Favourite Civilisations on huge maps, and long lasting games?

Greenpakto

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All civilizations accounted for, what is your top five favourites on huge maps? If possible state your difficulty, and why!

I guess, il go first, I play deity only (and mostly Domination victory, or none at all), and my favourite ones are probably:

Shoshone, purely for the fact that he is incredible versatile and fits any gamestyle. He's probably among the best civ to get a headstart with (probably the greatest), but reliant on 4+ ruins close by. Whether its a headstart in culture, science or faith, or even military. My main and only concern with Shoshone is that he falls out to other civs eventually, unfortunately. Thats because none of his specialties are permanent (except 15% more combat in own territory), and that makes it easy to catch up to, and even go past him.

England, for obvious reasons its almost pure OP on water maps (otto cuts it close), such as arhchipelago. Imagine being able to move 3 tiles further at sea with the exploration policy, and then also see two tiles further with ship of the line build. Up until airplanes can be built, this civilization is almost unstoppable at sea combat. Having an extra spy is also extremely powerfull, allowing you to focus a little less on science (and with BNW gaining benefits at Congress). And honestly the longbowman is pure awesome to upgrade to late era units.

China, being able to spam free Librarys (Paper Maker) allows for maintaining a lot more units early game, and making certain science is not an issue. And once you get that Chu-ko-nu, well you can be sure its incredible hard to take the fight to your lands! Building 20+ and then upgrading them all, to end stage units is a great military advantage indeed. Chu-ko-nu probably has the best ranged promotion in the game (England comes very close).

Dutch, is indeed a favourite of mine, but they are not actually that strong. Its almost impossible to start close to plenty of march (IMO), usually you end up with 1-3 tiles of march at most. If you do end up with 5-10 on your island, the dutch can grow very fast (espacially with tradition policy). The fun factor with this civ is high though, and with the Sea Beggars upgraded to ironclads, you can take down most coastal cities with ease. Not the greatest civ, but so much fun!

Aztecs, because warfaring benefits you by tons, and in deity usually you always wage war anyway (at least I do). Obviously the Aztecs main strength is gaining culture from kills. And if you want to abuse them even further, finish the honour tree to gain gold from kills. Ontop of that, IF you are lucky (and of course skillfull) you could get the pantheon "God of war" and also recieve faith from kills (eventually in later eras some units grant TONS of faith). Killing units will will never be as much fun as with this civilization! Oh, and they start in jungle, which is a benefit in itself, and if youre lucky to get freshwater close by this civilisation also offers great growth. main concern is that if the opposite team reaches airplanes before you (which is common with some civs in deity), youre going to have difficulties surviving and making peace, due to warmongering penalties.

PS: I understand not all agree with me, and usually I go with warfaring civs, because in late game thats the most fun!
 
Im currently rocking the celts on a huge/emperor/small continents. The automatic early religion lets you grab whatever for your bonuses, I grabbed mainly happiness bonuses, went straight liberty, and colonized all over the place.

England is op for any water map, and Otto is rather close behind as you mentioned, although this doesn't become apparent until late game when you have a simply enormous navy. Speaking of water maps, Carthage has a huge advantage with the free harbors, it would be interesting to see how they would match up with the boosted economy.
 
Im currently rocking the celts on a huge/emperor/small continents. The automatic early religion lets you grab whatever for your bonuses, I grabbed mainly happiness bonuses, went straight liberty, and colonized all over the place.

England is op for any water map, and Otto is rather close behind as you mentioned, although this doesn't become apparent until late game when you have a simply enormous navy. Speaking of water maps, Carthage has a huge advantage with the free harbors, it would be interesting to see how they would match up with the boosted economy.

Celts are indeed the gods of religion ;)
Im ashamed to say I havent played carthage more than once... But you are right, that is a huge benefit, though IMO as a unique building its not as strong as say Paper Maker.
But I do really like "coast" based civilizations, and id say 90% of my cities are founded by the coast!
 
England is op for any water map, and Otto is rather close behind as you mentioned, although this doesn't become apparent until late game when you have a simply enormous navy. Speaking of water maps, Carthage has a huge advantage with the free harbors, it would be interesting to see how they would match up with the boosted economy.

I've played with Dido few days ago, made thread about it. They work excellent with new economy system, because you get free harbors right away, including all boost that harbor gives you (increased range and income for sea TR) :eek:

Take MoG as pantheon and it's extra science, plus no gpt wasted on roads in early game, when gpt matters the most.
 
America BUY ALL THE LAND
Brazil My camps will block out the sun
Mongols That city...why isnt it my colors
Polynesia Overseas Land=Yoink
Germany Conquer...WW2 Style/HUG MY PANZERS WITH YOUR BODIES
Shoshone I didn't come here to make friends...
 
I used to prefer using the Egyptians because of the +20% Production bump for Wonders. Add the Religion Belief Monument to the Gods for another +15% for Ancient and Classical Wonders = +35%. Then add the Tradition Social Policy Aristocracy for another +15% for building Wonders = +50% through Ancient and Classical eras, but a permanent +35% thereafter. That combination would inevitably end up with >90% of all the Wonders being built by me -- PLUS all the benefits they provided. Not to mention all of the Wonder-building production that other civs will have wasted. Additionally, the Unique Unit of the War Chariot is VERY useful where you need a powerful UU, right at the beginning. FAST missile unit, able to dash to whatever threat or opportunity appears in or around a growing empire.

But with BNW I've noticed that I was always hurting for cash. Road Maintenance alone was eating up my cashflow. So I changed over to Songhai because of the tripled reward for destroying barbarian camps. (225 gold rather than 75-90.) It seems that the default barbarian setting for BNW is almost equivalent to Raging Barbarians in vanilla Civ V. For my first Social Policy, I adopt Honor, and that effectively gives me a "barbarian radar". I don't bother with city garrisons. Instead, I use those units to hunt down barbarian camps. The cash rewards are just too good to not do so. I look at the other civs and they're usually getting by with just a few hundred gold in their Treasuries. Meanwhile, I generally have a few thousand gold sitting there, waiting to fund whatever needs funding. New cities start with me outright buying them a Monument, a Shrine, a Granary, a Temple, a Water Wheel, and a Worker and they take off running at full speed. But most of my money goes for gifting City States. Coupled with Papal Primacy, Consulates, and the entire Patronage tree, and I pretty well own all of the CSs as Allies. And as Allies, they're giving me all of the Luxuries I need to keep my Happiness up around 100, I can sell just about ALL of my Luxuries and Strategic resources to the other civs, I don't have to build _any_ military units, my Research gets a hefty boost from the CS donations, and the occasional Great Person donations certainly help.

I've used Songhai on Prince, King, and currently on Emperor Difficulty, and they've all played out/are playing out like I described above. Hard to beat that cashflow!
 
I have to agree with the Aztecs being the most fun to play. I personally think that out of all the civs the Aztecs are the most interesting civ, with a vampire UU that moves crazy fast in forests to start with that carries upgrades, culture from killing anything and while you're at it, grow your cities to insane heights using their UB, although it is a bit situational.
 
Aztecs

Whichever ciz you play on a large or huge map consider taking the honor opener. It will get you enough culture to make up for spending a policy and it gets you so much gold at the beginning when you really need it. Raging barbs help too.
 
Question for all you huge map players. What game speed do you play them on? Is a huge map doable on standard speed? Or is it better to use epic or marathon speed to get the most out of huge maps? Basically, do these huge maps kind of scale depending on game speed as well?
 
I also play on large/huge maps and marathon (mostly domination/diplomatic) Deity only.

So far haven't seen a reason to play with other than Shoshone. Even with just a 2-3 ancient ruins it is enough to have a pretty good starting bonus in every diverse way you want to go.
 
Roman Empire - They can sustain a large empire with hammer bonuses to new and conquered cities, plus legionares connect the new cities together once you are done conquering.

America (On slower speeds mostly)- Buying tiles for additional luxuries is a huge boon.

Eqypt - Temple centric Religion is really cool.

Celts - Same type of deal

Iroquois - IDK just like going really wide with them
 
with Shoshone on a huge highlands map + raging barbs and marathon I usually find like 50 ruins even on immortal. This is more than enough for a head start in every category of the game (science, gold, culture, faith, military). The landgrab UA of the Shoshone is useful all game long.
 
any civ with good UB will do great on huge map with dozen cities. :lol:

Egyptian UB doesn't cost gpt, and gives +2 happiness. Add another +2 happiness and +2 culture per turn, and their Burial Tomb(s) become insane.

Arabia also benefits from going huge and wide, since they'll have dozen of luxuries to sell and caravans will spread your religion like crazy.

it's same for any domination orianted civ, because they can easily spam 20 units per turn when needed if they have huge empire with 20-30 cities.
 
late game civs are more fun on large games with landmasses separated by ocean

America: fun bomber late game

Brazil: late game UI and UU

etc
 
Shoshone, purely for the fact that he is incredible versatile and fits any gamestyle. He's probably among the best civ to get a headstart with (probably the greatest), but reliant on 4+ ruins close by. Whether its a headstart in culture, science or faith, or even military. My main and only concern with Shoshone is that he falls out to other civs eventually, unfortunately. Thats because none of his specialties are permanent (except 15% more combat in own territory), and that makes it easy to catch up to, and even go past him.

While I like this civ, and playing them was pure fun, I don't understand saying they are sooo OP. Shoshone basically get more c u s t o m i z e d bonuses from ruins and b i g g e r choice of starting tiles. That's all. Yeah, useful and cool, but still I think early game role is overestimated on civ fanatics.

Or maybe that's my pathological tendency to have damn hardcore start with extremely early zulu invasions/deep economical problems/ridiculous wonder - grabbing while being on the edge of extinction/generally being weakest civ on the map, and somewhere in medieval managing to create world superpower :lol:

I prefer bonus which stays for the entire game.

China, being able to spam free Librarys (Paper Maker) allows for maintaining a lot more units early game, and making certain science is not an issue. And once you get that Chu-ko-nu, well you can be sure its incredible hard to take the fight to your lands! Building 20+ and then upgrading them all, to end stage units is a great military advantage indeed. Chu-ko-nu probably has the best ranged promotion in the game (England comes very close).

China is very good, however it has one bad side... It is boring as hell :p Seriously, while many civs change the entire gameplay, with China you basically have few more gpt early game, and stron CKN - general army. Of course it is very effective and I consider China as very strong, but I wouldn't like to play it in very long very big games where I spend very long time with civilisation which entire gamestyle relies on "build CKNs and send generals".

The same goes to Babylon. It is very good civ for dealing with extreme difficulty levels, but it is IMHO the most boring of all civs. Basically everything unique in this nation is "get to writing, get GS academy, congratulations, your science is 1st". Not very useful UB and UU (well, they only serve as protecting Writing :p ) and +50% to GS generation - useful, not interesting.

My favourite civs on BIG DIFFICULT MAPS?

- Maya. Atlatl helps really much with this damn BNW barbarians, Pyramid is powerful and Mayan free great people are very fun ability :) Also, Mayans are pretty climatic and interesting nation :)
- Zulu. Impi + Ikanda + Iklwa = die bastards
- Poland. Free policies (I love the entire social policies system!), much gold thanks to Royal Stables, and of course these sweet Winged Hussars which create lot of warfare possibilities. Also, this is my IRL nation ;)
- Korea. It has powerful science, like Babylon, but
a) It's science bonus is less direct and requires more strategy, while it is probably even more powerful
b) It has Gangnam Style
c) Turtle Ships are fantastic for naval warfare, no I don't care I lose caravels if instead I get +80% to firepower
d) Hwacha are fantastic for land warfare. Does anyone notice these guys despite not having siege bonus have as big firepower as cannos against city walls, and doubled power against land units?
- Mongolia. Keshik.
 
While I like this civ, and playing them was pure fun, I don't understand saying they are sooo OP. Shoshone basically get more c u s t o m i z e d bonuses from ruins and b i g g e r choice of starting tiles. That's all. Yeah, useful and cool, but still I think early game role is overestimated on civ fanatics.

Or maybe that's my pathological tendency to have damn hardcore start with extremely early zulu invasions/deep economical problems/ridiculous wonder - grabbing while being on the edge of extinction/generally being weakest civ on the map, and somewhere in medieval managing to create world superpower :lol:

I prefer bonus which stays for the entire game.
/QUOTE]

It stems from Standard/Pangaea or Continents games on Deity where the AI will literally blot out your land. At least with the Shoshone you can get to 5 population faster and therefore can throw down satellites earlier than other civs and when you do throw them down they encompass a bigger area to get those 3f tiles to grow and produce more science. The Shoshone are pretty strong at that's basically the jist of it.
 
Question for all you huge map players. What game speed do you play them on? Is a huge map doable on standard speed? Or is it better to use epic or marathon speed to get the most out of huge maps? Basically, do these huge maps kind of scale depending on game speed as well?

Peaceful victories are about the same but domination is a little tougher. Start early, hyperexpand and triple your normal army size and even domination is doable on standard. The airlift capability makes it a lot easier than it used to be.

In response to the OP

This is going to sound crazy but...India!

On huge maps the negative side of their UA is basically cut in half but the positive side stays the same. You can expand much easier than on standard and can grow as tall as you want. BNW gave India a huge buff since they can use internal trade routes to grow cities super fast.
 
Peaceful victories are about the same but domination is a little tougher. Start early, hyperexpand and triple your normal army size and even domination is doable on standard. The airlift capability makes it a lot easier than it used to be.

Thanks for the response. With the new Fall patch, the game seems more appealing for larger maps and more Civs than the standard maps and Civs. So, I am going to give a huge fractal map a try. I think I will play on Epic speed, as it's the middle option. Going to play as the Celts because they are my personal favourite.
 
Egypt. Just... Egypt. Piety + Burial Tombs = Wide for days

The fun factor with this civ is high though, and with the Sea Beggars upgraded to ironclads, you can take down most coastal cities with ease.

For the record, Sea Beggars don't upgrade to Ironclads ever. They upgrade straight to Destroyers.
 
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