After having a few days to play BNW, what is your favorite new civ?

I gotta say, I think France is a lot more fun now. It was great to watch Paris turn into a cultural mecca in the Renaissance. The ideological wars make the cultural victory much more dynamic/satisfying.

I've only played with 3 of them because I keep starting games as Indonesia.

So many random elements to the civ (do you find any good islands? do your swordsmen become useless or flat out amazing?) but I guess thats just what makes them so much fun. Plus, the music is amazing and Gajah Mada is a badass.

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I'll have to play Indonesia again soon to see if my getting good opportunities in both of my Indonesia games is really the fluke people here are suggesting.

I've had bad luck with other civs sufficient to cripple me - Assyria with poor production and rough terrain everywhere, and rolling a duel map where I can't fund my units through trade; Morocco with no deserts on an archipelago map where civs are so widely-spaced that even with harbours I can't reach enough to get the bonus more than a couple of times (and whether I get it from civs trading with me seems to be wholly luck-based) - but no issues at all with Indonesia, even though suitable sites for off-continent colonisation may only be viable towards the mid-game (which is when they start to be most useful anyway).

Indonesia for sure, I prefer playing on island maps and they are absolutely OP. First Civ that I've managed to get 100 happiness with.

Ozzy88 said:

Indonesia for sure, I prefer playing on island maps and they are absolutely OP. First Civ that I've managed to get 100 happiness with.

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I played on Continents (random that turned out to be Continents) and it was strong there. I'm wondering if it's spoiled me, since after switching away from Indonesia (and Siam, which of course also gets happiness buffs) I'm struggling to manage my happiness much of the time.

I haven't hit all the new civs, but I've been pleased with all the ones I've played; Poland's free policies are great, along with Ducal Stables making pastures nuts, Morocco's trade bonus is nice and the Kasbahs are nuts, especially when stacked with Petra, and Arabia's new faith focus in combination with extra long trade routes is becoming one of my favorite civs.

But my favorite of the expansion is Indonesia. I tend to get unlucky with Kris swordsmen, but their UA and UB work so well together to create a both a strong trade civ and a religious powerhouse.

PhilBowles said:

I played on Continents (random that turned out to be Continents) and it was strong there. I'm wondering if it's spoiled me, since after switching away from Indonesia (and Siam, which of course also gets happiness buffs) I'm struggling to manage my happiness much of the time.

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Yeah that's definitely a very specific scenario that would only work on a small islands map. I like playing with an advantage though

After finding them rather uninspiring at first glance I have warmed up considerably to both Portugal and Maria I. That is to say both the playstyle of the civ and its flavor. I particularly like civs that encourage (force?) me to explore, so Maria joins her Iberian neighbor Isabella in my favorites. The unique ship unit and its one off gold capabilities led me to discover all of the civs before anyone and naturally led into a World Congress host position and an eventual Diplomatic win. Not to mention the flavor of the Civ, the tragic leader, the colors, that beautiful theme music....

Brazil is a close second though they require quite a bit of finesse in timing all of the bonuses, great artist spawns etc... They might have edged Portuagal out if they had included some Samba carnival music. Also Brazillian Spy music war theme FTW

Arabia is my favorite civ that got revamped, but from BNW I like Morocco for the extra money.

So far I've only had time to try out Portugal and Venice and I love them both. I really like Portugal's playstyle and I'm still working on a way to be very successful with Venice. But I am enjoying the new way of thinking; instead of "I've got to get those spots settled asap" you can pay your attention to other stuff while bribing cities that have been so kind to do all the hard work for you.

Actually just edited a video about this last week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAgAxMBHl3U

Poland so far. Not played Indonesia yet but i will stick with Poland

Free social policies is the best UA around. You can get a total of an entire social tree litterally for free. It really enhance the Trad/Lib finishers.

Lira said:

You've already won games?! I'm still trying to get my head around the new rules!

I've only played with Brazil so far, I've got an absurdly high score but city production is quite sluggish, and I'm lagging behind in science now even though I started off awesomely well :/

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Ha! This is me. Started a number of games. Closest I had to finishing one was as Siam (picked question mark, rolled as them and went with it). Quit the game at Information Era when I found out I'd end up winning science before culture, even though I was going for culture. Arabia had a crap ton of culture and Byzantium beat me to half the culture wonders by a few turns.

After getting comfortable with trade routes and the new culture game, also with the few experiment games I've played, I can only add this:

Shoshone: Was most excited about, but found out they are not all that great. A very generic Civ like America.

Portugal: May end up being a lot of fun--a surprise since I was least excited about this one pre-release. You can essentially get CS luxuries without the need to pay/keep alliances with them. May actually be a very good naval domination Civ; keep happiness up through Feidora's, keep gold that would have been spent on CS's and use for military instead.

Morocco: Probably one of my favorites so far. I like the color scheme and symbol.

Poland: Meh. Free policies just for playing through the game is great, but otherwise kind of boring.

Haven't played the others yet.

Ozzy88 said:

Yeah that's definitely a very specific scenario that would only work on a small islands map. I like playing with an advantage though

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No, what I'm saying is that Indonesia - on continents or otherwise - gives me such happiness buffs that switching to Morocco or Assyria (which have none) posed me problems in otherwise comparable situations. At least as far as these shuffle maps are concerned, one- to four-tile islands close enough to the mainland that the cultural borders extend onto the nearby ivory while still getting fish and good trade access are so common that the need for three of them is not a meaningful limitation. You'll be stuck if you spawn inland in a Pangea, but Indonesia's start bias seems to favour coasts (as do most of the civs I've played now).

Then again, I've had some truly weird starts recently - several jungle starts with Assyria followed by tundra and grassland starts for Morocco.

I'm playing Venice on emperor and enjoying the diplomacy. I only have 2 complete games so far. One was Freedom pangea and the other was Autocracy continents. The first game, I did the Commerce tree and the second I did Exploration. In the second game Alex was in there and he had a majority CS block at first. With in three rounds of voting, all were mine and he was slapped with an embargo.

Science really seems to be the limiting factor on how soon you can finish the game.

I am going to play through all the achievements as Venice before I move on.

My next goal is Radio Free Europe!

/put that up your wall

Assyria. But I haven't tried them all and I'm new to Civ V in general. Too much overflow. Technology stealing as a reward for a militaristic-aggressive gameplay, however, speaks to me.