Best Designed Civ Elimination Thread

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 20
Babylon - 8
Brazil - 18
Byzantium - 18
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 20
Maya - 20
Mongols - 22
Morocco - 20
Ottoman - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 20
Russia - 14
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

I'll go ahead and bite on upvoting Indonesia, if only because I'm playing my current game with them and finding them to be much more fun and interesting than I expected.I haven't even made use of the UA yet, I've been conquering so much with the Kris, and I don't find the negative promotions awful in practice - if a Kris gets Enemy Blade or Evil Spirits I just throw him to the front line and spam another one when he dies. A well-played Indonesia is fearsome, and I think there's some merit to the idea that maybe we don't want super-synergized civs in the future. Better to find clever exploits than to have them spelled out, right?

The Celts, meanwhile, are only even halfway at being scattershot. The UA gets faith but stymies development and movement, The UU bonus isn't worth the early warmongering penalty in most situations, and the UB - probably the best unique that the civ has - comes late and outside of the sensible strategy based on what the other two uniques do. So there's no synergy, but also no Indonesian lack-of-synergy between powerful uniques. It's just missing the thing that makes it worthwhile, in my opinion.

Petiscator said:

I'm not convinced. I understand the diversity idea, but, in my opinion, a good design means that the civilization has at least some synergy. Take the case of Brazil, for example. Their UI helps you get tourism, that is doubled with the UA, which is helped to be achieved by the UU. Or Assyria, whose UA and UU are greatly tied together and are also backed up by a UB on the same side of the coin. Then, there are cases like Byzantium, whose UA is very disconected from the UUs, or Indonesia, whose 3 bonuses point to different sides. They might be powerful bonuses, but the fact that they are so isolated means to me their design is not good. I wish there was a way to make the UA, UU and UB work together, but that's very hard. I understand the thing about diversity, but it just seems like a sack of three fat bonuses. Far from an optimal design.

Click to expand...

You make so many assumptions. Firstly, synergy is just another form of power, and needs to be balanced as such. Synergy isn't special free power that doesn't get considered. Besides, this thread isn't about power. If you're talking about design principles, then there's nothing stopping you from balancing three synergistic elements with three elements that work independently. Synergy implies an easy theme to point to and a roadmap to follow, but neither of those things are necessary positives. If you think about the idea of diversity a bit more, it might occur to you. What synergy has in thematic resonance, it often loses in a simplistic expression of purpose that drains the energy from the concept because it's so plain.

Abraxis said:

There is no unity in their diversity because they're opposites -.-

If their unique features did have cohesion, the flavour would be in what those features yielded when combined, as is the case with all the other civs. The only way to create a true sense of diversity in this format is to create uniques that don't coordinate into something greater. If it were the case, tell me, how would that would be different from every other civ?

Click to expand...

It's a tough concept to work with, I'll grant you that. Still, you said the motto is "Unity in Diversity". I think you need to reflect both, and right now Indonesia is close, but still a mismash of stuff, which I don't think is good.

I think my Kris swordsman fix would be an example of showing this. This is a way that you take 1 UU, make it different from each other, and then have them work together. The way the Kris swordsman is right now just shows diversity, but it's hard to plan around the diversity, so there's no real unity in the unit. The Candi is also a good example of this concept, as it provides a bonus for having multiple religions in a city, rather than the one you usually want. With the river requirement removed, I actually really like the Candi the way it is now.

The units themselves do a decent job, but between them, there's not much there. Now, yes, the goal shouldn't be to go for one victory condition, but to create a good, solid empire with a lot of stuff. I don't know how I would fix Indonesia keeping the UA/UU intact, but I'm going to try my best to create a custom Indonesia with unity and diversity, based around the Candi.

Costal bias
UA: Doubles religious pressure entering in to the city from trade routes. Can buy any great person with faith upon entering the industrial era (Great people scale normally though)
UB: Candi
UU: A trireme replacement, maybe +1 movement/sight? You can change this for historical accuracy, but this is supposed to protect trade routes and give you better early game costal scouting. Alternatively, if there's historical support for this, you could have it enter ocean tiles at a reduced speed.

The idea here is that you can still be very flexible, but you're playing the diversity faith game. You're going to be getting a lot of great people late game, and because costs increase, you're going to be getting a lot of different great people (diversity). You don't need to found a religion, but you can use religions better than anyone else, and you can use trade routes to your advantage to get lots of faith with the candi. I think this might be a decent example of a civ with a unifying theme of diversity that still has a coherent theme and strategy to it.

Kintara said:

You make so many assumptions. Firstly, synergy is just another form of power, and needs to be balanced as such. Synergy isn't special free power that doesn't get considered. Besides, this thread isn't about power. If you're talking about design principles, then there's nothing stopping you from balancing three synergistic elements with three elements that work independently. Synergy implies an easy theme to point to and a roadmap to follow, but neither of those things are necessary positives. If you think about the idea of diversity a bit more, it might occur to you. What synergy has in thematic resonance, it often loses in a simplistic expression of purpose that drains the energy from the concept because it's so plain.

Click to expand...

Perhaps. I'm not talking about the power that comes from the synergy, but about the synergy itself. I feel better when I play a civ that works with itself. One thing about Indonesia that bugs me a lot is the Kris Swordsman. Unlike most people, I actually like their randomness, but why should I warry at that time of the game? Shouldn't I be exploring oceans to find some islands, training settlers to build some colonies or trying to found a religion? It seems a bit conflicting. You might answer that I should use Indonesia's bonuses to adapt myself to the game, and I agree, but I didn't want to miss one of their bonuses (I'm not sure I was clear with this sentence, it is a bit late here and I'm sleepy, so I'm sorry if I'm not making sense). I like Indonesia, but I wish that their bonuses were a bit more conected. It is a nut very hard to crack and I'd need to play it many more times in order to get it, I think. What is, in your opinion, a good design? I find it a hard concept to define.

Well I was trying to avoid this as it's bound to be offensive at worse and a total disservice at best, but fine. Let me summarize the history and culture of an entire peoples over the last 1000+ years in a single post.

There's a bunch of islands. Each with people doing their own thing. Big old stompy guy comes along and says
"hey, you there, you're Indonesian now",
"무엇?" they say in response.
So big stompy guy hits them really hard until they agree they are in fact Indonesian.

After several successful instances of this, over many isolated islands (all of whom remain relatively isolated post-conquest), big stompy guy finds himself with a bunch of people whom can't speak to eachother, who's interests conflict with one another, and who simply can't cooperate as a cohesive whole. But because he's awesome, he manages anyways.
This is the challenge the game is trying to recreate for Indonesia.

How exactly do you not agree that having uniques which do not have any cohesion is putting you, the player, in the exact same situation Indonesia has always been in? The Nation is defined by its lack of cohesion, stop focusing on the "unity" because I'm telling you, you don't get it, and that's okay because National Identity is not something that should be summarized or understood from a single paragraph.

The lack of cohesion is litterally what they are. So stop saying that this is what makes them poorly designed.

Petiscator said:

Perhaps. I'm not talking about the power that comes from the synergy, but about the synergy itself. I feel better when I play a civ that works with itself. One thing about Indonesia that bugs me a lot is the Kris Swordsman. Unlike most people, I actually like their randomness, but why should I warry at that time of the game? Shouldn't I be exploring oceans to find some islands, training settlers to build some colonies or trying to found a religion? It seems a bit conflicting. You might answer that I should use Indonesia's bonuses to adapt myself to the game, and I agree, but I didn't want to miss one of their bonuses (I'm not sure I was clear with this sentence, it is a bit late here and I'm sleepy, so I'm sorry if I'm not making sense). I like Indonesia, but I wish that their bonuses were a bit more conected. It is a nut very hard to crack and I'd need to play it many more times in order to get it, I think. What is, in your opinion, a good design? I find it a hard concept to define.

Click to expand...

It's not easy. For instance, I don't particularly think that using every element of the civ in every game is essential. I don't even have a problem with conflict. Conflict is necessary to keep my interest. That's why playing as Indonesia on a Pangaea map isn't stupid, but merely a chance to adapt, as you say.

What makes a good design needs to be considered in context. I haven't tried to come up with much of an opinion yet, so I don't want to pretend like I'm laying down the law. But, generally speaking, I actually think the diversity discussion is very relevant (and it's probably why I'm not jumping in with a quick opinion). I want my civs to operate in a diverse range of ways. I don't want them all to be obvious. I don't want them all to be targeted towards a particular style of play. I want all of the above and more. Which makes eliminating individual civs difficult.

Anyway, I'm not going to stop anyone from using almost anything as criteria, even power stuff. It's just kind of impossible to disentangle. Still, it's worth thinking about the whole, I suppose.

Hmm, from a historical perspective, I can see where you're coming from. From a gameplay perspective though, I'm still not convinced that it translates well. In my attempt, I was going for something that kind of approximates an Indonesia as a late game diverse and unified civ, but I can see how that may not be completely accurate historically.

Hmm... One problem is that their UA gives you incentive to settle new cities on various islands, but the Kris swordsman was used to take over these resource cities in real life. In an attempt to get both kinds of accuracy, we now have two competing strategies in the same timeslot (scouting coasts for cities vs conquering the region). I'm not sure how to resolve this though, as you can't just create the spice islands out of nowhere, ripe to be conquered.

If you're going to keep using real life as a basis for your arguments, I urge you to at the very least read up on Indonesia's history. They did not just conquer everything and it's not that straight-forward. I don't appreciate you burdening me with teaching you thousands of years of philosophy and history in order to continue this argument. I told you that was a basic idea of their history, don't use it as a standard so literally.

All right, that's fair. Clearly I don't know enough about Indonesian history to actually design a good Indonesia, as all I know is what I've read today and what you've told me. Still, even if the country is accurately a complete mess, I don't think having a complete mess is all that great a gameplay decision. Anyway, Indonesia wouldn't be my next choice to downvote, although I don't like the design enough to ever upvote them either.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 20
Babylon - 8
Brazil - 18
Byzantium - 18
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 16
Maya - 20
Mongols - 22
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 14
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

I feel any civ that has better science is going to be imbalanced because science is so important. Imbalance is a symptom of bad design choices, so some civs are poorly designed and weak, others are too poorly designed and too strong.

While the Romans are rather bland I like them for it. They allow early conquest, but also get a boost to building their empire's infrastructure.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 20
Babylon - 8
Brazil - 18
Byzantium - 18
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 16
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 14
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

Russia is so godawful it's rediculous, a early game UB with a late game UU and possibly the most boring UA out there.
It makes some vague historical sense but there is nothing Russia really excels in or lend itself to any strategy you might want, zero synergy.

Mongolians are possibly the funnest wars you will ever have, it's too bad Keshiks don't upgrade into something that shares the promotion path, but it makes a lot of sense considering how powerful but short lived mongolian dominance was, early game take down some city states and when Keshiks kick in reign supreme over whoever you might want, perfect synergy between the UA, UU and UGP, even though the current state of patching doesn't favor them, that's just Firaxis inadvertently undoing some of the good work they've done.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 20
Babylon - 8
Brazil - 20 I think Brazil is certainly one of those with great synergies if only for the fact that everything of its uniques aid in CV.
Byzantium - 18
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12 Science UA, with two UUs that don't even help in SV. True the UA is fricking awesome, but the civ design is just terrible.
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10 the guy above me forgot to remove points for Russia
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22 - Very nicely designed UA that works if you work it, it also scales over the game as units get higher combat strengths. UB is the only thing in the game that makes lakes viable tiles and a meh UU but at least it keeps its promotions. Overall very nice design and fairly unique.
Babylon - 4 - Probably the strongest civ in the game but nothing about it is designed to make you do anything different.
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 18
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

I'm not sure I would even call the Jaguar "meh." With the way you're likely to be playing as Monty, the Jaguars let you clear out barbs for culture while not having to spend precious hammers spamming them quite so much. Pretty good synergy, I think.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22
Babylon - 4
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 14
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 20
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 24
Zulu - 22

-4 to Byzantium again.

No synergy whatsoever between the UA and (crappy) unique units, which come at the time where you need to really try to get a religion. Not to mention none of the UU's fits the era.

It would've been SO easy to make Byzantium right, like making Cataphract a slower but tankier Knight replacement unlocked at Theology (at this point you should have a religion already), as well as changing Dromon into a unique Galeass. But no, instead they gave Byzantium units at the exact same time as Ancient Greece...

Nothing in Byzantium cooperates with each other - they're just different elements glued together, creating a design mess.



+2 to Venice. Synergy is strong in this one. THe UA makes you a trading superpower, but takes away the possibility to settle peacefully - this is where MoV comes in, ensuring you can get some cities of your own. If you took the MoV from Venice, it'd all fall apart.

Without the UA's restrictions, the MoV's Steal CS option wouldn't be as good either - I, personally, would almost always wait until I got Commerce's +100% gold per GM mission, and then get 4000-6000 gold and insta ally unless I really needed a foothold or wanted to deny it.

Great Galeass is very fitting (not to mention the majority of your TR's should be naval, and it protects them. It can also help you conquer someone unfortunate enough to have a coastal capital loaded with wonders), although unfortunately its' weakness combined with the fact it can only be produced in your Capital (and for some reason it costs more production) weakens the synergy.


The elements are all fitting each other fine. If Great Galeass was buffed so it could fulfill its' role better, it'd all be perfect.






ALSO, Jaguar is not meh. Three free great promotions (two of which you CAN'T get any other way) on a unit you can spam and upgrade into super soldiers until Metal Casting?

Kintara said:

It's not easy. For instance, I don't particularly think that using every element of the civ in every game is essential. I don't even have a problem with conflict. Conflict is necessary to keep my interest. That's why playing as Indonesia on a Pangaea map isn't stupid, but merely a chance to adapt, as you say.

What makes a good design needs to be considered in context. I haven't tried to come up with much of an opinion yet, so I don't want to pretend like I'm laying down the law. But, generally speaking, I actually think the diversity discussion is very relevant (and it's probably why I'm not jumping in with a quick opinion). I want my civs to operate in a diverse range of ways. I don't want them all to be obvious. I don't want them all to be targeted towards a particular style of play. I want all of the above and more. Which makes eliminating individual civs difficult.

Anyway, I'm not going to stop anyone from using almost anything as criteria, even power stuff. It's just kind of impossible to disentangle. Still, it's worth thinking about the whole, I suppose.

Click to expand...

I agree. The problem with this concept is most probably the lack of a universal criteria. I, for one, used synergy to determine the quality of design, so Indonesia's looked a bit on the bad side. Without that criteria, any civilization can have a good or a bad design depending on the point of view. I enjoy playing as Indonesia, though, and will sure rethink my opinions on them.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22
Babylon - 4
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 14 This is a tough decision. Before I started this thread I didn't fully realize how good/well designed this game was. There aren't many civs with huge flaws, and I'll leave Babylon for someone else to destroy. I love the UA, but the UUs are boring and do nothing to help out the UA. There are too many games where Byzantium doesn't have a UA (and is stuck with terrible UUs), and even if it does, getting a religion later means you still could have a worse religion and a worse faith production than any of the other religioners.
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 22 If nobody will vote up the Incans, than I will. That's a big reason I started this thread, because the Incans have an awesome civ design, even if they are less powerful than the big 3 UAs. The terrace farms maybe should be a little less hit and miss, and the slinger is a weak point, but the UA itself is very fun and awesome to use. It's a very active UA, which I enjoy a lot.
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 22
Zulu - 22

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22
Babylon - 4
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 10
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 22
India - 20
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 20
Venice - 24
Zulu - 22

Counting Enrico's vote.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22
Babylon - 4
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 10
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 22
India - 16
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 16
Sweden - 22
Venice - 24
Zulu - 22

India - Their speciality is that there's a lot of them? I guess India got shafted pretty badly by being a vanilla civ, something religious feels like it would've been a much better fit. Its not terribly fun to play either when its so difficult to get any land before the AIs take all the decent spots.

Sweden - This is mostly for the UA, I love the idea of diplomatic games actually centered around dealing with and manipulating AIs, not just buying every city-state with your endless cash Venice-style. The UUs are solid enough too to give the civ a nice bit of diversity at a crucial stage of the game.

Arabia - 20
Assyria - 22
Austria - 18
Aztec - 22
Babylon - 4
Brazil - 20
Byzantium - 10
Carthage - 20
Celts - 18
China - 22
Danes - 16
Dutch - 22
Egypt - 16
England - 20
Ethiopia - 20
France - 20
Germany - 22
Greece - 16
Huns - 22
Inca - 22
India - 12 I've never played India, purely cause it doesn't motivate me at all. India's UA basically takes away happiness early game when you need it most, and gives it back to you late game when you need it least. You end up with a lot of extra happiness with nowhere to expand.
Indonesia - 16
Iroquois - 20
Japan - 22
Korea - 12
Maya - 20
Mongols - 24
Morocco - 20
Ottomans - 20
Persia - 20
Poland - 20
Polynesia - 20
Portugal - 22
Rome - 22
Russia - 10
Shoshone - 22
Siam - 22
Songhai - 16
Spain - 18 I love spain's design in its UA especially.It's basically just expand and explore as far out as possible to discover NWs, use the money to buy settlers to settle the NW's then try to hold a ridiculously stretched out empire with the bonuses the NW's grant you, which can be awesome at times. Conquistador very fun to use on terra maps as well, you can see really far, kill barbs and once you spot that NW in the new world, no need to wait, just plop your city down right there.
Sweden - 22
Venice - 24
Zulu - 22