Which new civ do you think will make the challenging to play against? (Version 2)

Assyria seems like the killer to me..........not only can they go on a war path, but they are rewarded with free techs...........The AI is already sooo good at the science victory

Of course the Zulu's military advantages give it an edge as well.............and Poland's UA gives it an advatage with SP's, so those are going to be good games to!

for Assyria's ability to mean anything they have to have less tech than their opponent, which makes it harder to take enemy cities. that is the worst UA in this expansion.

PerceeP927 said:

for Assyria's ability to mean anything they have to have less tech than their opponent, which makes it harder to take enemy cities. that is the worst UA in this expansion.

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Not necessarily - Assyria could beeline Military techs and steal the rest from their enemies. They'll always have the most advanced units in the game, so taking cities won't be hard, and receive all the domestic ones from war.
And we already know the AI does crazy beelines (ever got Compass stolen by enemies spies? I've heard some even go so far as to steal Calendar!), so Assyria might just be a strong player in the game.

Besides, I have the feeling aggressive civilizations do very well overall - in my games, Mongolia in particular is always HUUUGE and menacing!

JSMCAG said:

Not necessarily - Assyria could beeline Military techs and steal the rest from their enemies. They'll always have the most advanced units in the game, so taking cities won't be hard, and receive all the domestic ones from war.
And we already know the AI does crazy beelines (ever got Compass stolen by enemies spies? I've heard some even go so far as to steal Calendar!), so Assyria might just be a strong player in the game.

Besides, I have the feeling aggressive civilizations do very well overall - in my games, Mongolia in particular is always HUUUGE and menacing!

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i think the AI wont be able to use the UA to its advantage because it isn't intelligent as a human player...

The AI already beelines techs though; it's why you'll see civs like the Ottomans get to the Renaissance crazy early, Suleiman went straight to muskets while totally disregarding the rest of the tech tree.

Assyria is going to have a warmongering science focus; two-thirds of the perfect storm of AI flavors that makes Hiawatha the best AI in the game. It may get stunted if Ashurbanipal ends up mimicking Nebuchadnezzar's preference for staying small but if they do have an expansive settling flavor then the Assyrians will be terrifying indeed.

As some have mentioned, Assyria can beeline and steal techs they didn't bother to research in the preceding eras. They don't even have to take big cities to do it. They can pick off new pop.1 cities, raze them, and move on. Later the spot will be resettled and the Assyrians come back for more.

I think the AI can handle that pretty well. They don't even have to be stealing yours. They can steal the ones they skipped from other AI.

JSMCAG said:

Not necessarily - Assyria could beeline Military techs and steal the rest from their enemies. They'll always have the most advanced units in the game, so taking cities won't be hard, and receive all the domestic ones from war.
And we already know the AI does crazy beelines (ever got Compass stolen by enemies spies? I've heard some even go so far as to steal Calendar!), so Assyria might just be a strong player in the game.

Besides, I have the feeling aggressive civilizations do very well overall - in my games, Mongolia in particular is always HUUUGE and menacing!

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Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking

To make best AI use of the UA, I'd imagine that they will probably need set Ashurbanipal's Civ approch flavors to be weighted in favor of Hostile, Guarded, and Deceptive, and CS approach flavors to be weighted in favor of Conquest and Bully.

Then for Ashurbanipal's flavors they will definitely need to weight all the military and growth related flavors, while putting a low value on Science (so they dont chase beakers), but a high value on Spaceship (so they do chase techs). Unless they add in a new leader flavor specifically for Ash, so as to differentiate focus on science theft instead of science production. (Which undoubtedly they will add new leader flavors for the new trade and toursim mechanics, but hopefully for Ash as well so he can use his UA to its fullest potential).

They could do this by adding a flavor to for the different tech associations, such as FLAVOR_SCIENCE_MILITARY, FLAVOR_SCIENCE_CULTURE, FLAVOR_SCIENCE_SCIENCE(? )

I highly expect it will be Assyria.

For Zulu, if you look at other warmongers (Monty, Attila, etc.) they all perform very badly in lategame when an AI is at the helm.

ImperialChaos said:

Culturally: Brazil
Militarily: Zulu
Scientifically: Assyria

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I think Assyria has a much better chance to be a military powerhouse. If it prioritizes military techs and steals everything else it will be unstoppable.

Some good points have been raised here.

As has been said, a civ's effectiveness in the hands of a human player is not necessarily the same level of effectiveness it will have in the hands of the AI. Like how both Babylon and Korea are generally considered top-tier civs for humans, but I read that the AI doesn't use Babylon nearly as well as it uses Korea.

Martinus said:

I think Assyria has a much better chance to be a military powerhouse. If it prioritizes military techs and steals everything else it will be unstoppable.

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ya but the UB library + stealing tecchs froom other nations makes me think that theyll be badass science type of civ