Best and worst civilization per winning condition

[hyperwebman]

Hello fellow CivFanatics!

I know this question will be a lot about personal experience/flavor/way of playing, but which civilization do you think would be the best for each winning condition? Which one would be the worst?

I don't make this thread to try to make the game "EZMode" (always play random), but only to know the reasons of your choices!

Please mention if you are a Vanilla or G&K player.

(Template)
Scientific
-Best:
-Worst:
Diplomatic
-Best:
-Worst:
Cultural
-Best:
-Worst:
Domination
-Best:
-Worst:
Time (???)
-Best:
-Worst:

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Science
Best: Korea
Outpace babylon and maya, protect yourself from invaders, go tall as all hell. Very science in my mind
Worst: England
I would have gone polynesia, but they can go wider quicker, and england isn't very good wide, just standard size both ways. Nothing going for them as far as science goes.
Diplomatic:
Best: Greece
Not as strong in the state game as siam, but greece will outpace them in the long run.
Worst: Mongolia
An ability specifically for killing off city states? Yeah, their not gonna make a lot of friends. I would have gone attila, but his Combat prowess is generalized.
Culture:
Best: France
Go wider, build taller, keep up better, and defend well. You're very good at this.
Worst: Arabia
A wide ability, an invasion unit, and a cash cow of a building? You're not going anywhere fast with that.
Domination:
Best: Songhai
I would have gone Genghis, but you can feild a much larger army of city crushing mandekalu than you can Keshik, and Huns are only good for 45-70 turns.
Worst: fixed Korea
Before the patch your +200% catapult hwatcha's made you the deadliest city killer around. Now that it's fixed, you can't conquer nearly as well.

 

[iconocast]

would rather have a "top 3" for each vic condition. not sure there is a worst tbh.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Yeah, that's fair enough

 

[Halcyan2]

Culture:
Best: France
Go wider, build taller, keep up better, and defend well. You're very good at this.
Worst: Arabia
A wide ability, an invasion unit, and a cash cow of a building? You're not going anywhere fast with that.

Arabia isn't that bad.

With a Cultural game you have fewer cities (<= 4), which often means you are constrained by the luxury/strategic resources you have available to you.

With an Arabia culture game, Bazaars give you twice as many luxury resources. Helps partly offset the lack of expansion.

Also, the starting bias means you have a reasonable chance to have a monstrous Petra capital.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Yeah, but then you're ignoring one of your abilities (+1 trade routes) limiting the other severly (double oil), and practically discarding your VERY powerful unit by assigning it to a defensive strategy. What's your list?

 

[Peng Qi]

Scientific
-Best:Korea in SP, Babylon in MP
Sensible players will rush Korea before they become a problem, but Babylon's UU and UB both help prevent that early rush.
-Worst:Aztecs. While their UB somewhat synergizes with a science victory, their UU and UA want you to spend a lot of time and hammers making war, not growing.
Diplomatic
-Best:Greece. No explanation needed.
-Worst:The Huns. You've wasted them entirely if you didn't make a bunch of enemies and crush some city states in the opening segment of the game.
Cultural
-Best:Ethiopia. Everything they have helps the cultural VC.
-Worst:Huns. They have nothing to help this VC at all. Unless you run around eating cities into puppets, but then why not go for dom or science?
Domination
-Best:Mongolia. Keshiks and Khans OP.
-Worst:India. Dat UA.
Time (???)
-Best:The Huns. Cut into that early lead and ride it to the end.
-Worst:India. Dat UA again. Everyone else can expand to gain more points, but India can't.

 

[Halcyan2]

Yeah, but then you're ignoring one of your abilities (+1 trade routes) limiting the other severly (double oil), and practically discarding your VERY powerful unit by assigning it to a defensive strategy. What's your list?

+1 gold per trade route is already a very weak ability, so I don't think it's a big loss.

You are limiting your double oil ability, but that doesn't come into play until late game. In addition, any Cultural game may have issues acquiring Oil, so at least double Oil + desert start bias will actually give an Arabian Cultural game a much better oil situation than other Cultural games. Though Oil is mainly needed for units (maybe if you want a puppet empire?).

Camel Archers are good. Between that and all the Oil, maybe Arabia would do well with 4 main cities, and then a puppet empire gained through military?

 

[Halcyan2]

Domination
-Best:Mongolia. Keshiks and Khans OP.
-Worst:India. Dat UA.
Time (???)
-Best:The Huns. Cut into that early lead and ride it to the end.
-Worst:India. Dat UA again. Everyone else can expand to gain more points, but India can't.

Eh, I've read that India can actually do ICS and city spam quite well. It does acquire a higher breakeven point in terms of population and takes longer to set up, but it does mean that India can sustain spammed cities of much higher population.

Take a look at the War Academy article on India:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436730

 

[Kwami]

+1 gold per trade route is already a very weak ability, so I don't think it's a big loss.

You are limiting your double oil ability, but that doesn't come into play until late game. In addition, any Cultural game may have issues acquiring Oil, so at least double Oil + desert start bias will actually give an Arabian Cultural game a much better oil situation than other Cultural games. Though Oil is mainly needed for units (maybe if you want a puppet empire?).

Camel Archers are good. Between that and all the Oil, maybe Arabia would do well with 4 main cities, and then a puppet empire gained through military?

Emphasis mine. With a desert start, Arabia has a good shot at a Petra capital. Petra capitals make Cultural games trivial, even on Immortal/Deity.

 

[Tachii]

Eh, I've read that India can actually do ICS and city spam quite well. It does acquire a higher breakeven point in terms of population and takes longer to set up, but it does mean that India can sustain spammed cities of much higher population.

Take a look at the War Academy article on India:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436730

Just because India can do ICS doesn't mean it isn't the worst at it. Name one civ that's possibly worse than India's UA when it's intentionally there to support tall and hinder wide empires.

As for Arabia, I also agree it's a great culture game civ.
-Desert bias offer Petra and Desert Folklore, check.
-More luxuries to sell mean more gold to rushbuy buildings and ally CS, check.
-Camel Archers for puppeting 2-3 more cities midgame for more gold, check.

The worst culture civs are warmonger civs or limited to UUs only and UAs that offer nothing remotely useful for culture games. That includes Genghis, Attila, Bismarck, Ottomans, to name a few.

 

[Lordleoz]

Rome is great for a science victory. UU get you a large empire and UA enable you to build scientific buildings earlier.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Fair points. I guess I never really took petra into account. I'll have to tray that at some point.

 

[TM Moot]

Culture:
Best: France
Go wider, build taller, keep up better, and defend well.

I think France 'appears' good for Cultural Victories, but actually the UA encourages you to have lots of early cities which then count against you with slow SP collection.

 

[gracjanski]

thats a great topic. Any more ideas? especially with BNW?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The "worst" section is completely pointless. You might aswell just put Zulu as worst for Science, Culture and Diplo, because they get absolutely zero bonuses to their economy. As does Mongolia.

Some points made itt really bother me, specifically:

>India can do ICS

Every Civ that isn't Venice can do ICS, but India is by far the single worst Civ to do ICS with. Doing ICS with India is just plain stupid. ICS isn't about growing your cities large (which is what India is all about..), it is about getting lots of bonuses for founding and for working key tiles. Good ICS Civs are Ethiopia, Maya and Egypt, for example, because their respective unique buildings come early and have important bonuses.

>Rome is great for a science victory

Rome get's only extremely marginal bonuses towards a science victory. The unique unit comes a little late for expansion compared to Composite Bows and forces you off the ideal tech path, meaning it actually slows down your victory time. Furthermore ideally you want to rushbuy all your science buildings, not hardbuild them.

>Aztec as worst for a science victory

They are easily one of the best Civilizations for a science victory. They do not compare to Babylon, Korea and Poland, but they are definitely second. The unique building together with Temple of Artemis are the only buildings in the entire game that boost food instead of growth. This is so huge because by the end of the game cities can easily reach 60, 70, 80, in my games sometimes more than 100 total food. 15% is an insane bonus. Science is almost entirely a product of food. Aztec are a fantastic Civ for any peaceful win condition and just the building is enough to make them a top-tier science Civ.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What criteria for "best"?

 

[Chum]

Who dug up this fossil?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

a fearless individual called gracjanski

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Please do not revive 5 year old threads (particularly a vanilla thread, with questions about BNW). If you want have a BNW discussion along the lines of the original thread, please start a new thread. Thread closed.