Greece better than Babylon and Poland?

Everyone says that Babylon and Poland are the best Civs in the game but what about Greece?

From giving them a go in the DCL I found that with the UA, and the patronage opener you basically can hold alliances with CSs indefinitely. And if you can get a religion you suffer no influence loss at all.

That is a huge advantage to your game and basically is going to give you tonnes of free faith, culture, happiness, food and military units over the course of a game.
From that advantage you can basically steer toward any victory you want. The happiness makes warmongering so much easier, CSs can help you in wars, maritime states grow your cities for a SV and support a CV......

Compared to say Babylons free academy or Polands extra social policies I really think Greece is underrated. True that you do have to be much more assertive to get the full benefit from your UA though. You have to send units out to complete barb camp quests for instance whereas Poland and Babylon will give you your UA passively without any real effort on behalf of the player.

Then the UUs are incredible too. I really underrated the power of the Hoplite - arguably it's way better than a swordsman. For starters Bronze working is easy to tech too, it only has 1 less strength than a swordsman and in exchange doesn't require iron, is much cheaper 56 vs 75 hammers and has +50% bonus against cavalry.

The companion cavalry gives you extra strength and importantly movement which gives you heaps of utility in that you can pillage AI territory and escape out of harms way. Thus if even if you lack the means to conquer a city you can effectively cripple your opponents by wrecking their economy. This gives you heaps of gold and experience over time and makes your military even more versatile.

Yeah. Greece will make winning a piece of cake. But poland and babylon are better to achieve fast winning time as they allow better snowballing

Greece is definitely a very good Civ but I'm not sure if they're as good as Babylon and Poland. Influence may degrade faster, but if you have a hard time making allies in the first place (which is usually not the case but still) or if somebody else is drowning in Gold and making gifts galore, it's going to be hard to profit from their UA if you can't make allies.

In addition, their Hoplite is cool for fighting barbs and such, but becomes obsolete very, very quickly. And it doesn't come with any promotions that it passes on through upgrading. So if you don't make much use of it early on it's not really worth mentioning.

While Greece is a solid civ; Babylon, Korea, Poland, and the other "God Tier" civs win faster.

I also note that the nerf bat has been applied several times against Greece.
(Vanilla game balance patches, G&K introducing rig elections & coup, increased power of UAs for civs introduced after CD release)

Namely, Babylon, Korea and Poland is as johncnunn put it. God tier, you can say Greece is demigod tier. If you can't getting enough money or unable to found or make a CS allies. Greece is as good as civ with bad UA. This is quite an extrapolation. But Babylon and Poland UA wouldn't be stopped by anything but bad start and playing. Korea can be marred particularly hard by bad capital. But when they gain momentum, only Babylon can match them.

I have actually had my fastest victories with Greece on Diplomacy, but as others said, your ability to profit from their UA at all depends on whether or not you have enough gold and other factors.

Athenaeum said:

I have actually had my fastest victories with Greece on Diplomacy, but as others said, your ability to profit from their UA at all depends on whether or not you have enough gold and other factors.

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Diplo win time isn't a good measure. Any god tier civ can win diplo the first time UN votes for leader either by rushing globalisation or conquering AI and liberating CS.

Sclb said:

Diplo win time isn't a good measure. Any god tier civ can win diplo the first time UN votes for leader either by rushing globalisation or conquering AI and liberating CS.

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Well then , if Diplo is typically the fastest victory type, wouldn't it be feasible to say that those civs with strong Diplo bonuses such as Greece are best equipped for fast victories?

Another poster claimed that Babylon and Poland could win faster victories with Greece. While I agree that Babylon and Poland are stronger civs overall than Greece, I don't think they are necessarily equipped to win faster than Greece.

And I'm also just speaking from my own personal experiences, from which I've had the fastest victories with Greece.

Athenaeum said:

Well then , if Diplo is typically the fastest victory type, wouldn't it be feasible to say that those civs with strong Diplo bonuses such as Greece are best equipped for fast victories?

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Diplo isn't the fastest, Domination is, especially on pangea. Diplo victory requires the world to enter atomic era to activate.

While I agree that Babylon and Poland are stronger civs overall than Greece, I don't think they are necessarily equipped to win faster than Greece.

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Back to the above point, you can trigger entering atomic era fastest with either Babylon and Poland. Either you have to rush to information era, or conquer everyone except for 2 civs. FAST diplo victory isn't about getting easy alliances, it's about triggering the vote itself and getting enough bonus votes (through globalisation or FP/WI/WR) to win. Alliance is easy to get in this game.

May I ask what is your turn when you win DP with greece?

Greece could be better but if you turn off city states then greece would have a whole wasted ua.

Hahaha... no.

City-state alliances are good, but in no way compare to the other god tier Civs. For one thing, alliances are not difficult to get as any Civ. Half the time I will look at the diplo screen and realize I have 4 alliances without even noticing/trying. So it isn't like the comparison is 0 city-state alliances vs. 16 city-state alliances. It is often more like 4 vs. 8 or whatever (a lot of RNG, difficult to ever give exact numbers).

Then you also consider that they can get conquered or bought. Or some city-state alliances are redundant (e.g., two mercantile city-states sharing same luxuries).

It just doesn't compare to a free academy and 50% GS generation. Or essentially getting an entire policy tree for free. Both Civs which can combine those reliable bonuses with city-state alliances themselves.

Classical era lasts like 20 turns. I don't care how impressive hoplite looks on paper, in practice it isn't achieving much. You still need a ton of ranged to get anything done efficiently, and you still aren't going to use melee spears for much other than as a blocker unit. Companion cavalry is a tad better since knights are farther away than pikes, but still not a unique I'd consider "underrated". It is rated exactly as it should be.

Opinions are like... well, you know. You have tons of people saying a Civ like Japan is top tier, and no doubt there are big Greece fans out there. I personally don't see the appeal, but to each their own. Not that Greece is on Japan tier, just pointing out that there are always going to be people who say a Civ is underrated/overrated for ever Civ.

I'm not a fan of Greece and for me Babylon and Poland are superior as they can implement their UA's without being aggressive or by spending time and effort impressing others. Korea is another that should be put in the same bracket as Babylon and Poland. All three of these Civs have the attributes that align nicely with the way I like to play and I can never be bothered actively trying to get City States on my side. I tend to isolate and consolidate as best I can and will only turn aggressive if another Civ is racing ahead or is encroaching on me. I never play as Greece if I can help it and their UUs for me are nowhere near the best in the game and are obsolete too quickly.

Athenaeum said:

Well then , if Diplo is typically the fastest victory type, wouldn't it be feasible to say that those civs with strong Diplo bonuses such as Greece are best equipped for fast victories?

Another poster claimed that Babylon and Poland could win faster victories with Greece. While I agree that Babylon and Poland are stronger civs overall than Greece, I don't think they are necessarily equipped to win faster than Greece.

And I'm also just speaking from my own personal experiences, from which I've had the fastest victories with Greece.

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The fastest times for Diplomatic Victories are achieved by teching fast to Info Era (before the second WC vote), or completely conquering everyone except one civ and teching to Atomic Era (but in this case a DomV would have been faster).

The turn when the World Council is founded plays a major role as it determines the turn for the second World Council Vote, and if you reach the info era before that, the turn for the first World Leader vote comes 10 turns after that.

So you want to beeline Printing Press on Pangaea, or Astronomy and Printing press on Continents, and then tech your best to hit information era before the second World Council vote (you have like ~ 60 turns to do that, if I recall correctly). After that you have 10 turns to tech to Globalization and accumulate all the necessary votes to win on the first World Leader vote. Entering Info Era through Telecommunications is the easiest.

This is a very tight game to pull, and the hardest part by far is timing WC and getting to information era in time, not getting the alliance of the city states (which you can get through a combination of quests, coups and money). Babylon has the clearest advantage here because of the extra science (faster Printing Press and faster science Milestones), and extra great scientists (you can bulb your way trough most of modern and atomic era). Poland comes second because extra policies means you may get to fill Tradition, Patronage, Rationalism, get level 3 in Ideology, maybe even open Commerce (while with the others you may just have Patronage up to Scholasticism, and some in Ideology, other than the starter tree and Rationalism).

Out of the three civs, Greece comes last because their bonuses are not that big. They may have more city states alliances throughout the game but the bonuses aren't really that big to count: they may have more culture but the extra Policies they get are not free so they can't compete with Poland; they may get more food and happiness bonuses for growth and science, but they simply can't compete with the head start Babylon gets from the early academy; they may have more faith so more GPs, but really Babylon with 50% bonus will net more Great Scientists than you need.

Greece is solid civ but for sure is not top-tier. And fastest DV for sure does not belong to Greece.

The main problem of Greece vs AI and in MP that you can not play independetly - some1 killed CS, some1 'annexed' CS(Austria/Venice), some1 bought CS -- you need to do smth with it, but sometimes you can do nothing.

The Greek UA is indeed incredible. The total amount of culture/smiles/units/food that you'll get from it over the course of a game is huge.

But Babylon have TWO UAs, both are which are great, and a better UU.

And Poland's UA, well that has almost immeasurable value. Finish Tradition the turn you hit Philosophy? Yes please. Open Rationalism the turn you hit the Renaissance? Yes please?

If me playing Poland and me playing Greece were two human players both attempting Domination, with 6 AIs, on a Standard/Standard, the Polish would hit Artillery MUCH earlier, and in this game, speed = win.

But as I've tried to do in my Tier list, it's much better, I think, to compare each with a Neutral civ with no uniques, than direct comparisons.

Greece was so OP in vanilla, then nerfed and mostly forgotten in the subsequent expansions.

Claudiupb may have a point here by having babylon able to reach the information era sooner than greece or poland. Babylon ua in science gives it a way better advantage over greece and poland when it comes to getting a dipv particularly when getting telecomunications asap.

budweiser said:

Greece was so OP in vanilla, then nerfed and mostly forgotten in the subsequent expansions.

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How were they nerfed in the DLC? They had the same UA in Vanilla, did they not? Were their special units better or something?

From what I recall, in vanilla you gained a lot more influence with gold gifts, spending 500 gold would give you allied status. And there was a lot more gold around (tiles near river gave gold, ocean tiles gave gold, etc). Greece UA gives you a bonus in keeping a relationship with City States, but no bonus in acquiring influence with it, so in a way because gaining influence was nerfed, Greece was also nerfed.

They were nerfed indirectly. IIRC some of the quests were changed up. But more importantly, spies were added, Venice/Austria was added, there was a patch that had AI actually target CS's, Gunboat Diplomacy and Treaty Organization was added, religion was added.

In vanilla, CS's were just these solitary bonuses you got mostly by throwing gold at them, or being Greece. After all the changes the game as gone through, now there are several ways to get and keep alliances, and additional ways to remove those bonuses completely from the game.

Greece has held up better than some other vanilla Civs, but the UA is nowhere near as useful as it was in vanilla. They are still one of the top CS Civs, but they no longer have a monopoly on it.