Civilization elimination thread

maurcus · Sep 14, 2012

PhilBowles said:
All of which is true of Greece. The difference isn't that Siam is better for diplo victory, it's that it rewards you for playing diplomatically, and simply by giving you extra bonuses for having CS allies, it improves your game position for any victory condition.

No, it isn't close. Greece's benefit is only of value when you're close to losing friendship/allied status, which very rarely happens if you're completing quests. Losing influence half as fast is not equivalent to being friends/allies for twice as long. Even if Greece does get an early game advantage somehow, as soon as Patronage hits and Siam stops losing influence that would take it below friendship status, any minor advantage the Greeks have would vanish.

It is inaccurate - I'd thought the same in vanilla, but it was just an omission from the entry. And the G&K Civilopedia restores the reference to +2 science from jungles. Which, incidentally, Siam is much more likely to start close to.

Only assuming you aren't completing any other quests or making any effort to gain influence - and what would be the point of that if going Patronage? As I noted, it's very rare to lose alliances with city-states through natural decay in G&K. Even if you don't incidentally fulfill quest objectives, you'll lose an alliance to another civ that's increasing its own influence long before yours drops close to 60. So if you don't make active efforts to keep your city-states, you're not going to keep them as Greece any more than you are as Siam.

Wasn't your claim that it should have been in the top 10? Certainly fun plays a part in whether a civ makes it that far - however there was no suggestion even by its detractors that Denmark is not a fun civ to play. It still got eliminated very early. Though personally I just can't see what would make Greece fun since it doesn't do anything distinctive. For the sort of game you'd want to play with them I can have fun with Siam (decisions to make about which CSes to ally with to maximise my UA benefits) or Sweden (full diplo experience maximising both DoFs and CS alliances, and selecting which CSes to target so that my GPs don't go to waste). Greece seems to have one of the game's most boring UAs, in fact - not only does it not do a lot, but even though it takes a small amount of work to use, it works equally on any CS without giving you any incentive to make strategic decisions regarding your choice of friends/allies that you wouldn't make anyway, and its effects are entirely passive once they come into play.

just jumping into this discussion i would also like to note that if you take patronage and spread your religion to a city state you lose no influence per turn at all. as greece that is.

PhilBowles · Sep 14, 2012

maurcus said:
just jumping into this discussion i would also like to note that if you take patronage and spread your religion to a city state you lose no influence per turn at all. as greece that is.

Yes, this has been covered before. But it looks much better than it is - as I note, if you don't actively cultivate influence, other civs will just outbid you and grab your allies anyway. It's a bit like being tech leader with 60 beakers and assuming that therefore you'll stay tech leader if you stick at 60 beakers for the rest of the game. Since you almost never lose an alliance past the early game from natural influence decay, no loss of influence isn't materially better than halved loss of influence. On top of which it requires a not-typically-useful Enhancer belief, which in turn requires you to focus on getting religion early (AI civs love CSes and like to take that belief), which is a lot more effort than the mediocre benefit is worth. And if you do go for that benefit, you can do it as any other civ with very little loss of effectiveness - yes, you'll still lose some influence, but as I note that's barely noticeable at the best of times.

Rooftrellen · Sep 14, 2012

PhilBowles said:
Wasn't your claim that it should have been in the top 10? Certainly fun plays a part in whether a civ makes it that far - however there was no suggestion even by its detractors that Denmark is not a fun civ to play. It still got eliminated very early. Though personally I just can't see what would make Greece fun since it doesn't do anything distinctive. For the sort of game you'd want to play with them I can have fun with Siam (decisions to make about which CSes to ally with to maximise my UA benefits) or Sweden (full diplo experience maximising both DoFs and CS alliances, and selecting which CSes to target so that my GPs don't go to waste). Greece seems to have one of the game's most boring UAs, in fact - not only does it not do a lot, but even though it takes a small amount of work to use, it works equally on any CS without giving you any incentive to make strategic decisions regarding your choice of friends/allies that you wouldn't make anyway, and its effects are entirely passive once they come into play.

Just going to address this part, as I can't really talk much about the other areas. I don't have enough experience with Siam or Greece to really talk about the finer points of better or worse, but in my admittedly limited experience with both, I have found them to be quite strong civs, each in their own right, and I also have found myself playing quite differently.

However, for myself, I don't know if Greece would be top 10 in something like this. It would probably be close (and I would probably rate Siam higher), but power was one of many aspects brought up in the up and down votes. Again, had it been based only on strongest, Austria should have won by 200.

I was replying to someone who wanted to know why I felt some civs were limited. I commented on those civs and used as counterexamples a few civs that went out early that I found more flexible (and fun).

My personal top 10 would probably be:

Carthage
Maya
Byzantium
Aztecs
Sweden
Rome
Iroquois
Celts
Siam
America

My tendency to go wide is showing. I'd probably have Greece next in line, with America topping them mostly because 1 extra vision is just so different.

My top 5 in strength would be as follows:

Austria
Arabia
Persia
China
Siam

Which actually goes back to my first point

China and Arabia both made it really far, and both are terribly boring. Greece is actually pretty fun for the same reason as Persia (though for me personally, I use Greece better) or Sweden, you are pushed two directions at once and you get to balance what to do.

Which was in response to the idea that

Um, and they're (Greece) not fun to play. It might be hard for some to believe that not everyone is a min/maxing powergamer.

Simply that, all about the fun.

maurcus · Sep 15, 2012

PhilBowles said:
Yes, this has been covered before. But it looks much better than it is - as I note, if you don't actively cultivate influence, other civs will just outbid you and grab your allies anyway. It's a bit like being tech leader with 60 beakers and assuming that therefore you'll stay tech leader if you stick at 60 beakers for the rest of the game. Since you almost never lose an alliance past the early game from natural influence decay, no loss of influence isn't materially better than halved loss of influence. On top of which it requires a not-typically-useful Enhancer belief, which in turn requires you to focus on getting religion early (AI civs love CSes and like to take that belief), which is a lot more effort than the mediocre benefit is worth. And if you do go for that benefit, you can do it as any other civ with very little loss of effectiveness - yes, you'll still lose some influence, but as I note that's barely noticeable at the best of times.

the thing is if you complete a few quests for the cs and maby a small gift of gold and you can have them at about 150 :c5influence:

then you will never lose an alliance.

but siam also has its perks such as getting bigger benefits from cs so half the time equals the sme amount of time for greece.

so the real question is more benefits vs. longer time using those benefits.

also I will use a hipothetical scenario greece has 40 :c5influence:

so does siam, it is a food cs, now greeces capital gets 2 :c5food:

for 20 turns or siams capital gets 3 :c5food:

for 10 turns. that is without any other modifiers.
in the best scenario however siam would recieve the bonus 3 :c5food:

for twenty turns where as greece recieves 2 :c5food:

indefinetly.

I hope I havnt bored you

maurcus · Sep 15, 2012

PhilBowles said:
Yes, this has been covered before. But it looks much better than it is - as I note, if you don't actively cultivate influence, other civs will just outbid you and grab your allies anyway. It's a bit like being tech leader with 60 beakers and assuming that therefore you'll stay tech leader if you stick at 60 beakers for the rest of the game. Since you almost never lose an alliance past the early game from natural influence decay, no loss of influence isn't materially better than halved loss of influence. On top of which it requires a not-typically-useful Enhancer belief, which in turn requires you to focus on getting religion early (AI civs love CSes and like to take that belief), which is a lot more effort than the mediocre benefit is worth. And if you do go for that benefit, you can do it as any other civ with very little loss of effectiveness - yes, you'll still lose some influence, but as I note that's barely noticeable at the best of times.

ok ill use a hipothetical example both nations have 40 :c5influence:

so greece will recieve 2 :c5food:

for 20 turns where as siam recieves 3 :c5food:

for 10 turns under normal circumstances however under ideal circumstances siam will recieve 3 :c5food:

for 20 turns and greece will recieve 2 :c5food:

for indefinetly.

maurcus · Sep 15, 2012

sorry for the double post

Seabastian Civ · Oct 3, 2012

What was the final ranking?

crawf0rd · Oct 3, 2012

1. Korea
2. Inca
3. Babylon
4. China

Civilization elimination thread

maurcus

Warlord

PhilBowles

Deity

Rooftrellen

King

maurcus

Warlord

maurcus

Warlord

maurcus

Warlord

Seabastian Civ

King

crawf0rd

The One and Only

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