Most underrated civ

PhroX said:

Well, if it's lack of techs we're looking at, forget UUs - everyone can conquer perfectly well with CBs, and can still reach Edu pretty quickly. A 'zerk or two wouldn't hurt, but I really can't see it making a huge difference (and in the hands of Liz or Wu, those nicely experienced CB upgrade into an unholy terror....)

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Berserkers aren't the key reason Denmark is super-effective at conquest. You should start to worry as soon as they have both Optics and Mathematics. ;-)

Also, Berserkers are at an awkward point in the tree. They're much more dangerous later when they upgrade at a more convenient time and retain their promotions. Don't get me wrong, they're great, because conquest doesn't end at the coast. But if you take Metal Casting before Education, it sets you back long-term, tech-wise. And if you take Education first, Berserkers aren't as dominant by the time you get them. You can get away with Metal Casting first on anything but Deity though.

Where Denmark gets scary again is Physics. Ballista that can swim into range, land, set up, and fire in one turn. With +1 Movement from Exploration, you might not even see it coming. The value of nuking a city down before a defender's troops can even be moved in response is not to be underestimated. You can have a one-turn war. Boom, capital down. Denmark essentially has the equivalent of slightly slower Frigates that do *way more damage to cities and come earlier in the tech tree*. After you finish clearing your own continent, you land on the next continent with cannons and do the same thing all over again.

And those Berserkers, upon upgrade, become truly bad-ass shock troops. Especially when they become Ski Infantry.

And yes, it's still relevant on Pangaea. There are always at least 2 AIs on each side of the pangaea vulnerable to coastal attack, and usually one on the north or south side as well. The fact that you only need a minimal navy (to protect your cannons) allows you to split your army and attack the other coast while you start a campaign to head inland. You don't need to build naval units for the purpose of damaging cities. This speeds things up a lot when attempting an around-the-world attack. Yes, this all depends on geography, but the coastal bias usually works out pretty well. And your "ships" don't get stuck in an inland sea.

The AI never takes full advantage of its UA, and I think that's part of why people disrespect Denmark. If the AI did what I suggested, you'd rage quit every time you saw them on a continents map. ;-)

Venice!
I've seen lots of hate against Venice but it's really OP.
I'll take 250 GPT by the renaissance era in exchange for not settling my own cities any day.
Also your puppets don't count for NWs so 1 library in Venice for NC, 1 workshop for ironworks, etc.

"Thank goodness Shaka is my closest neighbor and not Harald!"

Tabarnak said:

Taken from the current overall civ elimination thread found into the general discussions :



Russia definitively should be at least top 15
Iroquois and Egypt should be higher too.

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Egypt second worst? RoFL

Egypt is one of the BEST for two really good and practically indisputable reasons:

1.) The most limiting factor to how powerful your civilization can get is the happiness cap, and this is universal to all victory conditions, practically to all games. Egypt is one of three civs, along with the Persians and the Celts, who have a major per-city advantage in this area, and Egypt has the earliest access to this advantage.

2.)I think many people dismiss Egypt because of personal pride. Egypt's unique ability gives a bonus to building wonders, and many players prefer to think, "I'm too good at this game to play at a level where building wonders is an option." Most of these players are the same people who emphasize completing NC by a target turn, "NC after turn 100 is just too late," "NC should be completed by turn 90." For these people, simply pretend Egypt's advantage is, "builds National College 20% faster," instead of ,"build wonders 20% faster," because that is part of the advantage, and ignore the rest. A 20% bonus to construction of NC alone is worth more than many of the other UAs.

So, while they may not be the best civ, they're top 5 IMO and certainly belong in the top 10, and being voted second worst certainly makes them the winners of the "most underrated" challenge.

I think the saving grace of Denmark is that it can actually be really fun to play. Few things are as satisfying as orchestrating a perfect siege attack and take over a coastal capital in 1-2 turns and then go pillaging the countryside with your berserkers. I'm playing an immortal level small continents game with them right now and Suleiman made the mistake of DOWing me early on, Istanbul became berserker fodder soon after.

Compare that to someone like Ottomans, the ability to get barb ships and very little maintenance cost is powerful but its not very interesting and hardly makes a difference in your playstyle.

DarthSheldonPhD said:

Egypt second worst? RoFL

Egypt is one of the BEST for two really good and practically indisputable reasons:

1.) The most limiting factor to how powerful your civilization can get is the happiness cap, and this is universal to all victory conditions, practically to all games. Egypt is one of three civs, along with the Persians and the Celts, who have a major per-city advantage in this area, and Egypt has the earliest access to this advantage.

2.)I think many people dismiss Egypt because of personal pride. Egypt's unique ability gives a bonus to building wonders, and many players prefer to think, "I'm too good at this game to play at a level where building wonders is an option." Most of these players are the same people who emphasize completing NC by a target turn, "NC after turn 100 is just too late," "NC should be completed by turn 90." For these people, simply pretend Egypt's advantage is, "builds National College 20% faster," instead of ,"build wonders 20% faster," because that is part of the advantage, and ignore the rest. A 20% bonus to construction of NC alone is worth more than many of the other UAs.

So, while they may not be the best civ, they're top 5 IMO and certainly belong in the top 10, and being voted second worst certainly makes them the winners of the "most underrated" challenge.

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I agree 100% with the wonder building pantheon, tradition wonder bonus, marble, and Egypt's bonus you can:

Build The Great library (free tech to philosophy) -> Build the national college in lightning speed.

even if you don't build anymore wonders through the game that tech boost early on can really put you ahead of other civs for a good while.

DarthSheldonPhD said:

Egypt second worst? RoFL

Egypt is one of the BEST for two really good and practically indisputable reasons:

1.) The most limiting factor to how powerful your civilization can get is the happiness cap, and this is universal to all victory conditions, practically to all games. Egypt is one of three civs, along with the Persians and the Celts, who have a major per-city advantage in this area, and Egypt has the earliest access to this advantage.

2.)I think many people dismiss Egypt because of personal pride. Egypt's unique ability gives a bonus to building wonders, and many players prefer to think, "I'm too good at this game to play at a level where building wonders is an option." Most of these players are the same people who emphasize completing NC by a target turn, "NC after turn 100 is just too late," "NC should be completed by turn 90." For these people, simply pretend Egypt's advantage is, "builds National College 20% faster," instead of ,"build wonders 20% faster," because that is part of the advantage, and ignore the rest. A 20% bonus to construction of NC alone is worth more than many of the other UAs.

So, while they may not be the best civ, they're top 5 IMO and certainly belong in the top 10, and being voted second worst certainly makes them the winners of the "most underrated" challenge.

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Agree 100%. The only weakness to Egypt is the UU, but on flat lands even that can be good at protecting trade routes from barbs.

I don't recall ever losing the GL race as Egypt on Emperor. Throughout the life time of the game, you will usually end up with at least 3 or 4 extra wonders you wouldn't have time to build as another civ.

The only other weakness is the amazing UA and UB don't have much synergy, you can't be building wonders and spamming settlers at the same time.

Deau said:

Actually wasn't Denmarka god-mode civ when they first came in? I thought they came in Vanilla when longswords rush was trivialized by liberty GS and bulb mechanics. You could literally run OCC or 2 city (settle 2nd city on 6 iron) upgrade a mere 4 berserkers and beat any AI down with with 4 zerkers at T50-T55.

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Yeah, they actually were but in my memory the period between Denmark being added and the Longsword nerf was pretty brief, I could be totally wrong though. That era was just loaded with brokeness. After the Longsword nerf they kinda fell off a cliff for a while though.

Egypt is pretty good, the Burial Tomb is quite powerful and their Wonder bonus + Marble bias makes it easier to get a key wonder you want early in the game.

DarthSheldonPhD said:

Egypt second worst? RoFL

Egypt is one of the BEST for two really good and practically indisputable reasons:

1.) The most limiting factor to how powerful your civilization can get is the happiness cap, and this is universal to all victory conditions, practically to all games. Egypt is one of three civs, along with the Persians and the Celts, who have a major per-city advantage in this area, and Egypt has the earliest access to this advantage.

2.)I think many people dismiss Egypt because of personal pride. Egypt's unique ability gives a bonus to building wonders, and many players prefer to think, "I'm too good at this game to play at a level where building wonders is an option." Most of these players are the same people who emphasize completing NC by a target turn, "NC after turn 100 is just too late," "NC should be completed by turn 90." For these people, simply pretend Egypt's advantage is, "builds National College 20% faster," instead of ,"build wonders 20% faster," because that is part of the advantage, and ignore the rest. A 20% bonus to construction of NC alone is worth more than many of the other UAs.

So, while they may not be the best civ, they're top 5 IMO and certainly belong in the top 10, and being voted second worst certainly makes them the winners of the "most underrated" challenge.

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It is true that the real value of the Egyptian UA probably lies more in the construction of national wonders than world wonders. On high difficulty SP, most WWs are out of the question until you catch the AI in tech. In MP, constructing too many WWs will just get you killed. On the other hand, NWs are very powerful and inconspicuous, especially the NC of course. The UA will only shave 1-2 turns off of NC construction, so that alone is not “worth more than many of the other UAs.” But shaving turns off of NC, CM, EIC, Guilds, IW, NE, HE, GT, etc. is.

Per-city happiness boosts are binary between useless and excellent. Sometimes there you have enough luxuries and/or CS allies to not need extra smiles. Sometimes you don’t. I would add that any religious civ has easy access to per-city happiness through Pagoda/Mosque.

It's already been established that the Civ elimination thread is flawed, but I don’t know about putting them top-5. I can’t put them ahead of Poland, Babylon, Shoshone, Ethiopia, Inca, or Maya. But they are in the next tier imo.

Well, on higher difficulty SP, Egypt is the only civ still able to build early wonders without godly start. In an immortal game i tried with them, i could get both Stonehenge and Great Library. Now, it's not Deity, but still no other civ could grab both without a trully godly start (including easy worker stealing) and loosing both isn't uncommon at this level. Arguably, you don't need both SH and GL, but it was more a test than a true game.
I havn't tried them since i started playing Deity, but i wouldn't be surprised if they could (with good but not godly start and right focus) get any early wonder (by any i mean any one of them, not all of them). Wonder strategy is not typical at Deity, but possibly Egypt would be you only option if you wanted to do such a game.

All this to say that even on higher difficulty, their UA is not limited to build NW faster. Obviously you don't want to go wonder spamming, and this is the risk playing a wonder focused civ, and possibly why some people think they are weaker on higher difficulties, but i think they are actually stronger. On low difficulties, you don't need their UA anyway, but on Immortal and possibly Deity, it will help you tremendously to be safe for those wonders you want.

Egypt can't reliably get Wonders on Deity, at least not until they have tech parity. But this is because Deity is hard in the wrong way.

Building it faster doesn't help when they get the tech 20 turns earlier. And once you have tech parity, any Civ can beat the AI to a Wonder, really. It helps being Egypt, but it helps *more* to have production trade routes to your capital. The AI can't compete with that, probably because it's not coded to. Egypt's advantage on Deity is that they spend less hammers to build Wonders, not that they win Wonder races. And those hammers not spent can go to other things.

Wanted to test this so i started a game and went for GL, no worker stealing, no salt and no culture ruins to get an early Monarchy (in fact i got 3 maps and 4 barb ruins) I was 7 turns away from finishing it when an AI built it ... on T25 Even on Deity i've never seen this before. Pre T35 is often safe, altought far from an obvious win. It's no guarantee, but a good chance. Another wonder would probably be easier.

It probably falls down to what "reliably" means. If it means "have a good chance", then, i think they do (possibly not for GL), if it means "be sure they win", then no they don't.

Bob Morane said:

Wanted to test this so i started a game and went for GL, no worker stealing, no salt and no culture ruins to get an early Monarchy (in fact i got 3 maps and 4 barb ruins) I was 7 turns away from finishing it when an AI built it ... on T25 Even on Deity i've never seen this before. Pre T35 is often safe, altought far from an obvious win. It's no guarantee, but a good chance. Another wonder would probably be easier.

It probably falls down to what "reliably" means. If it means "have a good chance", then, i think they do (possibly not for GL), if it means "be sure they win", then no they don't.

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I've almost never seen GL beyond T32 on deity since BnW. 29-30 is constant. I've never considered T32-35 as safe.

However, since starting to build it early derails AI from it (or at least contributes to), if you can hut pottery on "T0" or writting upon teching pottery, it's possible to aim for T30-32 completion without AIs overly competing as you then begin to build it 10 turns earlier than on a regular tech path.

Well, i sure don't have as much experience as you with Deity so i'll take your word for true In most of my deity games, it fell somwhere around T35 (sometimes a couple turns before, sometimes later) so i thought 32 was relatively safe and was quite surprised by T25

Cromagnus said:

Egypt can't reliably get Wonders on Deity, at least not until they have tech parity. But this is because Deity is hard in the wrong way.

Building it faster doesn't help when they get the tech 20 turns earlier. And once you have tech parity, any Civ can beat the AI to a Wonder, really. It helps being Egypt, but it helps *more* to have production trade routes to your capital. The AI can't compete with that, probably because it's not coded to. Egypt's advantage on Deity is that they spend less hammers to build Wonders, not that they win Wonder races. And those hammers not spent can go to other things.

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It can't in some cases, like when the AI pops free Calendar from a ruin and dose a t26 Stonehenge. But it can most certainly get a Stonehenge/ToA/etc that would have gone by t38-t40 that another civ wouldn't have gotten to in time.

The exception is the Great Library but the Great Library is always the exception. I would never attempt to build it on Deity.

Light Cleric said:

The exception is the Great Library but the Great Library is always the exception. I would never attempt to build it on Deity.

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Which is exactly why i tested it. If i could get it, no need for further tests
But yes, in a real game, i would have targeted SH or ToA.

Petra could also be an option. In the rare cases where i went for it on Deity (when i had desert and no AI had built it in their capital before i had the tech), i lost it to an AIs second or even third city for just a couple turns. There, Egypt would have won.

Bob Morane said:

Which is exactly why i tested it. If i could get it, no need for further tests
But yes, in a real game, i would have targeted SH or ToA.

Petra could also be an option. In the rare cases where i went for it on Deity (when i had desert and no AI had built it in their capital before i had the tech), i lost it to an AIs second or even third city for just a couple turns. There, Egypt would have won.

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The problem for me is that Petra sometimes goes on turn 60. Same with Oracle. ToA sometimes goes on turn 30. Stonehenge can easily go before you could possibly build it. Unless you're planning on playing out the game even if you lose that race, you shouldn't start the build. Otherwise you're basically just re-rolling until you get lucky.

Ask yourself if, when you decide to go for Petra and rush Currency prior to Philosophy, and then miss Petra by 4 turns... and now you're crippled by not getting Philosophy... would you keep playing or call it a loss? Or if you wasted 15 turns on ToA and now you don't have any archers or even a granary? Are you *really* going to play that game to the bitter end? Or are you basically just re-rolling?

I only build Wonders when I'm almost certain I can get them or I don't care if I lose the race. (Because I have nothing else I need to build at that time)

If I get a desert hills Shoshone start and manage to pull off two early worker steals, AND get early AI-spawned trade routes giving me beakers, yeah, I'll probably go for Petra, because I'm gonna have 2 extra population, 2 free techs, and some mad production by the time I get Currency, which won't be long at that rate.

But that's Shoshone. The "Easy Mode" civ. Same thing with Egypt. I would only go for Petra with Egypt if I got an awesome start. Or any other random civ. If I look at my production options on t70 after completing NC, and petra is sitting there with a build time of like 10 turns, sure, why not, I'll give it a shot. But would I put off NC for it? I have in the past... I won't anymore.

So, generally, since ToA or any of these early wonders (even Pyramids can go before t40) are not reliable, and I don't want to base my strategy around them, and I don't want to get in the habit of relying on an uber start, I just don't go for pre-Medieval Wonders at all really.

But, my point is, that's not how Deity should function! It's only because of the AI headstart that early wonders and early war are not a good idea. Once you get to the Renaissance, you can actually pull off Wonders if you've been playing well. I think that if you totally blow off all other builds and chop to get out GL you should get it most of the time unless the AI is doing the same thing. Even on Deity.

If nothing else, I wish you could do that because as soon as you do you'll regret it as they stomp your undefended capital with their unit carpet on T45.

But seriously, going for Ancient Wonders should be a risk mostly because of what you're *not building instead*, not because of the AI having a massive tech headstart.

If you remove the AI tech headstart, Wonders are still not a given, FYI. I've tried it. It delays them coming out about 10-15 turns, but a t35 AI GL is still possible, and that's hard for the player to achieve. But at least it puts them back in the field of play... and to the point, makes Egypt more relevant. For now, Deity functioning the way it does, I find Egypt's UA mostly cool for the fact that building NC in 12 turns instead of 16 allows me to build another CB.

Well, and late game Wonders. It's nice building PT, etc., faster. Otherwise, Egypt is kinda nerfed by the way Deity functions.

Deau said:

I've almost never seen GL beyond T32 on deity since BnW. 29-30 is constant. I've never considered T32-35 as safe.

However, since starting to build it early derails AI from it (or at least contributes to), if you can hut pottery on "T0" or writting upon teching pottery, it's possible to aim for T30-32 completion without AIs overly competing as you then begin to build it 10 turns earlier than on a regular tech path.

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I did extensive testing with Shoshone on this (starting new games and beelining GL over and over) and I found the AI built on T32 on average. T22 is the lowest I've ever seen, and it's almost always gone by T38.

Js_9001 said:

Venice!
I've seen lots of hate against Venice but it's really OP.
I'll take 250 GPT by the renaissance era in exchange for not settling my own cities any day.
Also your puppets don't count for NWs so 1 library in Venice for NC, 1 workshop for ironworks, etc.

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In the NQ multiplayer group, when players go random and somebody rolls Venice, they have the option of requesting a restart. Venice really is that bad when you are a human playing against intelligent humans. The top players in NQ play a LOT of civ, and on their blog they have horror stories of how easily Venice is neutered and helpless against good human players. The inability to have any map control, plus the extra trade routes that cannot be defended combine for a very unfun MP experience against good competition.

Silverfuturist said:

In the NQ multiplayer group, when players go random and somebody rolls Venice, they have the option of requesting a restart. Venice really is that bad when you are a human playing against intelligent humans. The top players in NQ play a LOT of civ, and on their blog they have horror stories of how easily Venice is neutered and helpless against good human players. The inability to have any map control, plus the extra trade routes that cannot be defended combine for a very unfun MP experience against good competition.

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Frequently with Venice you have to move your initial Settler quite a bit to snuggle up next to a future Puppet-buddy to build strongly. Venice wants to go to the seas, and thus can be blockaded pretty brutally with outmoded, throwaway units, but it works pretty well overland also.

It would be nice if you could attach a unit to a Trade Caravan/Ship so that they had some defense though.