Theming bonuses grow that. 3 Moai at an average of 3 culture give 18 or 36 tourism. Say your capital/NVC city has only 6 Moai, at 2, 3, and 3 in each direction. That's still 64 tourism. Say you only have a measly 15 more in your remaining cities, average of 3 culture, you're still getting 90 tourism from them. If you are agressive with your settling and aren't afraid of a DOW to prevent forward settling (obviously Atilla/Shaka throw a wrench in a peaceful CV anyway), you can easily build 25-30 of them.

The synergy is that you speed your science by not pumping hammers into Sistine/Uffizi or opening Exploration for the Louvre. Also, the tourism comes from worker turns, not hammers, and at a point when workers don't have anything else high priority. The embarkation bonus doesn't really add anything at this point, but the extra early trading on continents and some fractals does help buy science buildings and the earlier contact speeds discounts on techs.

I would hop on to the previous post to say how amazing a Moai on cow/sheep/horse is if you have an inland one (or more) with a pasture and build Stables (or iron/Forge). So you get the extra culture AND production. I have had ridiculous cities with like 3-5 Maoi sheep. The flexibility to build them on any resource makes them very powerful, IMO. (Of course, snaky/chunky coastlines make Maoi shine, so very map-dependent.)

As far as how they help you war, they get you through any policy tree faster, and with Stables/Forge can help you build units/infrastructure faster. Cool thread, Consentient!

Also, why is Kasbah 0/5? Sure, it's not the best improvement and it sucks on flat desert (because flat desert sucks to begin with), but Kasbahs turn desert hills into Petra hills and add 1 gold yield, which is great considering how you dont just get gold from terrain in BNW (unlike G&K where gold just lay on the ground). Desert hill with Kasbah is 1 food, 3 hammers, and 1 gold. That's 5-yield tile, and it is better than 3 yield mine which turns into 4-yield with chemistry. You can also build Kasbahs on flood plains. That's 3 food, 1 hammer, and 1 gold. Not terrible either, since you get more out of a tile compared to a regular farm. Sure, 1 less food can add up over several farms, but you get gold and production from otherwise only farmable tiles.

I will try and test the Moais next time someone sends me a decent map-pack free Polynesia map on Deity. The last one (DCL #10) was a fricken' monster (still don't know how you won that one, Nige!). But from what you're saying it doesn't seem any less situational than I thought it was, and although it can give a decent amount of tourism late on (assuming your maths are decent, which I can't exactly comment on), I wouldn't imagine this makes it much easier to win (all VCs considered). But I will test and give it second thoughts.

As for Kasbahs, I'm afraid I'd prefer farms and mines. I don't want 1 food tiles. I want 3/4 food tiles unless they can give me 4 production later on. I'm much less inclined to revise my ranking of them compared with Moais.

consentient said:

I will try and test the Moais next time someone sends me a decent map-pack free Polynesia map on Deity. The last one (DCL #10) was a fricken' monster (still don't know how you won that one, Nige!). But from what you're saying it doesn't seem any less situational than I thought it was, and although it can give a decent amount of tourism late on (assuming your maths are decent, which I can't exactly comment on), I wouldn't imagine this makes it much easier to win (all VCs considered). But I will test and give it second thoughts.

As for Kasbahs, I'm afraid I'd prefer farms and mines. I don't want 1 food tiles. I want 3/4 food tiles unless they can give me 4 production later on. I'm much less inclined to revise my ranking of them compared with Moais.

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The math for Moai is pretty straightforward.

1 culture + 1 culture per adjacent Moai. It's not unreasonable to get 9 culture from Moai in an average coastal city. If you have a large island or a ridiculous peninsula, it's not impossible to have significantly more.

9 culture = x tourism, depending on what you have in the city

if hotel, 9 culture = 4.5 tourism

if hotel + airport = 9 tourism

if hotel + airport + NVC = 18 tourism (9 base * (1+100%))

if hotel + airport + NVC + Internet = 27 tourism (9 base * (1+200%))

add in International Games, etc ...

A big Moai city with NVC, hotel and airport ... it would not be crazy to see 64 tourism as the poster noted.

I'll fix my first post when I can, because I overvalued the NVC. I presented a kind of worst case for Moai.

Take the Louvre. You get 8 tourism from GW, 8 from Hotel/Airport, 8 from NVC, and 16 from theming. That's 80 tourism with the Internet. If I can get Sistine and Louvre with the Vanilla civ, I can usually win CV with Freedom and some landmarks. So Sistine is 4, 4, 4, and 8 for 40 tourism. That's 120 from the two, plus everything else you can pull together.

Now take 30 Moai, with a culture distribution of 5-1, 4-3, 3-18, and 2-8. I think that's achieveable more often than not. That's 87 culture for 174 tourism, and 7 at 3 each in your NVC city gIves another 21x2 for 42 more, or 216 total. I presented a kind of worst case earlier. Now consider you didn't have to anything special to get an early GE or have a strong production start to hammer in wonders.

I should add in the tourism from the base culture of the wonder, but all the GW from the two wonders except for one would be in non-NVC museums. My point is this tourism is something a vanilla civ can't have. Your cost for 30 Moai is only about 30 food/hammers until fertilizer and chemistry, and you should have the Internet researched, or close to, when you finish building them all.

adcarrymaokai said:

Also, why is Kasbah 0/5? Sure, it's not the best improvement and it sucks on flat desert (because flat desert sucks to begin with), but Kasbahs turn desert hills into Petra hills and add 1 gold yield, which is great considering how you dont just get gold from terrain in BNW (unlike G&K where gold just lay on the ground). Desert hill with Kasbah is 1 food, 3 hammers, and 1 gold. That's 5-yield tile, and it is better than 3 yield mine which turns into 4-yield with chemistry. You can also build Kasbahs on flood plains. That's 3 food, 1 hammer, and 1 gold. Not terrible either, since you get more out of a tile compared to a regular farm. Sure, 1 less food can add up over several farms, but you get gold and production from otherwise only farmable tiles.

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Kasbah has that problem of spreading itself too thin, it's basically a cheap replacement for Petra , in the DCL, I really wanted to build farms/mines over kasbahs

stormtrooper412 said:

Kasbah has that problem of spreading itself too thin, it's basically a cheap replacement for Petra , in the DCL, I really wanted to build farms/mines over kasbahs

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The DCL had a crappy desert. I don't even think there were desert hills, but Kasbah on flood plains is not that bad. And a hill with Kasbah gives as much production as a mine until Chemistry, and even then it still has more overall yield than a mine from extra food and gold.

You know, you can get extra science from trading posts on jungle, but you build Brazilwood camps as Brazil, and yet Brazilwood camp is not 0/5.

adcarrymaokai said:

You know, you can get extra science from trading posts on jungle, but you build Brazilwood camps as Brazil, and yet Brazilwood camp is not 0/5.

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Because it gives a ton of culture + science + gold, without eliminating food.

2F, 2C, 2S, 2G tiles make the game so much easier to win than Kasbahs!

And a trading post on jungle with rationalism policy is 2f 3s 2g. 7 yield vs 8 yield Brazilwood. Kasbah on hill gives 1 food and 1 gold on top of 3 hammers, so it's 2 extra yield up until chemistry. And when you build it on a desert hill, it adds food to it. I do not argue that it is amazing, but 0/5? 0 means it is absolutely useless.

The gold cannot make up for the food and hammers that are lost, that's why it's not worth it. Sure it's good for plain desert tiles, but those should not be worked anyway, and the city is located badly if it has too many.

consentient said:

The gold cannot make up for the food and hammers that are lost, that's why it's not worth it. Sure it's good for plain desert tiles, but those should not be worked anyway, and the city is located badly if it has too many.

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Kasbahs aren't great, but they're clearly, clearly better than mines on dry Desert hills. I don't think you've provided any sort of coherent argument against this... because I don't think it's possible for ANYONE to provide a coherent argument against this. I'm sure you're an experienced enough Civ player to realize that 1f3h1g is better than 4h (and MUCH better than 3h).

It's ok to just admit that possibly you haven't gotten every single rating right on the first try. Nobody is going to think less of you. But if you show that you'd rather double-down on incoherent statements than seriously listen to feedback, it throws the whole exercise into question.