Generalist gaming made a video about what civs he believes are the strongest to play in the antiquity age, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and how to play as them, incl possible leader combos and civ transitions into the exploration age. Do you agree or disagree, what is your own tier list, what do you believe are the best antiquity age civs. Discuss here.
I think it says a lot about how diverse the gameplay is for VII that a dozen different people can have a dozen entirely different rankings of the best among a fairly small set of civs. Besides Maya, anyway, but they're a special case.
I think it says a lot about how diverse the gameplay is for VII that a dozen different people can have a dozen entirely different rankings of the best among a fairly small set of civs. Besides Maya, anyway, but they're a special case.
I've seen ratings where Maya were ranked as C. Even them could be ranked differently (I think the main problem with Maya is that their unique quarters are limited to the antiquity 3-4 cities and the rest of the features are not that impressive).
And somebody, I think it was One More Turn, just put out a video saying that Mississippians are even stronger than Maya. I'm not sure about that, but I don't think anything's really settled yet.
I really disagree with his take on the Khmer. Towns are bad, specialists are bad, what? It seems like he already chose his preferred playstyle, and anything that doesn't fit that, is deemed trash. Tall playstyle seems totally fine to me, even won OCC on immortal focusing on food. It's a longer term, slower burn to pay off, but not trash. Maybe B-C tier.
To his credit, he did say it would be a controversial take.
I've seen ratings where Maya were ranked as C. Even them could be ranked differently (I think the main problem with Maya is that their unique quarters are limited to the antiquity 3-4 cities and the rest of the features are not that impressive).
Marking Maya as C seems either contrarian, or really missing the point of their kit. In terms of the impact their unique district makes, there is genuinely no match in the game. You'd have to actively avoid investing into science not to see the payoff. It easily doubles the production of your cities. Without particularly trying to time things, I've one-turned my three science projects and multiple modern wonders with it.
And sure, it's just 3-4 cities, but that's like saying 3-4 free nukes don't make your fifth bomber any stronger - both true, and a little beside the point. How many cities are people even running in Modern? I normally stop at 5 or 6 in my Immortal games, and the Deity one I did stopped at 5. You need the core couple for your key projects. Factories can run in Towns.
And I would disagree on their other features. Scouts that can defend themselves (or even kill off a wounded target) are great for early exploration. The ranged unit gets movement in the forest and stealth; both are solid bonuses. The Poison card is one of the best legacy policies whenever you're at war. And the science/culture ones are just free yields from happiness. They are not absurd, sure, but they're not useless, either.
Yeah, I'm not sure about his ranking here (aside from Maya probably being alone in S-Tier), but then again, I don't play at Deity Level yet. I agree with him about Aksum being probably the most consistent civ to start off with - You're probably not going to break the game with them, but you'll pretty much always have a solid start with them. And I agree about "How do they set you up for Exploration and Modern?" being a major criteria for ranking these things - like, Greece is mid-tier at best, I'd say, but their traditions are amazing for helping you to get a quick leg-up in later ages, which makes them a very worthwhile Antiquity civ in my opinion.
But also, like... towns are fine? Unless you're going for the Silk Road Golden Age every time (which is nice but has its own economic downsides to keep in mind), you're going to have a bunch of towns at the start of Exploration regardless, and it doesn't take a lot to convert them to cities. Khmer (which I think he very much underrates), grows wide and tall fast, which is the whole point of them, and then when you go into Exploration (as, say, Majapahit, who I think is one of the best and most natural continuations for Khmer) you pick a couple of towns to convert into cities, specialize the rest of them, and take advantage of the increased specialist slots while your high-yield specialized towns feed the cities, and you overbuild your cities' rural districts with quarters and add more specialists that way.
I just finished my very first deity game, starting with Khmer. I still maintain they are a fine antiquity civ. They aren't going to win the game for you in antiquity, but they can set you up pretty well for the next ages with some long term planning. Pretty much just surviving antiquity with Angkor Wat built, and a large capital was enough to get me on track. Their elephants came in real handy for the whole survival part.
I didn't have any problem playing tall (3 cities, tons of food towns) the whole game. Surpassed the AIs midway through exploration in everything and never really looked back. Output at the end was about 1.4k science & 1.9k culture. Econ finished first with only 1 factory with 8 fish (other 2 cities were small islands). I did beeline factories for fish-powered growth, which helped me reach about 100 total specialists at the end.
I had run this several times on lower levels with Majapahit to Meiji Japan, which is simply a fantastic combo for this style. It's good to know that it works on deity too. There was a lot more fighting, pretty tense at times, but otherwise the game played out the same. Honestly just unlocking Majapahit is a plus for Khmer, that's how good they are. Another underrated aspect is the expansionist trait. You need a lot of those points to make the tall play style work at its best (both sides of the tree are quite good, the extra output from towns on the right plus all the specialist ones on the left). Playing as Khmer with Confucius gives you a great headstart on filling that tree in antiquity.
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