Romans suck and the Celts are the greatest ever Civilisation

What?

Well, that's what the Hall of Fame suggests!

I totaled up all of the victorious Civilisations currently entered into the Civilisation III Hall of Fame. I counted every victory from every land-size for the conditions - Conquest, 20k, 100k, Diplomatic, Domination, Space Race. And you, yes you, have voted by your actions that Rome is the suckiest Civilisation and the Celts are the greatest!

1. Celts - 203 placings
2. Russia - 199
3. Sumeria - 182
4. Iroquois - 180
5. Persia - 151
6. Babylon - 138
7. Aztec - 137
8. Byzantines - 134
9. Ottomans - 63
10. Inca - 44

11. Greece - 38
12. Egypt - 37
13. Korea - 31
14. Maya - 30
15. Arabia - 27
16. Carthage - 25
17. China - 21
17. Netherlands - 21
19. Spain - 12
20. France - 11

21. Hittites - 10
21. Germany - 10
23. America - 8
23. England - 8
25. India - 7
25. Japan - 7
25. Mongols - 7
25. Scandinavia - 7
29. Portugal - 6
29. Zululand - 6

31. Rome - 4


Justifications? Excuses? Words of wisdom? Taunts? Thoughts?

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/stats.php?show=civs

For those who prefer looking rather than linking, here's what LE is linking to:





So, we thank Lord Emsworth for attempting to post the stats in a different format, I hope this will assist people who prefer to look at the stats in a graph format before considering ponderations on the actual topic.

If you know the location of a pie chart, I like pie charts, let's have a look at that one too!

Lord Emsworth said:

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/stats.php?show=civs

Click to expand...

What's the joke?

Why is linking the stats in a different format which uses different parameters funny?

This is funny:



This... isn't? :




What am I missing?

I don't know either, what is supposed to be funny here?!

Anyway, the statistic is quite interesting. It shows, which qualities (traits, UUs, starting techs) are good for easy victories. (Or rather: it shows, what the experienced players think, which qualities are good for easy victories... Because that's what induced them to choose these civs for their HoF submissions. We don't know, whether equally good results could have been achieved with a different choice, do we?!)

The obvious result is, that the Agricultural trait is thought to be good for everything: 5 out of 7 AGR civs are in the top ten. The ones that aren't (Maya and Netherlands) are probably not there, because of their bad UU. (A large portion of these games are military VCs, and the Celtic Swordsman or the Mounted Warrior are just better suited for conquering the enemy than the "slow and expensive" Javelin Thrower and the "passive" Swiss Mercenary.)

Scientific also seems to be an important quality: 6 out of the 9 SCI nations are in the top ten. And the three that are not, again have a "bad" UU: Greek Hoplite (passive), Korean H'wacha (successful military games usually don't need artillery) and the German Panzer (great unit, but too late -- high scoring military games are usually decided in the ancient age/early middle age).

The most astonishing fact for me is, that the Industrious trait is not in the top ten!?! Only 2 out of 8 IND nations are in the top ten: Ottomans and Persia, and this may be attributed to the fact that they are also SCI and have an excellent offensive UU. I would have thought that IND is a very powerful trait for nearly every VC!

Even more interesting would be 6 separate statistics per victory condition. Because I think, a quick and dirty military game requires quite different qualities than a Spaceship. This is also seen by the fact, that the Celts, despite being at the top of the list, don't have a single Space or Diplomatic victory!

Calculating statistics for Civ trait impact is slightly harder as each Civ has two traits and there will likely be a Symbiance between the two in some cases, but not in others. Also, some traits are more common than others. Therefore straight numbers will not be representative, an equation is needed.

I've used a very basic mathematical method and simply totaled up the flat numbers (for example, Rel and Agr get 203 points for the Celt's score etc) and then divided their grand total (from all civ points) by the number of times the trait occurs (Agr 7, Com 8, Exp 8, Ind 8, Mil 8, Rel 7, Sci 9, Sea 7) to give the following results:

1. Agricultural - 114
2. Scientific - 105
3. Religious - 62
4. Industrial - 43
5. Expansionist - 39
6. Commercial - 36
7. Seafaring - 30
8. Militaristic - 24

However, all of the results 3-8 have a 'booster' score from a civilisation which is also either Agricultural or Scientific and it's quite difficult to fathom how to represent the values of traits 3-8 objectively because of this.

The best represented Civilisation which has neither 1-2 as either of its traits is Egypt, no.12 on the list.

Immediately following Egypt is both the Scientific/Commercial Civs of Greece and Korea - suggesting that Scientific is somehow crippled by being combined with Commercial - which seems counter-intuitive, especially as Scientific/Seafaring is much higher on the list with Byzantium - while this list suggests Seafaring to be poorer than commercial.

Maybe this anomaly suggests player bias more than factual reality? I don't know, perhaps the Byzantine's Unique Unit plays an important part?

This could all be irrelevant if the real deciding factor is just the Unique Unit. The Unique Unit definitely gives the Aztecs most of their points as the Aztecs completely dominate the Conquest charts for the smaller map sizes, but don't really feature anywhere else.

This would suggest their trait stats are also meaningless, adding more confusion to the 'ideal traits' question. But the trait stats do definitely indicate traits are crucial for player choice.

Yes, I find it easy to win with the Celts because of their UU. I tend to play for cultural victory but with the Celts I can expand quickly in the early going. If that looks unlikely then I'm usually big enough to deal with those German panzers are can take a few more cities and win by domination.

On the other hand Egypt is in the middle for success, and I find the Egyptians another easy one. Byzantines are apparently favorable but I've won with them I think only once. How much does one's personal style factor in this?

I think you are all wrong about the Agri trait. You see, a lot of the submitted games with the Aztecs have been played in PTW or Vanilla C3 where the Aztecs still were Military and Religious, and their UU only cost 10 shields.

But they are seldom chosen because of their traits anyway, but because of the Jaguar Warrior. They could have no traits and still dominate the tiny conquest tables for Monarch and higher, and the small tables for any difficulty. (You have to use C3C for Deity and Sid submissions.)

The Inca are similar. In most of the games they were chosen exclusively because of the Chasqui Scout. They could be Lazy, Luddite and Landlubbing, and still dominate the tiny conquest tables for Chieftain, Warlord and Regent as long as they start with a Chasqui Scout.


ETA: And now that I've come to think of it, the Celts have had their traits changed too. They were introduced as Military and Religious in PTW, but changed to Agricultural and Religious in C3C. There are a few games with the PTW Celts on the tables (I think).

And those two changed Civs alone are enough to change the ranking of the most popular traits. Religious should have the top position, Scientific be the runner-up, and Agri third at best.

Yes, the Aztec placing does seem very awkward indeed.

I've gone back and had a look at which games have been submitted via older (trait) versions of the game and therefore competing via a different playing field:

Aztec - 100
Iroquois - 8
Celt - 2
English - 1
Scandinavia -1
Carthage - 0
Spain - 0

As you can see, this only seems to effect the Aztecs when it comes to traits. While this does change all the statistics, apart from for the Aztecs it doesn't amount to much of a change at all. If I change the Aztec scores for the traits table to account for this then the traits table is still:

1. Scientific - 105
2. Agricultural - 99
3. Religious - 66/76 (depending on whether you now divide by 8 or 7)
4. Industrial - 43
5. Expansionist - 39
6. Commercial - 36
7. Seafaring - 30
8. Militaristic - 24

You still see Sci/Agr at the top by a huge margin, you've just given a false boost to Religion by having all of the Aztec UU scores included in the Religion score.

Do you think we should try to establish which Civilisations are used 'purely' for their Unique Unit and exclude these from trait discussions completely, such as removing all the Aztec scores?

or

Do you think we should remove all of the PtW and Vanilla scores simply because those people are playing a different game to everyone else anyway?

(come to think of it, why don't PtW and Vanilla have their own tables in the first place if they are, essentially, different games in some crucial aspects?)

In the original game, Industrial was clearly considered the best trait. But there are a lot of bad units to go with them. I find it still the second best to Agricultural. I never thought scientific was that good. I'm guessing there are some good UUs to boost them. I personally prefer religious over scientific anyway.

Regarding Rome, iirc, the original plan was to make them Militaristic, Industrial (China would be Scientific, Industrial and Persia would be Militaristic, Commercial). They found out that Rome in that context was ridiculously powerful. Certainly would have bumped them up the list of favorite civs (and bumped down Persia. Militaristic, Commercial just isn't all that interesting).

It's funny really, because Commercial is one of my favourites. I'm a builder rather than warrior in Civ III and Commercial/Seafaring make for great Archipelago traits for this.

I think with the Hall of Fame, the desire to make every turn count, right to the smallest detail, makes Scientific popular because of the 4 free tech advances every time there's an era change. That's 16 turns to play with there.

Religious would only save about 4 turns as most people tend to stick to their first gov-change of Republic (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no HoF expert). It does tie-in perfectly with the Cultural wins though, saving lots of turns on building temples and the like.

Agricultural is hard to pin down in specifics, but growing cities faster must be quite a boon. So, Scientific/Agricultural would be almost a no-brainer from this mind-set (hence the strong showing for the Sumerians).

Expansionist's use depends entirely on your luck with goody huts, but this also can be a HUGE turn-saver, hence why Russia is so prominent, being Scientific/Expansionist.

For some of the traits, the trait basically insists on it's presence:

Space/Diplomatic = Scientific
Cultural 20k/100k = Religious

But the weird thing is that Military doesn't come into play for Military victories, for the military victories the Unique Unit seems to trump the trait into relative insignificance. It would be nice to know if anyone picks a Military trait in order to win a Military game.

As far as I can tell, Seafaring should be the weakest trait as, if you're going for 'every turn counts', the last thing you'd want is to be island hopping. It would be interesting to know how many HoF games are either Archipelago or Continents!

Buttercup said:

Space/Diplomatic = Scientific
Cultural 20k/100k = Religious

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Religious doesn't have all too large of an effect on the top placing 20k HoF victories. The top-placing 20k HoF victories rely on multiple SGLs. So, it's actually more like

Space/Diplomatic/20k=Scientific (but note the Sid 20k tables).
Cultural 100k=Religious (it's the quick anarchy, but *more relevantly* the cheap temples and cathedrals).
Histographic=Agricultural (and to a lesser extent industrious).

Conquest/Domination-Unique Unit

Conquest/Domination games indicates why you see the Iroquois, Celts, and the Aztecs so much.

Babylon is both religious and scientific and thus falls into the space, diplomatic, 100k, and 20k categories.

Russia's expansionist picks up the pace for quick techs at lower levels. So, they have a bonus ability in lower level space and diplomatic games. And they're scientific.

Buttercup said:

Agricultural is hard to pin down in specifics, but growing cities faster must be quite a boon. So, Scientific/Agricultural would be almost a no-brainer from this mind-set (hence the strong showing for the Sumerians).

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Your settler factory gets set up quicker. So, your initial city not only grows faster, but you plant other cities faster. This also can explain why the Maya work so well for histographic games. They grab more territory faster and grow faster, because of their trait combination.

Buttercup said:

But the weird thing is that Military doesn't come into play for Military victories, for the military victories the Unique Unit seems to trump the trait into relative insignificance. It would be nice to know if anyone picks a Military trait in order to win a Military game.

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If you plan to war in the middle ages mostly or later, say in a Sid military game where you might not have much choice, then civilizations with the military trait appear more often. Take a look at the Sid domination and conquest games, and you'll see China selected. That said, I know I picked China more for their UU in one of my games, and I suspect Moonsinger and Lord Emsworth also selected China more their UU than the military trait.

I still like the religious civs, particularly Egypt and Celts. I like the shorter transition times. (I don't like having to deal with revolting cities; I'm lazy that way.) On the other hand I don't like the single-city cultural victory. I don't like having so much culture crammed into a single city. I find it inelegant. I have done it, just once, and only to say that I've accomplished it, but I still don't like it. I do, however usually play for empire-wide culture, and in my experience I must agree that the religious civs are best suited for this.

Also, as I said, one reason for my favoring the Celts is their unique unit. The Gallic Sword is almost too powerful for its age. The conquest of my neighbors almost becomes an extension of the REX phase.

The expansionist trait is, I would say, my second favorite. Running on zero science while the scouts snap up the tech advances works for me.

Buttercup said:

It would be nice to know if anyone picks a Military trait in order to win a Military game.

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I did not submit any HoF game, but in a couple of GOTMs I waited for a MIL civilization in order to shoot for the a 20K medal. My reasoning was along the lines "MIL = higher chance of getting elites = higher chance of getting MGLs = higher chance of building the Heroic Epic and higher chance of rushing wonders instead of buidling by hand".
So very funnily, I didn't pick MIL for a military game, but for a 20K game...

And this leads me to another open question, I never quite understood: as the chances for MGLs are much higher than for SGLs, why aren't all the 20K submissions in the HoF tables played in PTW?? Do the additional Wonders that were added in C3C (Zeus, Artemis, "enhanced" Shakespeare) really outweigh the ability to rush wonders with MGLs? Spoonwood, you are one of the experts in the area of 20K, what is your opinion about that?

Lanzelot said:

And this leads me to another open question, I never quite understood: as the chances for MGLs are much higher than for SGLs, why aren't all the 20K submissions in the HoF tables played in PTW?? Do the additional Wonders that were added in C3C (Zeus, Artemis, "enhanced" Shakespeare) really outweigh the ability to rush wonders with MGLs?

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It is not necessarily the wonders. It is also the tourism bonus. But mainly it is about the SGLs. You can get one by about 3500, then a second one in 3000 and so on. That's still some time before you can realistically generate MGLs.

This game has the earliest that I could ever manage. I got two leaders from the first four battles. And still the game doesn't chart very high:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/game_info.php?entryID=2147


I've also "developed" a strategy to puts a whole new meaning to leader farming. It only works on low levels with larger maps. Basically, I would plant 3, 4, 5 towns, give them some culture, and then gift these towns to the AIs. The free defenders would give me ample opportunities to win battles, get my units promoted and generate leaders. I'd do this with one AI Civ at a time, turn after turn. But setting that up takes time, and it was usually around 1000 BC when I could start my sustained leader farming.

Expansionist is the first trait to have. I have played this with the Zulu (Exp, Mil), America (Exp, Ind) and the Iroquois (Exp, Religious, +killer UU). And I am not quite sure what is the best second trait. I think the Zulu were slightly worse that both the Americans and the Iroquois.
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/game_info.php?entryID=2268
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/game_info.php?entryID=2275
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/game_info.php?entryID=2283
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/game_info.php?entryID=2511

The dates aren't bad, but with C3C it shouldn't be too hard to beat them.

Ok, so it is the SGL...
I didn' think of that, because I got like 3 SGLs in my entire C3C carreer, so didn't think it to be an important factor... But I forgot: in HoF games you just restart the game until you get that SGL in 3500BC...

Lanzelot said:

Ok, so it is the SGL...
I didn' think of that, because I got like 3 SGLs in my entire C3C carreer, so didn't think it to be an important factor... But I forgot: in HoF games you just restart the game until you get that SGL in 3500BC...

Click to expand...

And don't underestimate the tourism bonus. In C3 and PTW you need a real empire to get some research done. In C3C your wonder city is a mega super science city. From the middle ages on there's a marked difference.

Lanzelot said:

Do the additional Wonders that were added in C3C (Zeus, Artemis, "enhanced" Shakespeare) really outweigh the ability to rush wonders with MGLs? Spoonwood, you are one of the experts in the area of 20K, what is your opinion about that?

Click to expand...

Yes, the culture gained from the wonders outweighs the ability to rush wonders with MGLs. You can still get SGLs earlier than MGLs as Lord Emsworth has pointed out. On top of that, wonders *double* in culture after 1000 years. Thus to compensate for the SoZ in terms of culture you would need a 4 culture wonder at some point, and then another 4 culture wonder a 1000 years later. The SoZ also gives you free military, which can make getting the Heroic Epic easier.

Getting back to the OP, this perhaps explains why I usually lose. Almost always play as Romans 'cuz the Legionary is so cool. Apparently there's plenty of other stuff that isn't