And the best Civ Specific Ability is... Commercial? (Revised Rankings)

[DarkSchneider]

I've been playing Civ 3 on Monarch (King) level for a few maps now, and I can honestly say that I've changed my mind about most Civ specific abilities.

Originally after reading the FAQs I had ordered them
1) Industrious: Production is key, and you get most production enhancing improvements late in the game.
2) Scientific: Most of the early part of the game is spent climbing the tech tree so you can build helpful units/structures
3) Commercial: More commerce means more science/lux/money
4) Expansionist: A couple good huts (city/tech/units) early on and you're golden.
5) Militeristic: Never though Vetern status was that interesting, rarely built military structures before scientific or commercial ones.
6) Religious: There are only a few religious imporvements, I have little desire to rapidly change government.

After playing a little bit here are my new rankings
1) Commercial: Waste and corruption were far and away my biggest problems, to give you any indication, the city four cities away from my capital was experiencing waste to the point that they wouldn't actually generate a shield and could not grow above 5 due to civil disorder. Granted I was still in monarchy but the message is clear, corruption is a big problem in Civ 3 for early governments.
2) Scientific: There are more must have tech's early on in the game now, to get all of them you will likely need to up your science output. You need a aquaduct to raise you city above 6 and Monarchy or the Republic to deal with Corruption. That and without libraries you will be consistently behind you rivals in terms of science output (something that never happened in Civ 2)
3) Religious: There aren't a lot of religious structures, but the temple is key and you will build it in nearly every city early on (typically after your first defender) Only the temple and library produce culture early, and you will need a temple anyway to keep the citizens content.
4) Militiristic: It's rare for me to pursue a conquest oriented strategy, but it's extremely helpful to have defenders get addition life points when the computer attacks initially with ghetto units like archers. If your spearmen get hit early enough, they will be better prepared for dealing with the coming units, AND the warlike Civs may even offer you tech for peace treatys. The possibility of aquiring a great leader is just icing on the cake.
5) Industrious: Everything seems to take longer to do in Civ 3 than it did in Civ 2. On the other hand, workers are very quick to build, requiring a third the resources of a settler and half the population. Extra production is good, but you only get the benefit once a city has grown to sufficent size, and at that point most of it will be wasted. Also, you can always steal some good workers by enslaving a hard working civilization
6) Expansionist: The scout is a great unit, but with corruption such a large problem, you will be settling close to home anyway. Also, hills and mountains allow you to see very far regarldless of how fast you move.

Well there you have it, all in all quite a revision. Also, I would note that they seem closer in usefulness than I had thought originally, further proof that the good folks at Firaxis worked hard to balance this game.

 

[ecofx]

Nice evaluation
I haven't got civ3 yet, but I'm a big supporter of commercial and industrious. You have changed industrious from first to fifth place on your list.
Questions: what are the resource costs (shields) of workers and settlers, and how much faster are the workers on roads, mining etc than normal?
Why do you write the production benefit is only after a certain size - isn't it an extra shield per city centre (regardless of waste)?
On expansionist - can any civ build scouts and do they cost more if yes? I would want to build the most basic unit for exploration, anyway, so a free scout isn't much at all! Only the goody-hut bonus stands a chance of being really useful in my opinion. Am I right?
On corruption - how many squares away from the capital does corruption start and do roads help? Does corruption get worse with more cities regardless of how far away from the capital they are?
Many thanks for the thread, once I get the game myself I'll be ....

 

[adamschroeder]

I prefer Religious and Industrious after playing my three games. I also like commercial, but even that doesn’t seem to have a major effect on corruption.

Religious is nice because you can build cheap temples which give a great head start in the culture war and expand your influence rapidly, it also allows you to switch your government without anarchy which is a big plus if you want to be flexible in your playing style.

I like Industrious because your workers work a lot faster. I like infrastructure and especially in the early game when you only have a few workers you can build a great road and mine network early on, which provides compounded returns throughout the game.

 

[ghostwheel]

Well - after first few days of active playing with Persians(industrious/scientific) on Monarch level I can summarize following:


1) Corruption sucks! I can not emphasize this enough. I went for Republic (not a military type here) and even with it corruption ate just too many shields and even more gold. The biggest luck I had in the game is that one of my elite units produced a hero fairly quickly and I used it to build forbidden palace - helped quite a bit.

2) Fast-working workers are really useful at the beginning - I never had a problem connecting all cities and used quite a few forests to bump production. Also quite often it was helpful to stack some workers together on the same job. Additional shields were of limited usefulness due to a corruption but I do not want to comment on this until I play non-industrious civ to see how much effect this will have.

3) Military civs must be receiving some significant bonus during rolls - I always had trouble to take out fortified units in the military civ cities without a bombardment (and you need to have like 3-4 catapults stacked together if you want to achieve any bombardment effects). After seeing drastic effects hero had on my civ (basically a hero equals free wonder) I really beginning to wonder about commercial/military civ.

4) Culture was not a concern for me (due to being scientific mostly). Library is cheap with scientific civ. And even without bonuses Library and Temple are fairly cheap. So I am not a huge believer into religious civs unless there is some potent strategy with constantly shuffling governments.

5) Huts gave me only couple of free techs and map regions - never cities. And I do not like to be dependent on pure luck of finding good hut with expansionist civ.

So IMHO:

1) commercial (not verified yet but it looks like the only answer to corruption)
2) industrial / military / scientific (very close to each other - i really cannot say which one has an advantage)
3) expansionist (if you lucky, otherwise it is worthless)
4) religious (I must be missing something in here)


Also a note - it looks like all random events (battles, huts, etc) use same seeded random generator. It means that if you reload and repeat same sequence of events - you will get same results. So if you want to try to squeeze maximum from that hut - have some other random event (e.g. battle) in the same turn and try to do hut followed by battle and battle followed by hut.

 

[DarkSchneider]

AS for your questions, waste seems to affect everything, and you only get the extra production when your city gets larger so most likely waste will be a problem. Most cities produce 1 shield no matter their size when you get around 12 tiles away from your starting location. Only expansionist civilizations get scouts, but unfortunately they don't get a waste/corruption bonus for cities further out. Since waste/corruption is the single biggest problem in Civ 3, you will most likely be viewing land you will never settle. Anyway, I have played a little more Civ 3, and here are my revised/resived rankings. However, I think these will stick:

1) Religious: Early temples are more useful than early libraries, while I am not a big fan of shuffling government, there are a number of times you will need to switch from democracy/republic back to despotism/communism in order to use the population rush build. In ancient times, the lower temple cost is a huge boon, 1 shield + 1 population = 1 temple (get the culture early so the other civs don't put up cities around your territory.)
2) Commercial: I cannot emphasive enough how much corruption is a problem, anything that can help combat this is a boon.
3) Scientific: Can be used the same a religious, but early librarys require literature and are not as useful for keeping people content. An extra tech is helpful, but not great. Luckily, the early techs for most eras are all quite useful, so random is not too much of a disadvantage.
4) Militeristic: Promotions on the battlefield are key, this occurs with defenders too, and it's a great way to beef up those early spearmen. Leaders are immeasurably helpful, even for non-agresive strategies.
5) Industrious: Workers work faster, so you can build less of them. Still, I had a tendancy to build many workers early, then most ended up sitting around or doing meaningless work, like clearing jungles. The extra shields are not noticable and are typically eaten up by waste.
6) Expansionist: There is not much point in exploring terrritory you will never settle/conquer. Waste is such a large problem it's best sticking close to home until at least the industrial age. The only good thing about this is that I have never had a hostile random encounter and I am getting technology from tribes on a regular basis. However, unless you luck out an get an early settler, this advantage is probably the worst one.

Well there you have it, I expect these ratings to stick until Firaxis comes out with the first patch to tone down corruption (they will come out with a patch to tone down corruption :shotgun: )

 

[DaDrunkenFish]

They look very cool!
Only beause there intrestin, and there war elephant rocks(I hope)
There Commercial and Religious, plzplzplzplz PLZ sum super expert on Civ(Im a newbie) how these twp cpuld help me.

My writins alwaysf sskerey like this, ignore it

 

[JMac]

I think that even though I dont have civ3 yet that commercial and expansionist sound the best.
If corruption is as much of a problem as everyone says it is I think I'll stick to commercial.

 

[The Ripper]

Corruption is a realistic problem..
few civs in history succeded in getting a large empire,and to control the world is not so simple..
think to the satrapies of Persia,with governors doing what they pleased to get rich and safe,even starting wars against allies of their king..
Do you think that with such an empire they haven't been able to conquer greece because they were stupid?
they were not united because of too much local power in the far zones of the empire,in the game this is simplificated by corruption,slowing down your planes..
Production slowed by indebit appropiations and easy earnings for the local leaders...
Try to play as your civ wants,not to force every civ in your schemes..
Probably germans are not so inclined in building an empire,but to study the way to conquer it,actually to get it,losin it in a short time..
that reminds me one or two happenings...

 

[Malys Faisent]

I think just about every combination is viable, personally I prefer industrious over scientific...I just feel that infrastructure is the most important part of any empire, though I don't know if the game is the same way.

Military doesn't seem worth it to me, but I am generally not that aggressive and would rather just conquer with tech than with better units; however the tech race is not something that you can stay ahead of for very long. Defensive units are so extremely tough in this game, though Bombarding a city into oblivion is now an option...I've never gotten a GL as a military nation, though I've gotten them as the Persians. The other problem I see with trying to conquer the world is that cities can quickly shrug off your dominion, especially if they are of a decent size...I don't know how many times I've conquered a rivals city, supressed the resistance (with 8+ units at times!) and then have the city switch back to its original nation (losing all of my units in the process) the next turn...MOST annoying and it seems to happen with regular frequency even if I am the dominant culture. Now, if a city is above size 4 I just raze the damn thing...If I've got more military units in a city than its got people I don't see how it can throw off my dominance, its not like my elite handpicked special unit troops are just going to switch sides because the city once had a nifty temple! There should be the option to kill off resistors instead of razing the whole city, it would make the chances of a cultural switch much less likely to happen (though its evil as all hell...I'll grant you that)

Commercial is very important, almost impossible to have sprawling empires without it, unless you are in a higher government type and just buy everything out right (which commercial helps you do anyway...)

Expansionist is luck o' the draw, and doesn't seem to be all that impressive, you can start off ahead in the tech race, and if you are extremely lucky pick up a settler or two (which isn't all that great anyway if you are playing with lots of roving barbarians, its not like your scout can defend a settler back to your empire from 20 squares away). Expansionist is also over by the middle ages...it just doesn't help you anymore, so if you don't have an incredible start, the other advantages (even Military) are going to quickly overshadow anything you get out of expansionist.

For my style of play, Industrial Commercial is where its at. I just wish I could do something about the Pink.

 

[ApocalypseKurtz]

Civ Ability Rankings

1) Scientific - TECHNOLOGY FOREVER

2) Religion - Elimination of anarchy periods is huge + cheaper happiness improvements

3) Commercial - helpful, only slightly better than

4) Industrious - not bad not great

5) Militaristic - doesn't make much of a difference

6) Expansionist - the weakest one