What Makes a Civ Great?

Howe9

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 30, 2013
Messages
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I've been lurking on the forums for a few months now and was seeing people call certain Civs like the Maya and Ethiopia top-tier and India being the worst, and I was thinking, "how do people judge what makes a Civ better than another?" So I decided to quickly make an account and ask that question. In your opinion, what defines a certain civilization as being better than others?
 
Flexibility, fast and powerful religion (Maya, Ethiopia) and science bonuses (Babylon, Korea) are powerful because they can be customized based on your needs.

And there are civs that get unique, improved versions of stuff that is already powerful and mandatory, like England and China.
 
Flexibility and consistency. If a civ can't perform well in varied starts across different saves, they aren't as good as a civilization that can in my opinion.
 
I don't see why people call India the worst, I guess that's more a meme spreading on the forums, originating from the fact that they are the only ones with a potentially harmful UA, apart from the BNW inclusion of Venice, of course.

Instead of the flashier superpowers, I think the fairly boring ones of Poland and India are those that are fairly useful no matter how you go at the game. India especially, now that happiness gains from buildings have been nerfed their UA can produce a decent amount of free happiness.
 
There are not better or worse civilizations IMO, but you can't play the same way with all of them. Some are more flexible than the others, allowing you to pursue different kinds of victory, that's all.
 
I am a self admitted Civ noob, but I think what makes civ better or worse in comparison to others are two things.

1. How situational the UA is. Look at Denmark - their Viking Fury is great... if you can get just right placement on map with just right amount of coastal cities you can abuse. Otherwise whole game can play out without you ever being able to get any real use out of it. Or Polynesia - on archipelago, continents or terra ability to sail across ocean right away is pretty sweet. On pangea? You won't get much mileage out of that one... Then there are UAs, that will only support a single VC. Bushido will find some use on virtually any map, even if only to deal with barbarians more efficently. But will it support your attempt to flood opponents with manga and anime till they become completly subservient to you (i.e. cultural victory as Japan)? Or will it make for faster Farnsworth moment (science victory)? Nope. On the other hand Solidarity will always be useful, as long as you don't fail your Science 101, by supplying whichever SP you need for your current goals - be it export of enough vodka to make opponents drown themselves (why do you think you get any tourists as Poland? :p) or riding them down with those Winged Hussars or joining Mr. Twardowski*. Similarly Babylon's and Korea's science bonuses can be used to get a tech supporting VC of your choice faster, thus making both those civs unconditionally viable.

Long story short, whenever civs UA forces you to play certain way or requires certain map conditions, for you to get any mileage out of it, it lowers the general strehght of the civ.

2. Unique units/Unique Buildings. Again, those can be more or less useful compared to their standard counterparts or maybe even less useful due to what they replace. Let us again look at example of Japan - fighters see pretty light use in the game, thus making Zeros moderately attractive at best due to how situational they are. Or Norwegian Ski Infantry, whose bonuses are mostly pertinent to tiles that no one will fight for or in, due to their lack of worth. Compare this with China, who gets a maintenance free libraries, that make money as well as science AND the Cho Ko Nu, that are one of strongest ranged units of their period and become only more ridiculous as you upgrade them to Gatlings, MGs and finally bazookas.

I think that restrictivness of UA is more of an issue than UU/UB though, since even unimpressive UAs and UBs at the very least do the job of their standard counterpart and as such can't really hinder you.


*A character in Polish legends, that as a result of deal with the devil ended on the Moon way before Neil Armstrong.
 
I actually love India for super tall play. It can net you like 80 happiness late in the game and it's not impossible to get your capitol to like 80 citizens. :) I'm not sure if monarchy works as normal though (as opposed to netting you 1/4 happiness for each citizen).
 
India isn't bad for going wide either, really. I don't think people generally realize that the UA evens out even on fairly small cities. Growing the cities is a requirement when going wide anyway, so it's actually very good for producing some guaranteed happiness that keeps on increasing.
 
India isn't bad for going wide either, really. I don't think people generally realize that the UA evens out even on fairly small cities. Growing the cities is a requirement when going wide anyway, so it's actually very good for producing some guaranteed happiness that keeps on increasing.

I had done the math at one point with vanilla civ, and at that point, India's UA evened out at 4 or 6 population. At that point, you're basically rolling in happiness and earning lots of golden ages! I haven't played with them since getting the expansions, so I don't know if that has changed. I do think that a small food/growth bonus to help their cities get to that 4 or 6 population would be a nice boost though.
 
I think a lot of "best civ" rankings are focused on multiplayer.

Civs with science and/or economic buffs are the ones that I generally consider to be "better", since those abilities are universally useful. Some Civs, like Germany or America, have very specific bonuses that are very powerful when used correctly, but are only really relevant to certain strategies.

If you want a list of rankings of civs for each victory type, then that would probably be pretty easy for someone to compile. But a universal list of "best civs" is very subjective.
 
I had done the math at one point with vanilla civ, and at that point, India's UA evened out at 4 or 6 population. At that point, you're basically rolling in happiness and earning lots of golden ages! I haven't played with them since getting the expansions, so I don't know if that has changed. I do think that a small food/growth bonus to help their cities get to that 4 or 6 population would be a nice boost though.

It's still six population, I believe.
 
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