Anyone Else Disappointed in Carthage?

[Calouste]

And if you beeline Iron Working to get the colossus, then that tile is even more valuable plus the five gold free. Carthage looks like a lot of fun!

The Colossus only works in one city, so you'll probably have it in your capital, not in a newly build city. Still, if you complete Tradition and then start working on Commerce, you can have your newly founded cities grow really quick if they have two or three sea resources near them.

 

[Louis XXIV]

For starters, their War Elephant:
Carthage never actually used war elephants very successfully. In the First Punic war, they were badly trained and many just fled the battlefield. And in the Second Punic war, the vast majority died in the Alps, without ever seeing battle. Those that did survive found that the Romans were well prepared with anti-elephant tactics. In fact, Hannibal's reliance on elephants was one of the main reasons he lost in the end. They are in Civ V simply because people know about them.

While I agree, they were also spectacular in both the conquest of Spain and Carthage's expansion into the Numidian heartland. I'm pleased they correctly identified the type of Elephant.

Secondly, the quinquireme:
It's more historically accurate than the War Elephant, that's for sure. Carthage used them effectively in all their wars. However, I don't like the fact that Carthage has two UU's for their wars. They were historically a very peaceful civ, and I wish that they got a unique harbor building, or something along those lines. Civ's with 2 UU's (America, Japan, Rome, etc.) get those two UU's two encourage them to be warlike. Carthage shouldn't be a warmonger civ, and therefore they have no reason for two UU's.

Sorry, I disagree completely there. I don't think there's such a thing as an ancient civ that was historically peaceful, but certainly not Carthage.

Greek-Punic Wars

First Sicilian War - 480 BC
Second Sicilian War - 410-340 BC (70 years)
Third Sicilian War - 315-307 BC
Phyrric War - 280 BC–265 BC
First Punic War - 264-241
(Conquest of Spain)
(Conquest of North Africa)
Second Punic War - 218-201
Third Punic War - 149-146

While I prefer Numidian Cavalry, that would actually have been another Hannibal reference. Quinquereme is an excellent choice for them, but it is a ship. Land units are nice.

 

[carm3]

While I agree, they were also spectacular in both the conquest of Spain and Carthage's expansion into the Numidian heartland. I'm pleased they correctly identified the type of Elephant.



Sorry, I disagree completely there. I don't think there's such a thing as an ancient civ that was historically peaceful, but certainly not Carthage.

Greek-Punic Wars

First Sicilian War - 480 BC
Second Sicilian War - 410-340 BC (70 years)
Third Sicilian War - 315-307 BC
Phyrric War - 280 BC–265 BC
First Punic War - 264-241
(Conquest of Spain)
(Conquest of North Africa)
Second Punic War - 218-201
Third Punic War - 149-146

While I prefer Numidian Cavalry, that would actually have been another Hannibal reference. Quinquereme is an excellent choice for them, but it is a ship. Land units are nice.

Agree with basically all of this (including wishing that one of their UUs wasn't a ship - I'm terrible at the naval aspect of things). I'd also add that there's an additional problem with trying to avoid the Hannibalic period when deciding on civ attributes, namely that we have next to no literary sources for the period before their interactions with Rome, and therefore have only a schematic notion of their history. If anything, I'd argue that NOT emphasising the period of the Punic Wars would be historically unfaithful.

 

[Lyoncet]

Maybe I'll just play Carthage without crossing any mountains or building any elephants and pretend I'm playing a good representation of the Civ.

And again, yeah yeah yeah it's a game not a documentary. But it's a historically based franchise. Plenty of videogame IPs build themselves on the premise of loosely interpreting history for the sake of Rule of Cool. Conversely, Civ has (generally) recognized that there is no inherent tradeoff between accuracy and gameplay, and its games have been all stronger for it. So seeing it stumble like this is disheartening.

Honestly it kind of seems like they were trying to balance out removing Hannibal as the faction leader by cramming as many Hannibal references as they could into the rest of the civ, leaving . As a classical history enthusiast and fan of Hannibal and Carthaginian history in general, the choices made regarding the civ irk me. I can understand wanting to bring a new leader in, and Dido is the obvious choice, but the "this person's probably real but we have no idea if anything attributed to them actually happened"-type leaders always seem like weaker choices.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Agree with basically all of this (including wishing that one of their UUs wasn't a ship - I'm terrible at the naval aspect of things). I'd also add that there's an additional problem with trying to avoid the Hannibalic period when deciding on civ attributes, namely that we have next to no literary sources for the period before their interactions with Rome, and therefore have only a schematic notion of their history. If anything, I'd argue that NOT emphasising the period of the Punic Wars would be historically unfaithful.

Actually, I'm thrilled there's a ship, I just understand other people don't like them. In fact, I'm shocked the Dutch have a ship and nothing else because I don't expect people to be happy with it.

I think we do have Greek sources for the earlier history with Carthage. We certainly have a decent knowledge of the Magonid dynasty in Carthage and the wars against Dionysius, etc. It's possible these are Roman accounts of their early history, but there's a decent documentation. Granted, it doesn't compare to Polybius, who had excellent sources for the Second Punic War (including people from the time, iirc), but it's not a blank slate. It's just not as well known because it isn't useful for the Roman narrative of Rome becoming a superpower. It doesn't even fit into the Greek narrative because the Poleis didn't care about the western Greeks. So it doesn't get written about much.

 

[CivilizedPlayer]

Ok I just read every single comment here. I'm officially swayed, and Carthage may have shot back up to the top of that "who to play first" list

I forgot about how much more useful a navy is in GaK. With Carthage, you can conquer your way across the coastline, and then get free trade routes between all your cities. I'm going to cede the victory in this debate to the "Carthage is awesome" side

However, I do have one question: does "free harbors" mean that a harbor is instantly built in any coastal city? Or does it just mean you don't pay maintenence once it's built?

 

[carm3]

I think we do have Greek sources for the earlier history with Carthage. We certainly have a decent knowledge of the Magonid dynasty in Carthage and the wars against Dionysius, etc. It's possible these are Roman accounts of their early history, but there's a decent documentation. Granted, it doesn't compare to Polybius, who had excellent sources for the Second Punic War (including people from the time, iirc), but it's not a blank slate. It's just not as well known because it isn't useful for the Roman narrative of Rome becoming a superpower. It doesn't even fit into the Greek narrative because the Poleis didn't care about the western Greeks. So it doesn't get written about much.

Sorry, "next to nothing" was a bit of an overstatement. What I meant was that the sources are nowhere near what we have for the later period, and provide sort of a punctuated history (mostly based on whenever they came into contact with the Greeks/Romans) rather than a continuous narrative, and therefore it's tough to get nearly as well-rounded a picture.

 

[carm3]

Ok I just read every single comment here. I'm officially swayed, and Carthage may have shot back up to the top of that "who to play first" list

I forgot about how much more useful a navy is in GaK. With Carthage, you can conquer your way across the coastline, and then get free trade routes between all your cities. I'm going to cede the victory in this debate to the "Carthage is awesome" side

Huzzah!

 

[GenjiKhan]

However, I do have one question: does "free harbors" mean that a harbor is instantly built in any coastal city? Or does it just mean you don't pay maintenence once it's built?

Probably it means that you don't need to build a harbor once you got Optics,neither pay the maintenance cost . At least,that's what I understood .

 

[nokmirt]

The ability to move over mountains after a GG is earned is a huge plus. I don't know how many maps I have played, in which I wish I could have done that. Instead sometimes I had to go 10 hexes out of my way. As long as you can move your army without having a train wreck it will be quite an advantage.

 

[Nyanko]

The ability to move over mountains after a GG is earned is a huge plus. I don't know how many maps I have played, in which I wish I could have done that. Instead sometimes I had to go 10 hexes out of my way. As long as you can move your army without having a train wreck it will be quite an advantage.

I can definitely count the number of times I would have loved that ability.

But its far outweighed by the amount of times I would have never used it in a game. I think its just window dressing and the aforementioned throwback to Hannibal crossing the alps. The real bonus is the harbour. After the OP'ed Mayans, I think Carthage is next on the OPedness, nowhere near the weakest. Imagine Modern Armour upgraded with Terror, now that would be a terror to behold

 

[Lyoncet]

Yeah, Carthage does seem really playable, but I'm afraid it's going to depend too much on the map for my liking. Since I really don't envision the mountain crossing to be that big of a deal, in a map with little to no reason to go coastal, it really just gets one UU and nothing else. That's the inherent problem with civs that focus heavily on seafaring. Either they're poor on non-water maps, or they're crazy on maps with lots of water. IMO the new England having just one sea-related unique, or the Ottomans being in the same boat (so to speak ), or the Dutch, is a much better way of doing things than having essentially 2/3rds of your bonuses be stripped away frequently.

 

[Nyanko]

Yeah, Carthage does seem really playable, but I'm afraid it's going to depend too much on the map for my liking. Since I really don't envision the mountain crossing to be that big of a deal, in a map with little to no reason to go coastal, it really just gets one UU and nothing else. That's the inherent problem with civs that focus heavily on seafaring. Either they're poor on non-water maps, or they're crazy on maps with lots of water. IMO the new England having just one sea-related unique, or the Ottomans being in the same boat (so to speak ), or the Dutch, is a much better way of doing things than having essentially 2/3rds of your bonuses be stripped away frequently.

But unlike the Netherlands, England and the Ottoman Empire, the harbour ability is half decent even on Pangea maps. Because Carthage will have a coastal start bias, they can ignore the need to build roads, at least initially if they found other cities on the coast. As well as that; the hammer bonus for sea resources would be very useful too

 

[cccv]

Did you know a unit loses half of its health if it ends a turn on a mountain? That's hardly overpowered. Unless they make it so that moving onto the mountain doesn't cost them all their movement points, which would just be weird, this seems like something you'd do only as a last ditch effort to try to keep a unit alive. Attacking from a mountain? It's already at half health or less so that's already a bad idea, and then if it doesn't destroy the unit it's stuck on the mountain again for another halving. It seems very, very situational that you'd ever do this, it hardly sounds unbalanced.

As for the harbor part of the UA, the extra hammers from resources seem like the only positive, but how often do you have a ton of sea resources in a city anyway? The "free road" component isn't that great because you probably still want to build roads for faster movement. So all in all, I don't see what's really good about their UA, and I definitely don't see how it's unbalanced. It seems incredibly weak to me.

 

[cakes]

civ is a game that is more about "what if" situations rather than trying to replicate history. you have the scenarios for that and since carthage is the biggest name that tried to cross elephants over the alps, that feat is included in their UA.

 

[Lyoncet]

But unlike the Netherlands, England and the Ottoman Empire, the harbour ability is half decent even on Pangea maps. Because Carthage will have a coastal start bias, they can ignore the need to build roads, at least initially if they found other cities on the coast. As well as that; the hammer bonus for sea resources would be very useful too

Hm, I didn't know they have a coastal start bias. That makes it much more attractive, since the harbors do make coastal cities just that much more attractive for the hammer bonus alone, especially alongside a possible dip down the Commerce tree and picking up a Pantheon to support a coastal civ.

 

[prince_caspian]

I don't remember reading anywhere that Carthaginians will have a coastal start bias...still free harbors is not a negligible bonus. Auto free 3 gpt per city is good

 

[elprofesor]

It'd be weird if Carthage didn't have a coastal start bias, isn't it?

 

[Lyoncet]

I don't remember reading anywhere that Carthaginians will have a coastal start bias...still free harbors is not a negligible bonus. Auto free 3 gpt per city is good

Well if there is no coastal start bias, free harbors will often be negligible because you'll often not have coastal cities. May end up being more useful if naval AI is improved as much as they indicated, since that would make playing non-Pangaea maps not an exploit any longer. But still, if there's no start bias it will be a very high variance ability. Especially since you'll often not be able to leverage the cheap trade routs since you'll really want/need roads anyways.

 

[Nyanko]

It'd be weird if Carthage didn't have a coastal start bias, isn't it?

Every other naval based Civ does, why shouldnt Carthage?