A tiered ranking of leader novelty
- Thread starter crdvis16
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tu_79
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Ehem. I think you need to play Polynesia a bit more:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/polynesia.542220/page-4#post-14454980
Enrico Swagolo
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I don't think any civ with an UI can be anything less than tier 3 or at the very least 4 as they'll change how you place your cities if you want 1/2 more UIs, so Shoshone should be tier 3, especially since you get recon unit ruin flexibility too. Besides that the list is mostly okay.
Japan is tier 2 for me, I do everything exactly the same way as with other civs except I focus Walls/Barracks more. If you fight a war, you want to level up your units and keep them alive anyway, though I will often purposefully sudoku or gift a new unit that got a bad Dojo promotion. If something provides a Great General or Admiral, it becomes very important as it also provides half of GWAM, it makes the Faith benefit of Authority/Imperialism not be bad and the synergy between everything in this civ is awesome, but it's not tier 1 material.
Instead, Denmark is a clear tier 1, you want to fight on pillaged tiles and where I'd find pillaging not worth all that annoying repair of tiles, here it's always worth it. Unlike any other warfare guy in the game, Harald can benefit from keeping his prey alive and relatively healthy so it repairs the tiles for you to plunder again. One game I destroyed the only two civs on my continent too early in medieval, which was foolish as I had no tiles to pillage and the benefit of getting bad cities wasn't better than the yields I'd get from pillaging. Not stealing enemy Workers and even going out of your way so they are free to run away from your troops might be worth it so as soon as peace time is over, most of his tiles are up again quicker so you beat his new army up and pillage everything again. Under the dictionary definition of "unique warmongerer", there's a picture of Harald Bluetooth pillaging your quarry and about to do the same to two nearby farms all in one turn.
Egypt is not particularly unique, the Great Artifact is basically free yields to the UB. Nothing special. Tier 3..
Japan is tier 2 for me, I do everything exactly the same way as with other civs except I focus Walls/Barracks more. If you fight a war, you want to level up your units and keep them alive anyway, though I will often purposefully sudoku or gift a new unit that got a bad Dojo promotion. If something provides a Great General or Admiral, it becomes very important as it also provides half of GWAM, it makes the Faith benefit of Authority/Imperialism not be bad and the synergy between everything in this civ is awesome, but it's not tier 1 material.
Instead, Denmark is a clear tier 1, you want to fight on pillaged tiles and where I'd find pillaging not worth all that annoying repair of tiles, here it's always worth it. Unlike any other warfare guy in the game, Harald can benefit from keeping his prey alive and relatively healthy so it repairs the tiles for you to plunder again. One game I destroyed the only two civs on my continent too early in medieval, which was foolish as I had no tiles to pillage and the benefit of getting bad cities wasn't better than the yields I'd get from pillaging. Not stealing enemy Workers and even going out of your way so they are free to run away from your troops might be worth it so as soon as peace time is over, most of his tiles are up again quicker so you beat his new army up and pillage everything again. Under the dictionary definition of "unique warmongerer", there's a picture of Harald Bluetooth pillaging your quarry and about to do the same to two nearby farms all in one turn.
Egypt is not particularly unique, the Great Artifact is basically free yields to the UB. Nothing special. Tier 3..
Paramecium
Prince
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Okay I didnt explain myself clearly enough, I never said that the UI of Polynesia is weak, in fact it is a candidate to be the strongest UI.
But I didnt bring up the comparison between those terrain featured civs like Inca, Songhai, Iroquois and Polynesia. I just think the usage of mountains is more unique then those UI or better other terrains, which can be used by everyone, while mountains are quite only usefull for Incas and mountain tiles in lategame dont have to hide behind most other (improved) tiles ...
tu_79
Deity
Moving your cities inland so you can fit more moais change the game quite a bit. Specially for a seafaring civ.
I haven't checked out any mod-mods, I've stuck with just the normal VP+EUI. I don't get to play enough to really explore further, really. And I'm about to have to take a hiatus from the game for a while probably in a few weeks : /.
I think for the most part I've stuck with the UA being like 80% of the novelty while the UU/UI/UB are supplementary. I think for most of the civs in the game that works fine- the UA determines if your top/middle/bottom tier and then maybe the UU/UI/UB can push you up or down from there. So I think just having a UI alone isn't really enough to put a civ into a specific tier. UIs often make some terrain feature more useful but unless the rest of the kit also plays into it I don't think that alone is enough to create a novel experience. Like, I think the Shoshone are deservedly bottom tier, even though you and others have made a good argument about the ruin choice thing making for some interesting strategy.
I think Japan deserves tier 1 because they just have so much synergy and so much going on in their kit. The focus on defensive/military buildings (and the religious/policy synergies that can complement them) feels novel- when's the last time you rushed walls early on in your cities and felt good doing so? The highly promoted units (with their bushido promotions) that give you bonuses from further promotions feel novel- it's always important to keep highly promoted units alive but Japan takes this to the extreme. The accelerated generation of great generals by your UU and the huge bonus you get from creating generals/admirals feels novel- maybe Sweden can match the importance of generating tons of Generals but I find Japan's bonus from them more novel. They are geared for an interesting Culture victory through domination that only France can really match. Playing a game with them is really interesting to me taking advantage on all of those synergies.
For Denmark- I actually just started a game with them last night! The early game with them so far feels exactly like a normal warmonger Autocracy start. I just got my runestones up in all of my cities so I will soon start my pillaging campaigns and am certainly looking forward to how that plays. I think they are very similar to Japan in that their whole kit is full of synergy pointing toward a focus on some novel aspects of the game that aren't usually that important. I'm really looking forward to seeing if hyper-promoted scout units with pillaging buffs are especially strong with them. I'm wondering if playing them this game will change my opinion on them and make me want to bump them to tier 1. I guess one thing that I'm not sure of yet is what victory condition I should be going for- something aided by domination but I'm not sure what. I could see the best strategy being just constantly crippling whoever is perceived as the biggest threat and doing some domination/vassaling until Denmark simply wins a science, culture, or diplomatic victory almost by default.
In defense of Egypt, again, I think the UA is important. Such a big boost to wonders is very interesting, especially at higher difficulties where wonder whoring can be so difficult. Coupled with the bonuses toward dig sites and a cool UU that allows you to rush build wonders by killing units? I think they could not even have a UB and still be very novel.
Out of Inca, Songhai, and Iroquois I would agree that Inca is the most novel of the 3. However, I don't think they are so much more novel that they would deserve to be bumped up a tier. Their play style still boils down to mountains=good just like the others with jungle/woods or rivers. Mountains are certainly the most unique of the 3 terrain features, though, given that no one else can even cross them and given that they are almost always a dead tile (other than the pantheon/wonder/building you mentioned) for other civs. I normally play a continents++/standard/standard as I find it to be the most balanced map for basically every civ- I don't like tailoring my map to a specific civ. However, doing so would just make Inca feel stronger but not necessarily more novel I think. Perhaps I will try to give the Inca a play through next, though, to see if I short changed them.
Comparing those 3 civs to Polynesia, though, is no comparison in my opinion. Sure- the Polynesia UI reads coasts=good, but Polynesia's UA is much more than that. Being able to explore and cross oceans from the get-go gives the whole game a different feel. You end up settling cities spread out over vast distances and get to choose awesome sites that no one else will have access to for a very long time.
Legen
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I think that's the wrong reason to drop a tier. Again, Brazil isn't about staying in a permanent Golden Age, it cares more about a permanent WLTKD. Notably, Brazil does really well with Industry, since the gold efficiency of the tree does a lot coupled with the extra gold that the civ gets from all of its uniques, UU included. The Great Merchant from faith even helps keeping the Carnival going. Progress - Artistry - Industry - Order is perfectly fine with Brazil for a cultural victory that also wants a solid economy, as the civ's extra tourism isn't tied to specialists and great people, but to happiness and infrastructure.
Overall, Brazil should give more importance to gold efficiency than to Golden Age bonuses. The civ generates a lot of extra gold, and it's as important to your gameplan as the extra culture and tourism.
My counterargument would be that it just isn't that difficult to keep permanenet WLTKD going for a normal civ, and its worth doing for a normal civ as well
Legen
Emperor
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That was easier before the GMerchant change to 10 turns, and I'm not sure that most civs would automatically favor WLTKD bonuses, nor go out of their way just to trigger a WLTKD.
The only non-WLTKD civ as willing as Brazil to make an unfavorable trade deal just for a luxury that would trigger a WLTKD in one of its cities would be the Netherlands, and they do so for the UA yields from trading, not for the WLTKD.
It still remains that Brazil has tools to gain WLKTD that you plan around, as well as that, by pursuing one of the three parts of the cycle (happiness, frequent golden ages, WLTKD), it pushes the other two as well. Other civs may want all the three, but doesn't mean they will have nearly the same ease as Brazil at achieving them all simultaneously throughout the game, benefit as much, make them all easier to maintain, or even fit into their strategy. Other civs that focus on tourism or economy are willing to forego maximizing happiness and WLTKD anytime these two are inconvenient to maintain, if just because they don't contribute to their focus. For Brazil, however, pursuing the three becomes a core part of winning the game and is never neglected.
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