Worst civilization incl. BNW

Yeah, peaceful Denmark will suffer for the most part. It's just that the way I see it, one part of the UA used to be actually somewhat Unique along with the Ottoman Sipahi. This is now technically nullified thanks to the Landsknecht.

The UA still works quite well if you warmonger like Ziad wrote, it's just that perhaps Denmark should get one little extra thing in their pillaging, making their pillaging just a little bit more powerful, so it stays with their playstyle. Perhaps a little experience on pillage or 50% more gold from pillaging?

Because let's not forget; Pyramids+Citizenship equals repairing improvements in one turn. This can potentionally lead to pillaging a tile, have your worker repair it, and pillaging it again! No movement cost involved and you're 50HP stronger and got some extra gold in your coffers. Heck, with enough workers, all of your units could have a March promotion without having it!

Doktor Vic Tim said:

Because let's not forget; Pyramids+Citizenship equals repairing improvements in one turn. This can potentionally lead to pillaging a tile, have your worker repair it, and pillaging it again! No movement cost involved and you're 50HP stronger and got some extra gold in your coffers. Heck, with enough workers, all of your units could have a March promotion without having it!

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Though, I find that part of me dying inside when I take advantage of that particular exploit cancels out the benefit somewhat.

I bet that doesnt work on marathon...

It also seems the word " worst " is not too clear. To me it's India because they are just boring. Their UA just force you to settle a few cities.

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Babylon is the worst. You get a huge benefit at the second tech you research and then you have to work hard to stay awake for the rest of the game because there's pretty much nothing else happening strategy wise. The one decision you get to make during the whole game related to your UA/UB/UU combo is where to settle the Great Scientist. Exciting.

From that elimination thread, I like this summary which seems to salvage results which are otherwise plainly skewed.

jlim201 said:

When the elimination threads were going on, I averaged all the results, (multiplying buildings (X3), improvements (X8) and abilities (x1.3) so they all match up with units). So basically according to all the other elimination threads this is the overall civ ranking.

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Looking for breaks in the numbers, he has the top six as: Zulu, China, England, Arabia, Siam, and Poland. With only a one point difference between each, so pretty much a 6-way tie.

There is a four point break to the next group of 36 (!) civs, each of which is 0/1/2 points difference to the next, until you get to the end. Talk about balance!

At the very bottom, a 5 point spread (quite significant, considering) to the worst civilization incl. BNW: Japan.

Granted, this is all still pretty subjective, but I think it has good face validity. I would love to see raw numerical scores rather than rank (since ranking can mask big gaps). That might expose some additional logical places to draw distinctions between top and bottom tier civs.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

Huh, that's very interesting. I'll try that out in the future. I mean, I've only consistently played at Emperor, and won't you suffer warmonger hate from everyone when you start warring?

Though there's always bribing people to attack each other.

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Declaring war has a small diplo penalty. If you're at good relations with a civilization, you don't even get a negative modifier show up so the AI essentially ignores it.

It really is worth it to train a few soldiers and stomp a neighbor into giving you tribute. Denmark excels at this as pillaging counts as a loss to the AI and you can do it way faster given their UA.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

The UA still works quite well if you warmonger like Ziad wrote, it's just that perhaps Denmark should get one little extra thing in their pillaging, making their pillaging just a little bit more powerful, so it stays with their playstyle. Perhaps a little experience on pillage or 50% more gold from pillaging?

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Honestly that seems like a good idea. Pillaging is already powerful though. You can get around 100g a turn if you do it right.

Calouste said:

Babylon is the worst. You get a huge benefit at the second tech you research and then you have to work hard to stay awake for the rest of the game because there's pretty much nothing else happening strategy wise. The one decision you get to make during the whole game related to your UA/UB/UU combo is where to settle the Great Scientist. Exciting.

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Perhaps someone should make a mod so the moment you place that first academy, the victory screen pops up.

I have never played with the Byzantines (other than fall of Rome), but it's hard to argue that their UA isn't the weakest. Dromons and Caliphracts are a nice consolation though.

I love how citing "America got knocked out early" is base for the list being "trash" : America IS a pretty poor civ. They've gotten some buffs over the ages but they're still one of the least interesting civs to play as.
The 5 civs I named, 3 of them are on the bottom of the Deity Tier List, the other two are just one tier higher (Along with India, Japan and USA...hmm.). But India can play a powerful game with some HUGE well-focussed cities without happiness issues, Japan's culture game has drastically improved and Samurai are not to be trifled with, and America does have a pretty powerful midgame UU that prevents it from being bottom of the barrel.

Denmark can do raid-warmongering very well, yes. Except, that's not the most viable strategy in the game by a long stretch. I love how everyone asking for the worst civ tends to rabidly defend Denmark whenever their name gets dropped.

As for that list that gives points to UU/UB/UA...cute. But a poor list. It's about synergy, and in some cases, a simply crazy good UA (Babylon, Korea) can cancel out poor/mediocre UU (Bowman, Turtle Ship). It's why the Zulu aren't considered god tier. Oh they're good at what they do, very much so. The Impi is a fantastic unit, the Ikanda is a great building and their ability is pretty good...but that doesn't mean they're as strong as Korea.

Poland is both the best and the worst.

Best, because its so damn strong

Worst, because the UA lacks any sense of flavour to me, the UU is an upgrade of a unit you normally only want a few of at most, and the Ducal Stable just dull dull dull. I'm sure others will disagree, but I rarely find Poland fun to play.

I've experienced this too...though not with the master-pillager denmark. Pillaging the crap out of a neighboring empire can throw them out of the game completely and can be easy to do. Then they give you 50 gpt or more just to STOP! It's great! It's the one consolation I've found to the fact that conquest warring is basically a lost cause before the medieval unless you are alone with your victim. As far as warmonger hate, you get a bit for starting the war, but not nearly the amount you'd get for taking even ONE city, it's kinda ridiculous.

Loucypher said:

I love how citing "America got knocked out early" is base for the list being "trash" : America IS a pretty poor civ.

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Easy: Two UU that are consistently well regarded (and you go on to say nice things about the one I like less). Two UA that are both useful, if a little subtle. The “pretty poor” characterization is just not objectively justifiable, unless you actually mean “not one of the few best”.

They've gotten some buffs over the ages but they're still one of the least interesting civs to play as.

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I am all for equating “least interesting” to “worst”, but the UA can be exploited all game long and B17 is good for the last third and great fun. (And if least interesting means worst, that undoes your defense of India.)

Thanks for the reminder about the Deity Tier List. At Deity level, I might agree with Byzantium being there, but otherwise they are quite good. I have already pointed to the thread that redeems Denmark. The raid-warmonger play style is viable in every game that has water, and is by no means limited to DV. I think you are correct that Japan is not the worst.

I was very happy playing Denmark on islands map. Not the strongest, but not the worst.

I highly disagree with America being the worst, because of the Minuteman. But you need maps with lots of hills and forest. They keep their bonuses after you upgrade them. You should spam them as much as you can before researching rifles.

I'm sticking with the Byzantines, at the higher levels, and for large maps with lots of civs. It's not so much that they can't get a religion at all, as it is that by the time you do, all the good beliefs are already picked over by the other AI's. You have to sacrifice a lot to get that early faith build. And then you might be able to grab one good belief still--but probably not two. You have to get a lucky map start just to be on par with the other civs.

Just played Venice, and I think they're somewhere in the middle, too. Not the worst, not the best. But they sure are different.

I can vouch for Byzantine trouble. I have played many religious games and am quite good at nabbing early religions. Try as I might, I had a lot of trouble getting a good, synergizing choices for all their beliefs without going full-blown Piety. I finally knuckled under and went piety and that gave me decent choices on immortal, but it was still close. Seems every time I want to go piety 4 other civs try it too. Or maybe I just need to play a non-huge map...meh. For them, you just need to think about what the AI prioritize and plan a religion with beliefs that are likely to still be there. Aka nonstandard or just accept you'll get a mish-mash.

beetle said:

Riffing off your handle, yes if you want to be a Peaceful Viking, the Denmark UA is no good. But the UA is quite competitive with other UA that are war-only (Ottomans and Mongols, off the top of my head).

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Vikings were great traders. They need some buff about trading. Playing as warmonger in every single Denmark campaign is kinda boring.

Varangian Rus said:

Vikings were great traders. They need some buff about trading. Playing as warmonger in every single Denmark campaign is kinda boring.

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I'm really surprised they didn't tweak them for that in BNW (probably because they are a DLC team). I thought it would have been interesting to take into consideration the viking influence in trade with rivers, like the Dnieper and Volga trade routes.

Byzantine is pretty poor but one can build a game around the dromon. The dromon allows byzantine to ignore the archery tech as much as the atlatl for Maya and really push for philosophy and theology. The religion can be founded either by the liberty finisher or the building of hagia Sophia. The key is to get a good coastal start with good coastal expansions that can easily be protected by dromons.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

Huh, that's very interesting. I'll try that out in the future. I mean, I've only consistently played at Emperor, and won't you suffer warmonger hate from everyone when you start warring?

Though there's always bribing people to attack each other.

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Warmonger hate isn't too bad as long as you don't conquer many cities. Choose your friends and enemies early, and warmongering can actually gain you diplo among your friends. If you can bribe your friends to declare war on your enemies, you can further solidify alliances and give you good diplo all the way until ideologies. Your friends just need to know that you're being consistent with your warmongering, and your friend network needs to agree that the people you're declaring war on are bad. If you can make yourself liked more than who you're declaring war on, then you can easily build an alliance, and warmonger penalties are minimal if you don't take cities, which is awesome for Denmark, as Denmark is better at pillaging, defeating armies, and running anyway.

Loucypher said:

I love how citing "America got knocked out early" is base for the list being "trash" : America IS a pretty poor civ. They've gotten some buffs over the ages but they're still one of the least interesting civs to play as.

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Pretty poor civ, huh. With two UUs that each have multiple promotions over the base unit, that all stay on upgrade.

I remember reading somewhere that it was probably due to all the "America UP" complaints that the devs added more and more promotions to the UUs, to the point that it got a little crazy. Now it's GA points on kill, what'll they give Minutemen next?

Sure, I can grant that America may still be a poor civ compared to the others. But those UUs though.