consentient
Domination!
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 3,379
General principles
TLDR: To my knowledge, there have been a number of Tier lists made over the years, but in my opinion they fail in undervaluing conquest as a game mechanic, they consider maps types that are not so often played at Deity, and they compare civs against each other, rather than to some objective standard.
My view is that if we want to construct something like an objective tier list for Deity SP civs, we must first imagine a completely neutral civ with no UA, UU or UB, and then compare how much better each civ is to this imaginary civ.
Direct comparisons cannot really work. If we have a feeling that Venice is better than Austria, for example, we must actually consider how much better each one is than the neutral civ. I will hereafter call this civ The Neutrals, for the sake of simplicity. I hope this does not offend some punk band out there that likely have the same name. Our Tier list analysis therefore must weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each civ against the Neutrals.
But I think we must also consider what general strategies are most likely to win, and then compare how much easily those strategies can be won with each civ, not rank them according to how easy it is to win with the civ in a set of decent conditions. For example, Brazil are fantastic at CV, but if the arrangement of the map and some of the game consequences don’t go your way, you might struggle getting that CV and have to change VC, in order to win.
I would say that there are only really five kinds of advantages that a civ can have over The Neutrals on Deity:-
Science: the advantage somehow boosts research, allowing key techs to be reached faster, catching you up to the AI faster, and extending the dominance you enjoy once you’ve overtaken them. These advantages are more important on Deity than on Prince, for example, where you can win really easily and quickly without even building libraries.
Culture: advantages that allow for the quicker enacting of social policies mean that the powerful meta-advantages they bring will similarly snowball.
Gold: advantages that grant more gold mean the choices about what to build/rush buy are less severe, and every VC is made significantly easier by making CS alliances slicker
War: advantages that make it easier to kill enemy units and capture their cities is important regardless of whether or not you are on the offensive or defensive.
Faith: faith is really a meta-value since it can be turned into science, gold, culture, and even units. It doesn’t really provide any benefit in and of itself. All the same, it will be considered separately since some civs have large advantages to faith, and some none at all.
As for what we are actually rating, adwcta said it best in the OP of his thread:
I totally agree. This is about ease of winning, not speed of winning, or versatility of VCs. Korea, for example, are not just 'a science civ', since their UA means that by the Industrial Era you can have a good enough tech lead to win by Domination very easily.
And here’s where I make the statement that many of you will find controversial, which is this: -
The above criterion basically means that, since warmongering gives the greatest advantages to a civ looking to win, then warmongering advantages count more than others.
I’m not really looking to debate this point here, and should anyone completely disagree with me, then I’d prefer they start their own thread, respectfully. This thread is for discussion of the tier rankings once this fact has been admitted/accepted.
The basic reasoning is this: the more capitals your empire conquers, the more all other advantages begin to snowball. For demonstration purposes, take a look at my screenshot from a recent game and especially at the BPT, CPT etc.
Without having to give any consideration to growth in my 3 self-founded cities, without premium dirt, without founding my own religion, without food caravans, without trying hard to make CS alliances, without building any wonders myself, etc., etc., by T150 I usually become the dominant force in the game purely through conquest, taking the hard work the other civs have done in establishing religion, building nice cities and wonders inside them, and just using it for my purposes; just like most empires.
And it must be said that I’m a pretty sloppy warmonger. If you really apply yourself you can do a lot better than I can, finish earlier, and be more dominant. You can also take some cities, expand your empire and have more confidence that you can win another type of VC. I did this on DCL #4, a map that most turtlers struggled with. I smashed the AI then won a CV, purely for fun. If you’re the type of player that tries to win turtling victories and undergoes stress wondering if you’ll be invaded, since you’ve concentrated so hard on science that you only have 3 XBs and a Pike, then this tier list is probably not for you right now, but maybe in the future you would enjoy learning a bit about war and how it can help you immensely.
The conclusion: how science, culture, gold, war and faith enable war mongering is the truest measure of how good a civilization is. Since 4 other VCs exist that aren’t directly brought about by Domination, they will not be completely discounted, but the previous popular Deity tier list was heavily skewed in favour of turtling and this doesn’t make any sense.
But how to weight the factors? Gold can be converted into culture – for example, by buying an Opera House. And culture can be turned into gold, for example by the Commerce opener.
I think its pretty clear that, given my opening premises about war and conquest, that conquest and science must be considered the twin imperators of how a game goes. On Deity, basically you have to either drive science or conquer cities, and increase your power that way. A combination of both is most effective – i.e. easiest. You do this by reaching the techs you need to finish the game, as fast as you can, without compromising earlier warfare, which also makes things easier by bringing about more power and science much earlier. Starting warring at artillery will not give you Sistine Chapel on T120 without having to build it.
Tech-ing means that you unlock techs to build things that increase your culture, but so does capturing cities. The most important thing for Deity domination is keeping your army cutting-edge while making sure your cities are producing enough science, which is one reason I love Peddroelm’s 3-city Honor-Commerce-Autocracy strategy so much. You build universities in good time, and work them until you have the techs you need to win. You have much more gold than you would have had from Tradition or Liberty, and a much better army. The advantages you think you’re losing out on – for example culture and GP production - can be seized when you capture other cities. I finish almost every game without building amphitheaters, the national epic, guilds or public schools. And I do it far more easily than I am able to score a science victory where I turtle and put myself at the mercy of the AI, even when I play with bribes. And I usually finish way before most players are winning their turtling victories, since the last tech I generally need is Navigation, Dynamite or something like that, whereas one usually has to reach The Internet (for CV), or, for SV, the whole tree.
So, in summary, this is not a tier list just for DomVs only, but it does acknowledge, more than any other Tier list I’ve seen, that conquest is more powerful and more flexible than turtling-biased lists give it credit for.
(to be contd.)
TLDR: To my knowledge, there have been a number of Tier lists made over the years, but in my opinion they fail in undervaluing conquest as a game mechanic, they consider maps types that are not so often played at Deity, and they compare civs against each other, rather than to some objective standard.
My view is that if we want to construct something like an objective tier list for Deity SP civs, we must first imagine a completely neutral civ with no UA, UU or UB, and then compare how much better each civ is to this imaginary civ.
Direct comparisons cannot really work. If we have a feeling that Venice is better than Austria, for example, we must actually consider how much better each one is than the neutral civ. I will hereafter call this civ The Neutrals, for the sake of simplicity. I hope this does not offend some punk band out there that likely have the same name. Our Tier list analysis therefore must weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each civ against the Neutrals.
But I think we must also consider what general strategies are most likely to win, and then compare how much easily those strategies can be won with each civ, not rank them according to how easy it is to win with the civ in a set of decent conditions. For example, Brazil are fantastic at CV, but if the arrangement of the map and some of the game consequences don’t go your way, you might struggle getting that CV and have to change VC, in order to win.
I would say that there are only really five kinds of advantages that a civ can have over The Neutrals on Deity:-
Science: the advantage somehow boosts research, allowing key techs to be reached faster, catching you up to the AI faster, and extending the dominance you enjoy once you’ve overtaken them. These advantages are more important on Deity than on Prince, for example, where you can win really easily and quickly without even building libraries.
Culture: advantages that allow for the quicker enacting of social policies mean that the powerful meta-advantages they bring will similarly snowball.
Gold: advantages that grant more gold mean the choices about what to build/rush buy are less severe, and every VC is made significantly easier by making CS alliances slicker
War: advantages that make it easier to kill enemy units and capture their cities is important regardless of whether or not you are on the offensive or defensive.
Faith: faith is really a meta-value since it can be turned into science, gold, culture, and even units. It doesn’t really provide any benefit in and of itself. All the same, it will be considered separately since some civs have large advantages to faith, and some none at all.
As for what we are actually rating, adwcta said it best in the OP of his thread:
I totally agree. This is about ease of winning, not speed of winning, or versatility of VCs. Korea, for example, are not just 'a science civ', since their UA means that by the Industrial Era you can have a good enough tech lead to win by Domination very easily.
And here’s where I make the statement that many of you will find controversial, which is this: -
The above criterion basically means that, since warmongering gives the greatest advantages to a civ looking to win, then warmongering advantages count more than others.
I’m not really looking to debate this point here, and should anyone completely disagree with me, then I’d prefer they start their own thread, respectfully. This thread is for discussion of the tier rankings once this fact has been admitted/accepted.
The basic reasoning is this: the more capitals your empire conquers, the more all other advantages begin to snowball. For demonstration purposes, take a look at my screenshot from a recent game and especially at the BPT, CPT etc.
Without having to give any consideration to growth in my 3 self-founded cities, without premium dirt, without founding my own religion, without food caravans, without trying hard to make CS alliances, without building any wonders myself, etc., etc., by T150 I usually become the dominant force in the game purely through conquest, taking the hard work the other civs have done in establishing religion, building nice cities and wonders inside them, and just using it for my purposes; just like most empires.
And it must be said that I’m a pretty sloppy warmonger. If you really apply yourself you can do a lot better than I can, finish earlier, and be more dominant. You can also take some cities, expand your empire and have more confidence that you can win another type of VC. I did this on DCL #4, a map that most turtlers struggled with. I smashed the AI then won a CV, purely for fun. If you’re the type of player that tries to win turtling victories and undergoes stress wondering if you’ll be invaded, since you’ve concentrated so hard on science that you only have 3 XBs and a Pike, then this tier list is probably not for you right now, but maybe in the future you would enjoy learning a bit about war and how it can help you immensely.
The conclusion: how science, culture, gold, war and faith enable war mongering is the truest measure of how good a civilization is. Since 4 other VCs exist that aren’t directly brought about by Domination, they will not be completely discounted, but the previous popular Deity tier list was heavily skewed in favour of turtling and this doesn’t make any sense.
But how to weight the factors? Gold can be converted into culture – for example, by buying an Opera House. And culture can be turned into gold, for example by the Commerce opener.
I think its pretty clear that, given my opening premises about war and conquest, that conquest and science must be considered the twin imperators of how a game goes. On Deity, basically you have to either drive science or conquer cities, and increase your power that way. A combination of both is most effective – i.e. easiest. You do this by reaching the techs you need to finish the game, as fast as you can, without compromising earlier warfare, which also makes things easier by bringing about more power and science much earlier. Starting warring at artillery will not give you Sistine Chapel on T120 without having to build it.
Tech-ing means that you unlock techs to build things that increase your culture, but so does capturing cities. The most important thing for Deity domination is keeping your army cutting-edge while making sure your cities are producing enough science, which is one reason I love Peddroelm’s 3-city Honor-Commerce-Autocracy strategy so much. You build universities in good time, and work them until you have the techs you need to win. You have much more gold than you would have had from Tradition or Liberty, and a much better army. The advantages you think you’re losing out on – for example culture and GP production - can be seized when you capture other cities. I finish almost every game without building amphitheaters, the national epic, guilds or public schools. And I do it far more easily than I am able to score a science victory where I turtle and put myself at the mercy of the AI, even when I play with bribes. And I usually finish way before most players are winning their turtling victories, since the last tech I generally need is Navigation, Dynamite or something like that, whereas one usually has to reach The Internet (for CV), or, for SV, the whole tree.
So, in summary, this is not a tier list just for DomVs only, but it does acknowledge, more than any other Tier list I’ve seen, that conquest is more powerful and more flexible than turtling-biased lists give it credit for.
(to be contd.)
) This is massive. UA rating = 6
]
At the time caravels are available, I generally have enough GPT that 200-300 is not gonna make it worth sending them to faraway lands for non-military purposes. Sheer roleplaying in my view. Does anyone disagree and can demonstrate optimal play with them? UU rating 1/5 (for the extra speed and sight compared with the Neutrals)
