Is France's UA not the worst ever?

[Athenaeum]

How big a role do theming bonuses really play in securing a tourism victory? Next to none I would imagine.

I actually really liked their UA in Vanilla, it made them an excellent civ for Liberty. The DLC completely nerfed them.

 

[Dushku]

Tourism is very useful even when not going for a Culture Victory.

https://youtu.be/HvgyqhmoRCw

Iroquois have the worst UA as it implies it gives much more than it does.

 

[shaglio]

Tourism is very useful even when not going for a Culture Victory.

When I'm not going for a Cultural Victory, I don't waste my time on Theming bonuses (France's UA bonus). I just bulb my GW's for their Political Treatises and my GA for their Golden Ages.

 

[reddishrecue]

France ua has its strategies. ..

Exploration with louvre and its hidden great works would require a lot of cities to support each artifact unless you do political treatises.
Aesthetics will double your tourism along with already doubling ua which will make 4 times tourism than regular tourism.

 

[GenuineRisk]

France's UA is actually significant for a CV, but it is less powerful on Deity due to having to build at least 3 of Sistine Chapel/Globe Theatre/Uffizi/Louvre (in Paris) to really take advantage of it. It multiplies with the Aesthetics finisher so it results in a good amount of "free" tourism, which at least buffs your end-game musicians, if nothing else. I'm not sure it's even worth theming Broadway or SOH though.

 

[reddishrecue]

Well with broadway you either take that or you take eiffel tower whichever one you would prefer and both could do well with UA + aesthetics. If you could take both then way better.

 

[CraigMak]

The worst UA in the game is Venice's inability to make settlers. A UA that is actually a detriment. Ghandhi's double unhappiness from newly founded or captured cities is also quite bad as it prevents them from getting a quick start and snowballing.

UA's which are irrelevant or weak are much preferred over any that are actually a detriment.

 

[GKShaman]

The worst UA in the game is Venice's inability to make settlers. A UA that is actually a detriment. Ghandhi's double unhappiness from newly founded or captured cities is also quite bad as it prevents them from getting a quick start and snowballing.

UA's which are irrelevant or weak are much preferred over any that are actually a detriment.

Ghandi UA is awesome in the mid game and late game. It is tough to found a religion but otherswise its awesome!

Venice is just a different type of play-style. If you like settlers dont play Venice.

France was awesome with +2 culture in all cities. Strong 3 city start with liberty. Now its pigeonholed into Culture Victory. Btw how much can this UA yield "reasonably" on deity? I havent played Deity with France but hows the Chateau and Musketeer? France was awesome in Vanilla with the Foreign Legion and +2 culture!

 

[Manpanzee]

France's UA is pretty irrelevant most of the time, but Chateaux are very good for Culture victory and have decent general use (a good tile yield is a good tile yield). Chateaux don't seem to get much respect, which I just don't understand at all. They really aren't that limited, since every single city should have luxuries nearby.

I recently played through a Deity culture victory with France, which I posted about here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13878088&postcount=24
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13879426&postcount=26

In this game, I ended with 681 tourism. Of that total, 180 came from Chateaux and 36 came from France's UA, for a total of 216 tourism from France's unique traits. All else equal, a normal Civ would have had 465 tourism here, meaning that France was worth a 46% increase on tourism over a normal Civ. That's quite significant.

 

[joncnunn]

On the thread title, no. The worst ever is Mongolia's, which only provides a combat bonus against city states.

 

[CraigMak]

Ghandi UA is awesome in the mid game and late game. It is tough to found a religion but otherswise its awesome!

Venice is just a different type of play-style. If you like settlers dont play Venice.

France was awesome with +2 culture in all cities. Strong 3 city start with liberty. Now its pigeonholed into Culture Victory. Btw how much can this UA yield "reasonably" on deity? I havent played Deity with France but hows the Chateau and Musketeer? France was awesome in Vanilla with the Foreign Legion and +2 culture!

Venice is so terrible that NQ actually deleted them from multiplayer games. So no, they're horrible.

Civ is about snowballing, abilities which allow a jump start are the strongest in the game because those early leads end up being larger later leads.

Gandhi can not rapidly found cities nor take cities by war without going massively unhappy. This is very bad. you can't wait until all of your cities are size 15 to start getting a benefit. That's too late.

Even when going tradition you want to rapidly found your first 4 cities. If Gandhi attempts to do this it's going to be bad news.

 

[Dushku]

When I'm not going for a Cultural Victory, I don't waste my time on Theming bonuses (France's UA bonus). I just bulb my GW's for their Political Treatises and my GA for their Golden Ages.

You are certainly free to do that if you prefer. You'll just end up with less culture in the long run and possibly dozens of unhappiness out of nowhere.

 

[reddishrecue]

I used to do that but i rather get their building slots built because the tourism adds up into later era ideologies that find tourism useful. Culture alone wont help reduce unhappiness better from rival influences better than both tourism and culture.

 

[GenuineRisk]

Even when going tradition you want to rapidly found your first 4 cities. If Gandhi attempts to do this it's going to be bad news.

It's easy to go 4 city (or more) Tradition with India, and it won't be long before you're swimming in happiness. The Grassland start bias means that Delhi should get big pretty fast. India's UA is actually not bad for peaceful play and I wouldn't consider it a handicap like Venice's inability to settle/annex.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Not counting Venice, worst UA is probably Iroqouis. It might be somewhat decent if it actually did what it says it does (ie: forests function as roads), but it doesn't really do that - it just makes forests connect cities without roads, which is far less good and basically requires you to build roads anyway. (Roads are for more than just city connections, troop movement is vital - all the more so if you're surrounded by forests!)

France's isn't very good though. It's not as useless as the Iroquois UA - more tourism is helpful - but given how late in the game you can realistically start taking advantage of this, it's just not going to have a big impact. If you're going for a tourism victory it's entirely possible to pull it off without City of Lights. I suppose it could win you the game if it's really close, and in that respect it's certainly not the worst UA. It's decent with Aesthetics, which if you're going for a tourism victory you're probably going to take.

Mongolia's is worse than France's, it may be the second-worst after the Iroquois. Combat bonuses against city states do help you, but not enough to matter. Conquering city states is already dead easy; I conquered one the first game I ever played, it was basically the first thing I did. And if you're going to start knocking off city states you'd better be prepared for the consequences...

India's UA isn't bad. Your mid-game happiness problems are going to be caused by population growth, not expansion. India doesn't really have to worry about this because you can usually get new happiness buildings out in time to counteract unhappiness from population growth. The early happiness hit is painful, but there are a variety of ways to counter it and by size 6 it stops being a hinderance. Definitely not the worst or even a contender for the worst. India does pretty much have to go tall though - it could pull off wide if it had a huge happiness reservoir somewhere, but very very hard to do.

I'd say Japan's is pretty far down the list as well. You rarely want to be sacrificing your units in Civ V, so 100% combat strength for injured units is of fairly limited usefulness.

Morocco's UA is garbage. The amounts of gold and culture involved are so small as to be almost meaningless. I did have fun playing them though - Kasbahs add some flair to the desert.

Having trouble thinking of any other really bad UAs. I'm sure someone will remind me.

 

[Athenaeum]

Tourism is very useful even when not going for a Culture Victory.

https://youtu.be/HvgyqhmoRCw

Iroquois have the worst UA as it implies it gives much more than it does.

I never said tourism isn't important. I said that theming bonuses don't often play a big role, even when you are aiming for a tourism victory. If you're actually taking your tourism seriously, you should have at least a couple/few hundred tourism per turn. How much of that do you think comes from theming bonuses?

 

[Athenaeum]

On the thread title, no. The worst ever is Mongolia's, which only provides a combat bonus against city states.

You're forgetting +1 movement for mounted, which is a big deal considering what it does to keshiks.

 

[Athenaeum]

Venice is so terrible that NQ actually deleted them from multiplayer games. So no, they're horrible.

Civ is about snowballing, abilities which allow a jump start are the strongest in the game because those early leads end up being larger later leads.

Gandhi can not rapidly found cities nor take cities by war without going massively unhappy. This is very bad. you can't wait until all of your cities are size 15 to start getting a benefit. That's too late.

Even when going tradition you want to rapidly found your first 4 cities. If Gandhi attempts to do this it's going to be bad news.

If you're talking about MP then yes Venice is bad. If you're also talking about single player then you couldn't be more wrong about that.

 

[Acken]

Chateaux are good, the UA isn't.

 

[Redaxe]

Does the UA effect double the value of the Aesthetics finisher?

I've never played France - I'm waiting for them to come up on the DCL

To me the Musketeers seem the most lacklustre part of the French Civ. They could at least give them the foreign lands bonus so the civ gets a bit of a domination edge to it.