Aren't some of the civ bonuses gamebreaking?

[klauz619]

1/7th of the civs get completely gamechanging bonuses while some seem just pitiful.


Napoleon = Incredible culture growth, you can get like 10 policies within the first 100 years without even building more than 2-3 monuments maybe. Very easy to spam golden ages with piety + the other golden age policy + great peoples. You save maybe 4000 gold within the first 200 turns from freebie territory from culture.

Japan = 1hp units that can drop you to 5hp on equal footing, drops you to 3hp if you are slightly outteched.

Babylon = GS spam.

Siam = your capital gets 6.75 food from maritime 1.50 for normal cities, universities grant a ton of culture and cost less to maintain.

China = tons of great generals, your libraries give tons of gold.

I mean, compared to everyone else I just don't even want to play say, germany or britain, come on.

 

[Oerdin]

Germany is great fun on a huge pangea map with raging barbarians.

 

[Babri]

Japan = 1hp units that can drop you to 5hp on equal footing, drops you to 3hp if you are slightly outteched.

Actually they need to slightly change the combat rules. Even non-Japanese 1HP units can sometimes cause 2-3 damage to my full strength unit.

 

[swordspider]

1/7th of the civs get completely gamechanging bonuses while some seem just pitiful.


Napoleon = Incredible culture growth, you can get like 10 policies within the first 100 years without even building more than 2-3 monuments maybe. Very easy to spam golden ages with piety + the other golden age policy + great peoples. You save maybe 4000 gold within the first 200 turns from freebie territory from culture.

Japan = 1hp units that can drop you to 5hp on equal footing, drops you to 3hp if you are slightly outteched.

Babylon = GS spam.

Siam = your capital gets 6.75 food from maritime 1.50 for normal cities, universities grant a ton of culture and cost less to maintain.

China = tons of great generals, your libraries give tons of gold.

I mean, compared to everyone else I just don't even want to play say, germany or britain, come on.

Agree and Disagree. You have to remember it is a balancing act and each Civ is designed to be different. Their unique features are what makes them unique.

China is not unfair, the generals do not come as quick as you think and the paper maker is a great building but in the end it isn't game-changing. France's strength is to be able to spam out culture, but they don't get any other military, happiness, or gold bonus and the cities still only grow in population as fast as other civs, so despite having 30 tiles to choose from, they can still only work as many as they are big. Japan is perhaps the only one I agree with you on because a very small defending force can take out a large attacking force, which makes sense in small battles, but when Japan is allowed to get big and get equal, or worse more units than the other civs, they have a stupid unfair advantage. This multiplies the stronger the military units get, so 1 Tank can cause immeasurable damage, not to mention when it is stacked with the wounded soldier social policy bonus... it gets sick!

 

[klauz619]

Having powerful unique traits add a lot of flavor, its just that a lot of the other civs are just trashy in terms of bonus.

Why can't the egyptians sacrifice one population for 5turns worth of hammers?(-1 happy for 10 turns).

Americans can buy stuff for gold at a 33% discount.

Russians can trade 1 population for any unit up to rennaisance, 2 population for industrial. -3 happiness for 10 turns.

Rome can capture any defeated unit and he gets +3 happiness, maximum of one "gladiator entertainer" per city.

If everyone had broken bonuses, the game would be pretty damn unique.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Siam is insane. In fact, anything that gives a Maritime CS bonus is good. Greece went from very good to good with the horse nerf, but their abilities are still very strong in human hands. Siam though... why do out of the way, well known but not global player Civs always end up being the best? Kind of like the Inca in BTS. Rome or China, sure. Siam? Um... okay. I do like Thai food.

Oh, and as a bonus to their CS advantage, Siam also gets the Wat (extra scientists!) and their elephant (dominate unit in a critical era!) Super.

China is too good. Not so good that the AI can abuse it like Siam, but very good. The +4 from Paper Maker is free gold, as everyone builds libraries. Somewhat less useful post-patch, but the lack of scientists means you'll need their science even more. Probably why the AI builds them like crazy. And the general? Really? They claim that Civs are balanced as a whole (units, abilities, buildings, et cetera) yet they do stuff like give the Siam a powerful ability, unit, & building... then do the same for China. Okay, the unit is merely above average, but it is good, and the generals are too much. Either the Paper Maker or the generals, both is making this an easy win Civ for human players. (AI can't segue China's abilities quite like they can with Siam).

Babylon is also borked. No need to go into details. Better post-patch, but still very powerful.

France? Good, not great. Can be useful for some early policy strategies, and the AI plays them well, but I'd put them top 10, not top 5.

Japan is the same for me. Top 10, not top 5. And everyone was complaining about the Japanese ability like crazy before the game was released. It didn't turn out that great. Again, good but not great.

Germany & England are about neutral for me. Germany can do well in the early game and snowball, but that rarely happens. England is dominant on archipelago and the longbowmen are one of the best units in the game, but overall their abilities don't translate to great status in most games.

 

[elthrasher]

No, you've got it backwards. Several civs have very weak bonuses. The listed ones are fine. Well, maybe Siam is a little strong.

But no more nerfing, please! We're going to end up with a game where each tile yields exactly one hammer, apple or gold, a warrior takes 20,000 turns to build, has one hit point and 0 movement and the only tech you can ever have is agriculture. I just know it's gonna happen.

 

[Baron2]

The most discreet bonuses are sometimes the most powerful. ''Manifeste Destiny'' +1 LOS look utter trash, until you realize that this allow your artillery to fire out of range of cities without a spotter. Now, if you couple this with carriers carrying B-2s.....

 

[Toady]

They are gamebreaking for multiplayer... for singleplayer they aren't gamebreaking, some civs are just harder to win with due to their nonexistent bonuses.

 

[LegioCorvus]

They are gamebreaking for multiplayer... for singleplayer they aren't gamebreaking, some civs are just harder to win with due to their nonexistent bonuses.

Which is ironic, because multiplayer is already broken as it is.

 

[builer680]

The most discreet bonuses are sometimes the most powerful. ''Manifeste Destiny'' +1 LOS look utter trash, until you realize that this allow your artillery to fire out of range of cities without a spotter. Now, if you couple this with carriers carrying B-2s.....

By the time I have Bombers of any kind, let alone stealth bombers (which I rarely use because by the time I have them my normal bombers are promoted so high that they're better), I have long ago lost the need for any ground based artillery .

But yeah, during the time I do use Artillery, the +1 LoS can be decent. In general I rarely play America except in MP, where the rules I play state you must pick a Random Civ for each game. Though it's certainly a useful trait in that situation, I'm generally happier when I get a Civ that has traits/buildings/units that are useful in a greater number of situations. But you make the best of the cards you're dealt with Random picks.

In any case, every Civ's bonus effects and their relative strengths are based on the context. Map size, game speed, terrain, resource availability, who your opponents are and where they're located, the era you're in, the units currently in your army, etc... It's pretty clear though that lots of Civs have bonuses that are useful in more situations (contexts) than others. And as said in a post above this one, this really is magnified in MP, where a Human player tends to try more often to make the most of every advantage they possess. I'd certainly have liked more thought to be put into them.

As it stands, it feels like many ideas were of the "Hey wouldn't it be cool if Turkey got free boats?" variety, and nothing further to ensure that this bonus was on a par with what other Civs received, and had usefulness in a comparable number of situations/usefulness lasted as long as others.

Arguments like this get annoying fast though, because by nature "balance," when used to compare different things, can become subjective very quickly... so no matter what points you make someone will argue with you.

But yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that some of the bonuses are much more useful for a greater number of situations/for a larger period of time than others. By definition, this is imbalanced... and in certain cases in MP can mean the difference between a loss and a win between players of equal skill. Of course, so can the start era, the player's start location, etc... but in general, Civs could and should have been better balanced from the start.

 

[wurstburst]

No. None of the current civ bonuses are gamebreaking IMO. The problem is that there are a number of civs with good UA and good UU/UB, along with a number of civs with little of use beyond a vanilla civ.

The answer is to beef up the abilities on some of the lesser civs, rather than nerfing the better civs. The obvious candidates for beefing up include America and Ottomans, each needing a big boost. Several other civs could also be improved a bit too.

The only civ I'd even think about nerfing at this point is Siam, which still manages to abuse the maritime CS for food, leading to a food=>growth=>tech=>conquest=>more growth runaway in a lot of games. Combined with better than average UB and UU, and they seem to be the best in the game at the moment. If I was to nerf them I'd remove their UA and replace it with something else growth oriented, but more controllable (perhaps an extra +2 food in the capital for the whole game).

 

[Jon the Bastard]

I agree in that some of the civs in Civilization V had extremely powerful UAs. However, I also think that each civilization's UA is something that sort of dictates your playing style. As far as I am concerned they are all extremely powerful in their own way - you just have to know how to play to their strengths.

 

[Morterius]

Nonsense, those bonuses are definately one of the lesser problems with Civilization V (a lot bigger being stupid AI). Some are better, some are worse, but all civilizations can be very decent (even if at the beginning it doesn't look good on paper) if you play on their strenghts and choose a world map and settings that amplify them - achipelagos for England; Epic lenght, Pangea for Germany, lakes, early war on epic for Aztec etc. One can make an argument that possibilities for Arabian wealth or Persian game-lenght golden age are also very overpowered and even the weakest civilizations have great strenghts (like upgraded Ottoman Yanissaries).

 

[Atwork]

I didn't see mention of Persia's trait. Persia's trait plus Chitchen Itza is crazy powerful.

Playing on Epic Speed/Immortal I was able to pop back to back to back golden ages -- happiness overflow, followed by a social policy, followed by a great person. If I remember right, I had something ridiculous like 65 consecutive turns of golden age -- it might have even been better than that -- this was during the Renaissance era.

I was able to pump out cities and infrastructure, build a powerful military, wage multiple successful wars, and generally dominate. I entered the Industrial era as a dominant powerhouse -- advanced, wealthy, productive, and buff in every way. At that point, the game was already over.

 

[wurstburst]

I didn't see mention of Persia's trait. Persia's trait plus Chitchen Itza is crazy powerful.

Playing on Epic Speed/Immortal I was able to pop back to back to back golden ages -- happiness overflow, followed by a social policy, followed by a great person. If I remember right, I had something ridiculous like 65 consecutive turns of golden age -- it might have even been better than that -- this was during the Renaissance era.

I was able to pump out cities and infrastructure, build a powerful military, wage multiple successful wars, and generally dominate. I entered the Industrial era as a dominant powerhouse -- advanced, wealthy, productive, and buff in every way. At that point, the game was already over.

It's pretty hard to judge a civ by how a human plays it. A human is very good at abusing what is abusable. The AI won't be able to do the mega long GA like a human will with Persia (although they'll get a lot of GA on the higher difficulties due to happiness buffs).

China, Siam, Persia, France, Germany, Greece, Songhai, Spain and Babylon all have abusable mechanics, IMO. This makes them good civs in my book. America, Ottoman, England, Japan, Arabia, Russia, Aztecs are difficult or impossible to abuse. Some have decent attributes (Japan, for example), while others have useless ones (Ottoman), but pretty much you can't abuse them much beyond what you could do with a vanilla civ. You play them like a vanilla civ for the most part.

The better civs you play differently than vanilla civs, to abuse the mechanics.

 

[vexing]

I didn't see mention of Persia's trait. Persia's trait plus Chitchen Itza is crazy powerful.

Playing on Epic Speed/Immortal I was able to pop back to back to back golden ages -- happiness overflow, followed by a social policy, followed by a great person. If I remember right, I had something ridiculous like 65 consecutive turns of golden age

with the taj mahal + persia + chitchen itza being broken, i've gotten literally a 400 turn golden age on marathon as persia chaining great people. the taj is 100 turns, happiness golden age is 45, reformation is 30, great people start at 32 and go to min 12

 

[Atwork]

A human is very good at abusing what is abusable....abuse the mechanics

I don't think its abuse to utilize the options provided in the game to a player's advantage. I think it is bad game design that gives players so obvious and powerful options that when utilized will skew the mechanics so far to the player's advantage that it essentially breaks the game. It's bad game design, not bad game play.

 

[JohnnyW]

Napoleon = Incredible culture growth, you can get like 10 policies within the first 100 years without even building more than 2-3 monuments maybe. Very easy to spam golden ages with piety + the other golden age policy + great peoples. You save maybe 4000 gold within the first 200 turns from freebie territory from culture.

Napolean has one of my favorite UAs. It is incredibly strong early for sure, but only if you stay small to keep your policy costs low.

Babylon = GS spam.

This is all they have though. Once Bowmen are obsolete it's the only advantage they have, though it is quite nice. No GSP from the library makes their UA only kick in near midgame.

Siam = your capital gets 6.75 food from maritime 1.50 for normal cities, universities grant a ton of culture and cost less to maintain.

I hate Siam.

China = tons of great generals, your libraries give tons of gold.

China gets a really strong economy and they seem like a really neat civ. I don't think they are OP though.

I mean, compared to everyone else I just don't even want to play say, germany or britain, come on.

I hate any civ with a random mechanic: Germany, Ottoman, Spain. For the most part random = stupid. Obviously randomness is required in some places like battle outcomes, but not for something you base your entire civilization on....

 

[Tokira]

In my opinion the bonuses for those civs (that OP listed) are fine. As many have said, it would be much better to boost the poor civ bonuses. Atleast England, Ottomans and America should get a totally different bonus. Increased ship movement, capturing barbarian ships (Wow, I have seen like 3-5 galleys per game) or cheaper land/+1 sight are all pretty crappy bonuses.

I maybe would grant some bonus to Greece and Iroquois too but atleast their bonuses are even somewhat useless unlike the poor three mentioned above.