Underpowered Civilizations

I just wanted to know your opinions on this: The somewhat imbalance of Special Abilities in Civ 5.
I'm going to leave out SAs that involve city-states, but my biggest problem is with these three:

The Great Warpath (Hiawatha) Units move through Forest and Jungle in friendly territory as if it is Road. These tiles can be used to establish Trade Routes upon researching The Wheel.

Nobel Prize (Gustavus Adolphus): Gain 90 Influence with a Great Person gift to a City-State. When declaring friendship, Sweden and their friend gets a +10% boost to Great Person generation.

The Long Count (Pacal the Great): After researching Theology, receive a bonus great person at the end of every Maya calendar cycle ( 394 years ).

Hiawatha's is just plain unfair, since an enemy can chop down forest and jungles (which can't grow back; meaning you're screwed).
Plus if your playing on an island based map, the whole thing is almost COMPLETELY USELESS.

But those are all excellent UAs. Maya are indisputably one of the strongest civs in the game, Long Count is borderline overpowered with the versatility it brings. Getting a early GE, GS, and Prophet set you up to easily dominate the game. Theology is on the way to Education which almost everyone races towards on Immortal/Deity, so it's not even out of your way to activate the UA.

Sweden is a bit more situational but still excellent, since you can gift Generals, Admirals or captured Prophets. You have to think outside the box to use it correctly, but the benefits are extremely powerful. On most maps you should be able to maintain 2-3 DoFs even on the highest difficulty setting unless you get a particularly vicious AI pairing.

Hiwatha saves you a ton of gold on road maintenance (around 3 Gold per city, as much as a Paper Maker). Warpath is also borderline overpowered on defense, since forests give you an effective Great Wall to inhibit enemy movement, and give your own units a movement bonus equivalent to Cavalry. Hiwatha with properly settled cities is one of the best defense civs in the game. Also helps speed up your workers to get to that next tile to improve, easily shaving a couple of turns for each improvement.

There aren't too many civs with weak UAs. Arabia, Japan, Germany, and India come to mind, but even most of those can be situationaly useful.

You can't say that a UA is underpowered because it doesn't work in certain conditions, because that applies to MANY civilizations, take Vanilla Elizabeth, her power is completely Useless on a map with no major water bodies, her only ability is a +1 movement, that's it. Kamehameha's ability is also underpowered as it's nearly non-existent in non-island/continent areas.

I'm not sure if you've actually played as the Maya or Sweden before, really, the Mayans are great and so are the Swedes. The Mayans receive a ton of great people, what's not to love? Use the flexibility to get a wonder, start a golden age, enhance your army, increase your beakers, etc etc endless options. Really NOT underpowered. On the other hand, we have the Swedes: warry against other people to generate a bunch of GG and get a bunch of Allies (thus giving you food, happiness, culture, faith, units, even science, with Patronage). Also, you get bonus %GP generation per DOF. Your religion, enhanced with Messiah, would grant you 3 spreads and a CS alliance. They are simply awesome. You also didn't give any reason for those two being UP, so...

About Hiawatha: he is not very good at water maps, true. But using Hiawatha on Archipelago is like using England on Pangaea, Atilla on Tiny Islands, Incans with a flat world, Polynesia on Pangaea, Siam with no city states, and the list goes on. Every civ has its strenghts and weaknesses, and the Iroquois are not an exception: they do much better on land maps than on water maps. Now regarding your opinion on their UA: using the free trade routes between your cities is quite useful. You get a forest bias to use: you found some cities, buy some tiles, and BAM, you've got a nice gpt. Your units are now able to move faster to aid on defense, and you can connect cities much faster, easier, and less expensively. It is true that enemies can chop their forests to handicap you in case you invade them/to use the insta production bonus, but they wouldn't chop yours. I mean, if I were to use my workers, I'd prefer to help myself than to handicap the others. You are also not mentioning the UU and UB. They have a lot of sinergy with the UA: the longhouse provides production to your forests, helping you to build things faster. Your cities will most probably be covered with forests, so it helps you a lot. At the end of the game, you get tiles giving you +1 food, +4 production and that is awesome. It is, also, a base production, so it is much best enhanced by % modifiers. The Mohawk Warrior is useful to be spammed - no iron requirement - and is quite decent to rush with. If you want to get the most of it, try an Arborea map as them

Odd picks, as I would consider them all above average.

Now how about India and Mongolia UAs? Those always seemed almost detrimental to me.

ASLunar said:

The Great Warpath (Hiawatha) Units move through Forest and Jungle in friendly territory as if it is Road. These tiles can be used to establish Trade Routes upon researching The Wheel.

Click to expand...

I used to think this way too... until this happened:



There's no way one is going to chop off all that jungle forests in a reasonable time eh, and this Hiawatha is a fast techer who is pretty good at fighting

Civ's aren't balanced piecemeal. You have to compare them as a whole. Where the Unique Ability seems weak, they are often countered by a strong UU or UB.

Iroquois: The capacity to move units rapidly without having to built a large network of roads is the initial benefit. The ability to connect cities is the second. That helps you keep costs down. Even if you have to build a few roads over gaps in the forest, it still saves you a ton of money. With regards to archepelago maps, certain maps have greater benefit to some civs than others. It's just how the game is. The Polynesians have less benefits from their UA on Pangea maps.

Sweden: Their UA is very controversial. Some say it's weak, others say it's strong. I've learned that it takes a strategic paradigm shift in order to use it properly. You have to think of Great People as having an extra ability that gives you an instant 30 turn alliance with a city-state. So if you really don't need that Great Admiral right now, but it'd be nice to get some happiness for 30 turns, gift it to a mercantile city-state. The bonus to generation really takes a diplomatic brain to use properly. YOu have to create a bloc, like NATO, that are friends with you and friends with each other. If you turn your bloc against an enemy, you can get a lot of Great Generals out of it.

I don't know too much about the Maya or how good the Long Count is, but the Mayans have an excellent UB in the Pyramids. So balance-wise, the Mayans are still quite good.

Really unexpected choices. The Long Count is phenomenal. In emperor and below you can use the GL to rush Theology at a ridiculously early time, which nets you a ton of free GP before you even hit the 0 mark. Sweden gets 90 influence for gifting a GG/GA (as well as other GP), which is pretty nice in conjunction with honor/commerce/war. The Iroqois can save a lot of early GPT on road maintenence as well as early worker turns. That's not bad at all.

ASLunar said:

I just wanted to know your opinions on this: The somewhat imbalance of Special Abilities in Civ 5.
I'm going to leave out SAs that involve city-states, but my biggest problem is with these three:

The Great Warpath (Hiawatha) Units move through Forest and Jungle in friendly territory as if it is Road. These tiles can be used to establish Trade Routes upon researching The Wheel.

Nobel Prize (Gustavus Adolphus): Gain 90 Influence with a Great Person gift to a City-State. When declaring friendship, Sweden and their friend gets a +10% boost to Great Person generation.

The Long Count (Pacal the Great): After researching Theology, receive a bonus great person at the end of every Maya calendar cycle ( 394 years ).

Hiawatha's is just plain unfair, since an enemy can chop down forest and jungles (which can't grow back; meaning you're screwed).
Plus if your playing on an island based map, the whole thing is almost COMPLETELY USELESS.

Click to expand...

Iroquois & Maya are actually on my OVER powered list. Just play Iroquois on a normal map and as Maya you make Theology a beeline.

As to Sweden, that's not on my over powered list, but isn't under powered either: Just use spare Great Generals & Great People. You can also have a Great Prophet that's spreading save its last spare and instead gift.
But the main point of the UA is that the DOF bonus to great people generation stacks.

I would agree with the posters on the Mongolian UA being the worst one. (Outside of the scenario); it does have one of the best UUs though which keeps it off the list of worst civs.

India's UA: Yes, here is a case where on turn 1, you'd be better for with no UA at all. It won't be until your city reaches size 6 that you break even. Around size 10, it becomes decent and gets better from there.

Sweden is on my OP list second to Denmark, Denmark being a monster at quick amphibious invasions. Sweden, if you play like i do, is great early in the game for science if you build the great library as soon as possible and then get 120% great person generation by DOFs. Once you get to the caroleans then drop the passive DOFs and attack EVERYONE! By the time they all declare war on you, you will have artillery and the games over basically

If anything the Mayans are maybe THE most powerful civ if you play a (religious and/or science) wide/ICS game - even if you ignore the UA. The cheap UU also allows you to get religion and/or writing jumpstarted w/o worrying too much about early rushes. The UA feels more like a very nice bonus.

Hiawatha, much like the Incas, save you tons from road maintenance throughout the game, and movement through forests (hills for Incas) allow you to postpone/drop road building for military purposes for a long time - allowing your workers to develop the land.

I am confused, are you trying to say those are strong or weak civs? Because Iroquois and Maya are definitely strong civs.

Sweden, on the other hand....

I see you're new to this game .. Maya is (arguably) the strongest civ out there, having strong religion/science and a bunch of free great people . Sweden is great warmongering/culture candidate, because the friendship UA actually stacks; and Hiawatha is very difficult to kill once he gets to Mohawks.

Talking about underpowered we can talk about Gandhi. And even here many people will disagree with me on this one. There is probably a way to make every civ shine, even India.

I wonder which civs have "strong" abilities according to you.

The thing about UAs is that almost every single one has to be looked at with its other uniques:

The Great Warpath (Hiawatha) Units move through Forest and Jungle in friendly territory as if it is Road. These tiles can be used to establish Trade Routes upon researching The Wheel.

Click to expand...

Their unique Mohawk Warrior gets a bonus in forest and jungle which can be pretty key early on. And the fact that they don't require iron means you can spend a good chunk of the game building your cities and establishing a very strong foothold on your continent with your other unique, the Longhouse, which gives a massive production bonus for forest tiles. (If you want to test their might without stress then play them on arborea maps).

The Long Count (Pacal the Great): After researching Theology, receive a bonus great person at the end of every Maya calendar cycle ( 394 years ).

Click to expand...

Their UU Pyramid and UU Atlatlist is just the perfect early combo

Let's not forget Mohawks do not require iron. How broken is that. You might as well make them invincible while in forest tiles, and you mass produce them... lol

Despite never playing as Hiawatha, I can clearly see their UA being one of the best in the game, esp. in conjunction with their UB. Their UU seems to be pretty good, too.

Sweden is one of those "seems lame in theory, but super effective in practice" ones. I saw many other people saying the same thing, and had to agree even before I tried them. I mean, honestly, out of all the great people you get, how many did you actually NEED? Not a lot.

Pacal is the opposite. His UA is certainly unque, and seems good in theory, but in practice I think it's lacking. The actual number of GP you get is low, and you only get it theology. That said, his UB is amazing.

I think a disintction needs to be made between civs that have a underpowered UA, underpowered UU/UB/UI, and those that are underpowered overall.

Mongols have a very limited UA (minus the movement point), but their UUs are some of the best in the game. India, overall, i think is UU. It's not bad, but just about every other civ is better in any given situation.

The last time I played Hiawatha the map was nice. I had four cities connected with three roads and one city was not that close.

When I consider under/overpowered in Civ, I have to consider the nations' real life history. Having said that, two stand out as severely underpowered.


Japan: Resisted invasion for ~1900 years, Pioneered naval aviation combat, Conquered most of the pacific islands, Manchuria, China, Thailand, Indonesia, created economic powerhouse in '80's, Have incredibly cohesive culture... and none of this is reflected in Civ. We get a samurai UU, which is decent at best, a Zero UU which is HOT GARBAGE, and a UA that has minimal effect except for extremely damaged planes and bombers. This civ needs a total overhaul. I'd love to see them get an modern-era UB that reflects their industry/electronics takeover in the 80's.

Germany: Europe's greatest fear for 1000 years was a unified Germany, once it happened it swiftly asserted itself by invading Russia and smashing the then-most-powerful army in the world (France) into a standstill, came back ~20 years later to conquer most of mainland Europe, built a network of satellite nations that even Napoleon or Stalin would envy, and now is BY FAR the strongest and healthiest economy in Europe. But in Civ they get... a landsknecht UU that is very solid, but ultimately nothing special and takes massive losses in combat, a UA that is half garbage (barb camp popping) and half solid and makes no sense historically, and a UU that might be the worst non-Zero in the game, the Panzer. Tanks are near worthless in civ 5, and this one isn't much better than the rest... ugh. Please power this Civ up... they should be nearly unstoppable when going for domination in the Modern Era.

Seabastian Civ said:

When I consider under/overpowered in Civ, I have to consider the nations' real life history. Having said that, two stand out as severely underpowered.


Japan: Resisted invasion for ~1900 years, Pioneered naval aviation combat, Conquered most of the pacific islands, Manchuria, China, Thailand, Indonesia, created economic powerhouse in '80's, Have incredibly cohesive culture... and none of this is reflected in Civ. We get a samurai UU, which is decent at best, a Zero UU which is HOT GARBAGE, and a UA that has minimal effect except for extremely damaged planes and bombers. This civ needs a total overhaul. I'd love to see them get an modern-era UB that reflects their industry/electronics takeover in the 80's.

Germany: Europe's greatest fear for 1000 years was a unified Germany, once it happened it swiftly asserted itself by invading Russia and smashing the then-most-powerful army in the world (France) into a standstill, came back ~20 years later to conquer most of mainland Europe, built a network of satellite nations that even Napoleon or Stalin would envy, and now is BY FAR the strongest and healthiest economy in Europe. But in Civ they get... a landsknecht UU that is very solid, but ultimately nothing special and takes massive losses in combat, a UA that is half garbage (barb camp popping) and half solid and makes no sense historically, and a UU that might be the worst non-Zero in the game, the Panzer. Tanks are near worthless in civ 5, and this one isn't much better than the rest... ugh. Please power this Civ up... they should be nearly unstoppable when going for domination in the Modern Era.

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I have no issues with japan (Their UA really fits them from he whole "honor before death thing".) Except maybe the zero/

Germany's UA annoys me though. It's supposed to represent the Germanic tribes, but the germany civ is the germany as a nation. Their UA should involve militarization. I plan to make a mod for this.

My problem with Hiawatha is how as you go up in difficulty the window to use the Mohawks effectively is smaller and smaller because the AI likes to walk their own Swords around by turn ~50-55. Plus the Longhouse is somewhat restrictive on what improvements you can use because it loses the +10% base production of the Workshop. Maybe it's a playstyle thing.

With a couple of exceptions, the only civs I really consider "underpowered" are rather map dependent or have issues with their UU/UB(hi Gahndi) more than their UA.