After playing the elves...

[SchpailsMan]

I might be coming late in the discussion... well, I've just finished reading the thread, and there's one thing that I think is worth commenting.

I started up another Arendel .15 game... It's almost year 200 and I have twice the score of my nearest rival. I have been able to quickly expand to eight cities (ninth on the way), all without a single war, despite three rivals starting near me. This would be more or less impossible with any other Civ, but the Ljosalfar are powerful enough in the early game to do it. I actually did found the Order, and the basilicas and courthouses are allowing me to keep a decent economy even with this early expansion. I have Valin Phanuel and Gilden Silveric poised to attack whenever I feel like it, and Baron Duin Halfmorn can be made in a dozen turns. I'm just about to finish commune with nature and bloom my whole empire, but the game is already as well as won.

Had I used warfare in the above game, I could easily have wiped out all my neighbors, expanded without restriction, and then crossed the ocean and wiped out the technologically backwards Civs uncontested. As is, I'll still be able to do that over a longer time scale. The lack of siege engines is irrelevent, as I built the Pact of the Nihlorn with the elves' huge production advantages. Even had I not, I could still overpower enemy cities with sheer weight of numbers.

About all Civs being equal eventually... it seems like so many Civs are "done," but their power is nowhere near that of the Ljosalfar. It's certainly simpler to change one Civ for balance than it is to change all of them, especially when many Civs have already been balanced out with each other.

First, I'd like to see the game settings. From this report, I just can't have a clue whether any information there is relevant. I can only guess that you've played using somewhat "standard" settings, at noble-to-emperor difficulty, on a map whose size is not duel and that might have some sea tiles in it. As someone said before (maybe in another thread), these informations help understanding one's point a lot better. For example, depending on the settings, getting "twice the score of the next rival after 200 turns" may be fairly easy or really hard (try emperor level on a huge continents map with 16 civs).

Then, you say that the lack of siege engines is irrelevant because you just had to build the Pact of Nilhorn. Does it mean that your strategy more or less relies on getting a world wonder ? Against the computer at low difficulty levels that might be a safe move, but in MP or at higher difficulty levels you can never know if some other player (say, the industrious Khazad) won't beat you at it. The fact that the elves get a few extra hammers probably helps, but the inability to chop may as well turn against you (in the early game, you won't have the option the build a workshop to force forest chopping on flat ground). Besides, in MP you can bet that a human player will try hard to take out those giants if they know they are your only siege weapons altogether. And I don't buy the argument about 99% of the games being single player... balance in not that relevant in SP games since the AI just doesn't know how to exploit your weaknesses (or at least until we get some Chalid-powered magic ), but it does really matter in MP because you wouldn't want the other guy to take benefit from some imbalanced game design.

Finally, I doubt that other civs are "nowhere near of the ljosalfar" in power. Maybe your usual playstyle just fits particularly well with them, but I'm not sure they are anywhere more powerful than well-played Lanun, Hippus or Calabim, for example. Even the Grigori (which I usually consider somewhat weaker than most of their rivals, then again my last try with them was a long time ago, I should probably try them out in 0.15) may strike the ljosalfar very hard if they can rush them with early adventurers.


All in all, I've not played the ljos recently enough to really consider wether they are overpowered or not. But the more I read comments in the related threads, the more I tend to believe that the ljosalfar are just somewhat easier to play with than other civs, or at least their bonuses are so obvious that you can't really play plain wrong with them (I know I got screwed hard in my first game with the Cabalim mainly because I failed to understand what techs I should have rushed to).

(next on my todo list : finish my current 0.14 game if I manage to get back to it after my holiday break, download & install 0.15 + patch, play a game with the grigori and then play another one with the ljosalfar, all of this without ruining my social and professional life... I'm sure there's a catch somewhere but I just fail to get it)

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Finally, I doubt that other civs are "nowhere near of the ljosalfar" in power. Maybe your usual playstyle just fits particularly well with them, but I'm not sure they are anywhere more powerful than well-played Lanun, Hippus or Calabim, for example. Even the Grigori (which I usually consider somewhat weaker than most of their rivals, then again my last try with them was a long time ago, I should probably try them out in 0.15) may strike the ljosalfar very hard if they can rush them with early adventurers.


All in all, I've not played the ljos recently enough to really consider wether they are overpowered or not. But the more I read comments in the related threads, the more I tend to believe that the ljosalfar are just somewhat easier to play with than other civs, or at least their bonuses are so obvious that you can't really play plain wrong with them (I know I got screwed hard in my first game with the Cabalim mainly because I failed to understand what techs I should have rushed to).

More food for thought can be found here.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=182240