Civilization Rankings! Part Five: RESULTS!

Arabia is usually pretty good, but there are specific times when it just falls flat...
Spoiler :


No trading partners, no nearby civs for camel archer war, only 2 civs to trade luxuries to (that I met late), missed Petra by 62 turns (on deity). I would be very impressed if anyone could win this setup on deity (I'm sure it's possible though).


Meanwhile, I played Poland in the game after this (quit the Arabia one halfway in), and won my first deity victory in 1816. I have to say Poland wins the OP competition in my opinion, because their UA is just so amazing.
 
I think these ratings are not about "what is the best CIV", but rather "what CIV enjoy people playing the most".

...so don't be overly shocked that some good CIVs are rated rather low.

It's because everyone has a certain playstyle, and civs which they have performed badly with, don't often play or dislike will get shunted to the bottom. As well as old prejudices (e.g. India being so low is (I am almost certain) largely because of its G+K badness, not taking account of how it plays much better in BNW). They're mostly balanced pretty well, really, though with some obvious exceptions (Venice is too powerful, Iroquois underpowered), so I wouldn't take any notice. I'll keep playing India and Byzantium because I like playing them and I'm good with them, regardless of the opinions of others.
 
The Candi is fine as it is. Having it replace the shrine or the temple will gimp Indonesia's faith gain.

I'd like to see it stay as a garden replacement but maybe remove the freshwater requirement. Having the freshwater bonus makes it really hard for the candi to synergize with UA since it can really hard to find a overseas location that also has access to freshwater.
 
Iroquois can't be that low. I've played them a few times, faced off against them regularly. It's one of the most powerful Civs in the game.

It's about as good as the Incas, yet Inca (8.32) ?

Hiawatha was a very strong opponent in G&K because of his AI, not because of his civ's strengths (and in BNW he seems to be somewhat punchless). The Iroquois are terrible. They have a mediocre replacement for a crappy unit, a unique building that's worse than the one it replaces, and a very weak UA.

The Inca have a relatively weak UU, but it's still better than the Mohawk Warrior—at least you'll actually build it. The Inca UI is excellent; the Longhouse is a disaster. And the Inca have one of the best UAs in the game. The Iroquois get free roads in forests and jungles in their own territory, nothing more. No benefits outside their territory (apart from the new Caravan thing, which is marginally useful), and they have to build railroads anyway in the late game if they want the attendant bonuses. The Inca get free roads and railroads in hills and half-price roads/railroads everywhere else, regardless of whether they own the tile—that's already better than the whole Iroquois UA. Crucially, they also get double movement in hills anywhere on the map, which gives them major advantages in exploration and warfare.
 
Hiawatha was a very strong opponent in G&K because of his AI, not because of his civ's strengths (and in BNW he seems to be somewhat punchless). The Iroquois are terrible. They have a mediocre replacement for a crappy unit, a unique building that's worse than the one it replaces, and a very weak UA.

The Inca have a relatively weak UU, but it's still better than the Mohawk Warrior—at least you'll actually build it. The Inca UI is excellent; the Longhouse is a disaster. And the Inca have one of the best UAs in the game. The Iroquois get free roads in forests and jungles in their own territory, nothing more. No benefits outside their territory (apart from the new Caravan thing, which is marginally useful), and they have to build railroads anyway in the late game if they want the attendant bonuses. The Inca get free roads and railroads in hills and half-price roads/railroads everywhere else, regardless of whether they own the tile—that's already better than the whole Iroquois UA. Crucially, they also get double movement in hills anywhere on the map, which gives them major advantages in exploration and warfare.

Don't need to lecture me on the merits of the Inca, It's my most played Civ ;)

Also, Hiawatha's been very strong AI civ since vanilla, granted I haven't seen him as much on BNW due to the sheer number of Civs. But having played him specifically to try him out in BNW, Hiawatha hasn't lost his touch. With his starting bias, he can get a jungle start quite often which will give him massive food throughout the game, and paired with trading posts, SP and pantheon, he gets a crapload of super tiles in the late game (gold,food,science,culture) all in 1 tile. Furthermore, with Hiawatha, you can delay roads until later, making the early gold crunch in BNW significantly easier to handle.

You're also very likely to get jungle/forest starts which means you get your UB bonus and late-game supertiles within the radius of a single city; he's very flexible that way and unlike the Incas, don;y rely on perfect/good mountain starts to get that super core (I also play alot of Inca and have to reroll once or twice as the map script can put Incas on some awful starts with a lot of hills next to mountains, but with SHEEP!)

Iroquius is only more meh if he get ONLY jungle or ONLY forest starts but that's rare, and it's not the end of the world, unlike playing the Incas with few or no hills to farm.

Having played Haiwatha in BNW, he's an amazing Civ to play, without having to rely on gambits and UA crutches like the other civs, he is just pure production/science/food ; a builder's dream Civ that can be a mean warmonger too as he gets a resourceless swordsman. Meaning you don't even have to worry about a no iron start!

If the Inca is in the top 10, which I agree with BTW, there's no reason Haiwatha can't be. But the list is just so nonsensical I'm just going to accept it as a people's choice awards, rather than an exhaustive analysis of what are the actually strong civs to play. :p
 
dexter, what would you consider the best map build for them? arborea wet? rainforest dry?
 
dexter, what would you consider the best map build for them? arborea wet? rainforest dry?

Good question, I play on standard settings. The only thing that is non standard is map size (large) and I'm currently playing on pangea.

The map scripts starting bias should place your capital near forests or jungles or both.

I assume the Iroquois would be even stronger if the map conditions are baked for them.
 
With his starting bias, he can get a jungle start quite often which will give him massive food throughout the game, and paired with trading posts, SP and pantheon, he gets a crapload of super tiles in the late game (gold,food,science,culture) all in 1 tile.

Jungle is bad. It doesn't give you massive food and it cripples your production.

Furthermore, with Hiawatha, you can delay roads until later, making the early gold crunch in BNW significantly easier to handle.

In the absolute best-case (extremely unlikely) scenario—if you have forest fully connecting all of your cities—you might save ~20 gold per turn for 50-100 turns (before you have to build railroads), and you'll get a little extra from earlier city connections. That's actually pretty good (not top-tier, though). However…

You're also very likely to get jungle/forest starts which means you get your UB bonus and late-game supertiles within the radius of a single city; he's very flexible that way and unlike the Incas, don;y rely on perfect/good mountain starts to get that super core

If you're willing to reroll repeatedly, you might eventually get a nice start with lots of forest and a sprinkling of jungle. If you're not cheesing it, though, you're much more likely to get a "forest start" that involves three or four forest tiles around your capital and very few (or none) near other good city sites. The Inca are good even if you never have a single mountain in your territory. The Iroquois are worse than a civ with no uniques if you don't have enough forests, thanks to the Longhouse.
 
Is no one else surprised that Carthage is ranked so lowly? Perhaps pangea maps are too popular and I'm just an outlier, but that is really surprising to me. Carthage is amazingly powerful in my opinion.
 
Hiawatha was a very strong opponent in G&K because of his AI, not because of his civ's strengths (and in BNW he seems to be somewhat punchless). The Iroquois are terrible. They have a mediocre replacement for a crappy unit, a unique building that's worse than the one it replaces, and a very weak UA.

The Inca have a relatively weak UU, but it's still better than the Mohawk Warrior—at least you'll actually build it. The Inca UI is excellent; the Longhouse is a disaster. And the Inca have one of the best UAs in the game. The Iroquois get free roads in forests and jungles in their own territory, nothing more. No benefits outside their territory (apart from the new Caravan thing, which is marginally useful), and they have to build railroads anyway in the late game if they want the attendant bonuses. The Inca get free roads and railroads in hills and half-price roads/railroads everywhere else, regardless of whether they own the tile—that's already better than the whole Iroquois UA. Crucially, they also get double movement in hills anywhere on the map, which gives them major advantages in exploration and warfare.

Mohawk Warrior (which requires no Iron) is slightly weaker in BNW due to the shift in iron discovery from Iron Working to Bronze Working, which makes Iron much more easily accessible.

I think you are heavily underestimating the Longhouse. Yes, it is terrain dependent but it grants BASE hammers (which can get multiplied by modifiers), so it can easily yield more hammers than the normal Workshop. Are you also the type of player who thinks that the Austrian Coffee House is "worse" than the base Windmill?

Incans can build free roads, but those roads benefit enemy prophet/missionaries, as well as opponents if they manage to take your city. If the Iroquois lose their city, the opponent is denied access to roads since they don't exist!
 
Jungle is bad? news to me. Maybe in Civ3. A title that gives you 2 food base that adds 2 extra gold with TP, that can then add science with university, with the potential for even even more gold (3 gold) with Rationalism plus an an optional culture (if you get Pantheon) is not awful.

2food,3gpt,1science,1 culture. is a godly tile that is only rivaled by the GP supertiles.

Improved jungle tiles will make your golden ages truly golden, not to mention power your capital to amazing heights with all the multiplier buildings inside it.

This is probably why rankings are so borked if people actually believe improved jungles are bad.

If you hit Liberty, get the worker improvement bonus then also get Pyramids , the long improvement time isn't even an issue. But you should be hitting liberty at some point in almost all games you play even if its not the first SP tree you finish.

Note that I haven't even touched on their UB;
 
Jungle is bad? news to me. Maybe in Civ3. A title that gives you 2 food base that adds 2 extra gold with TP, that can then add science with university, with the potential for even even more gold (3 gold) with Rationalism plus an an optional culture (if you get Pantheon) is not awful.

2food,3gpt,1science,1 culture. is a godly tile that is only rivaled by the GP supertiles.

Improved jungle tiles will make your golden ages truly golden, not to mention power your capital to amazing heights with all the multiplier buildings inside it.

This is probably why rankings are so borked if people actually believe improved jungles are bad.

If you hit Liberty, get the worker improvement bonus then also get Pyramids , the long improvement time isn't even an issue. But you should be hitting liberty at some point in almost all games you play even if its not the first SP tree you finish.

Note that I haven't even touched on their UB;
I'm sad to inform you, but the initial poster was right and your if{if{if{if{if}}}} construction just confirms it.

Civ is all about snowballing. Value of "superIf" is always lower than +2 hammers or +2 faith at turn 1.

Concretely jungle tiles can be huge mid to lategame, but starting with them isn't that great.
 
I'm sad to inform you, but the initial poster was right and your if{if{if{if{if}}}} construction just confirms it.

Civ is all about snowballing. Value of "superIf" is always lower than +2 hammers or +2 faith at turn 1.

Concretely jungle tiles can be huge mid to lategame, but starting with them isn't that great.

If you're playing any other civs than the Iroquois I would agree. But since you're jumping in and likely not reading everything, the reason it;s good for Iroquois is its starting bias towards forest and jungles and their UA which counts jungles as roads too.

Since this thread isn't about general strategies for what counts as a good start, I was laying out the merits of a Civ with a bias towards jungle/forest starts. And why it's an error for people to vote it so low vs. the Inca, a Civ I quite like and played most of my games on.

You talk about 'snowballing' ; those jungle tiles are a good example of snowballing, the tile stats only keep improving after you get a TP built; no extra worker turns required.

And again, we're kind of just talking about jungle tiles only and completely ignoring their UB and assuming zero forests spawn with the jungles at your core area and you just have a bunch of cities with no production; which of course is not true and probably about as frequent as Incas spawning next to an isolated patch of mountains with a bunch of hills with SHEEP on them. lol.
 
Point is, you still have to buy stuff other than the base game to obtain them.

But if you didn't buy them you're not going to play against them either, right? And all of the vanilla civs will be better comparitively.

I get power creep and think it might have come into play a few times--you don't want all of the added civs to be the best ones. There could be some tweaking here. But it would clearly also not make much sense or be too fun to have all of the later ones be bad.
 
Mohawk Warrior (which requires no Iron) is slightly weaker in BNW due to the shift in iron discovery from Iron Working to Bronze Working, which makes Iron much more easily accessible.

I think you are heavily underestimating the Longhouse. Yes, it is terrain dependent but it grants BASE hammers (which can get multiplied by modifiers), so it can easily yield more hammers than the normal Workshop. Are you also the type of player who thinks that the Austrian Coffee House is "worse" than the base Windmill?

On the contrary, I'd say the Coffee House is probably the third-best building in the game (after the Stele and Pyramid)—certainly in the top five. The Coffee House has two huge, pure advantages over the Windmill: it's not terrain dependent and it boosts GP production. It also has a sort of sidegrade-y quality, the 5% :c5production: rather than 10% :c5production: for buildings (I'd argue that generic production is better: even if you spend more than 50% of your time in a given city working on buildings, the times you work on wonders, projects, and units are the times that speed is of the essence and every extra hammer counts most). The Longhouse has no clear advantages over the Workshop; it's only a sidegrade. Even if the Coffee House didn't have other obvious advantages, its sidegrade facet would be better than the Longhouse's, because it's something the player can actually manipulate. Go Commerce, go Order, buy all your buildings, and use those extra hammers for wonders, projects, and units. All you can do to leverage the Longhouse is reroll until you get an epic forest start (and, yes, settle cities near forest, but when you're also concerned with resources, rivers, hills, mountains, strategic chokepoints, etc., forests barely figure into the equation).

The Longhouse grants base hammers, yes, but there aren't actually that many percentile increases to production. The only one the Iroquois are going to get before the Industrial era is +20% :c5production: from a Golden Age. You'll get ten, maybe twenty turns of that. In the Industrial era, you get +10% :c5production: from Factories and +25% :c5production: from railroads (you have to abandon your UA to get that one, and you'll never get it in the capital, where you probably have the most forests). It's not much.

The Longhouse is best in small cities, where base production would be well below 30 but the city is able to get three or four extra hammers by working forests. However, that pressure to go wide is basically negated by the fact that the wider you go, the fewer forests there are. Even around your starting area you're not guaranteed to have a decent number of forests.

I just rerolled ten starts as the Iroquois on standard size Pangaea maps (small sample size, yeah, but go ahead and try it yourself). Each time, I founded my capital where my settler stood. I got an average of 6.2 forests within its workable radius—figure there were a couple still in the fog of war where I couldn't see their edges and we can round it up to seven (incidentally, only two of these starts contained any jungle). The worst had only two forest tiles; the best had seventeen (although three of those had luxuries that require chopping). Seven forests in a city is pretty good—the Longhouse is certainly better than a Workshop in that case. However:

1) Pangaea is the most favorable of the standard map types for the Iroquois. Continents is less likely to have huge forests; Archipelago is a complete disaster (way worse for the Iroquois than Pangaea is for, say, England).

2) Seven forests near the capital is good, but you need to average three or four forests around each city if you just want your Longhouses to break even compared to Workshops. If you only average seven near the capital even with the forest start bias, what are the odds you're going to manage that, especially with so many other important concerns driving your decisions about where to settle?

3) Sometimes forests need to get chopped. Any of the strategic resources except Horses and Oil can appear under forests. Artifacts can appear under forests. Sometimes you need the extra food from a riverside farm.

The Longhouse shines when you reroll over and over to get a godly start. But anybody can reroll over and over to get a great start. The Longhouse is, under normal, average circumstances, a liability.

Incans can build free roads, but those roads benefit enemy prophet/missionaries, as well as opponents if they manage to take your city. If the Iroquois lose their city, the opponent is denied access to roads since they don't exist!

That is a seriously trivial advantage.

This is probably as good a place as any to point out that the Iroquois have been hit harder with indirect nerfs than any other vanilla civ. Their UA has never been very good, but that was okay—they used to have one of the best UUs in the game and a pretty decent UB. First, the Workshop was changed to give generic production instead of a bonus only to buildings, with no corresponding change to the Longhouse. Now the Longhouse was a crappy UB instead of an average one. Then, in G&K, the Swordsman went from being a powerhouse to being almost completely sidelined by the Pikeman. The Mohawk Warrior was still decent—at least you were guaranteed to get it if you teched to Iron Working—but no longer one of the best units in the game, especially considering the fact that ranged units now ruled the battlefield. Finally, as you mentioned, BNW moved Iron up to Bronze Working, partially eroding the one major advantage the Mohawk Warrior still had over other Swordsmen.

If the Iroquois have been hit so hard by patches and expansions, and they're still a top-tier civ, you'd think we'd remember them being completely unstoppable in vanilla. But they weren't—they were fairly middle-of-the-road even then.
 
Just to bring this back on topic, this isn't a contest about whether Incas or anyone else voted in the op deserve to be in the top tier;

As I said, I'm not that concerned about the rankings in the OP insofar as I accept it's a people's choice awards, not an in-depth study of each Civ's strengths and fit.

I noted how the AI generally performs well with the Iroquois because if you look at the AI as a fairly mediocre/bad player ; Civs they do well with tend to be generally strong to play. Though not exclusively, as there are other Civs, like Assyria that probably requires the human touch to get the most out of their UA and is a strong Civ with their seige towers.

If the Iroquois have been hit so hard by patches and expansions, and they're still a top-tier civ, you'd think we'd remember them being completely unstoppable in vanilla. But they weren't—they were fairly middle-of-the-road even then.

What patch and expansion made them worse? Can you give specific examples?

Even if you argue that 'new' civs added pushed them down the list; ignoring the people's choice list in the OP, how many spots do you think do they deserve to be pushed down?

Are you implying every single add-on Civ is better than them to push them out of their 'supposed' top tier ranking?

Like I said, I play the Incas and love them absolutely. Top tier Civ I agree; but I also took the time to revisit the Iroquois and my conclusion is, they are still a strong Civ;

The Iroquois is good because of sum of its UB/UA/UU + starting bias makes it a far more flexible Civ to play than even the Incas, which can spawn on a patch of mountains with few/no workable hills and no 4 food terrace hills, in those cases you lose your UI for your core and have to rely on 'skill' to work with what you have.

Naturally, everything said here is in context of standard settings; not baked ones.
 
What patch and expansion made them worse? Can you give specific examples?

Seriously? Please read my post again. Or just read this part, I guess, if you can't be bothered with the whole thing:

First, the Workshop was changed to give generic production instead of a bonus only to buildings, with no corresponding change to the Longhouse. Now the Longhouse was a crappy UB instead of an average one. Then, in G&K, the Swordsman went from being a powerhouse to being almost completely sidelined by the Pikeman. The Mohawk Warrior was still decent—at least you were guaranteed to get it if you teched to Iron Working—but no longer one of the best units in the game, especially considering the fact that ranged units now ruled the battlefield. Finally [...] BNW moved Iron up to Bronze Working, partially eroding the one major advantage the Mohawk Warrior still had over other Swordsmen.
 
Stonecutter, could you either post the medians for the data you have, or provide the data in an Excel format? The 'averages' you post hold no meaning, due to the nature of the ranking scale you chose.
 
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