Best General Civ?

[KevinRuddPM]

I've just started playing Civ II, I've had the game for a long time and I didn't know how to play it before, now I do so I need some advice. What is the best civ to play as? Just to let you know, I'm a science/research guy, I'm not very millitary.

From my experience, Babylonians are a good science civ, especially with King Richard's Crusade, Great Library and Leonardo's Workshop.

 

[civiijkw]

I've just started playing Civ II, I've had the game for a long time and I didn't know how to play it before, now I do so I need some advice. What is the best civ to play as? Just to let you know, I'm a science/research guy, I'm not very millitary.

From my experience, Babylonians are a good science civ, especially with King Richard's Crusade, Great Library and Leonardo's Workshop.

If you plan on also being the most powerful civ then go purple to reduce your beaker costs per tech. Each power ranking has its own civ that it keys off of to determine costs for the next tech. The cost is modified based on the additional-tech count difference between the two civs. Purple is the key civ for the most powerful civ, so playing purple means that you would not face additional costs.

Somebody else may be able to point you to which color is key for which power ranking.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

As far as I know, there are no substantial differences between the civs in Civ 2. Some civs have different supply/demand weightings (eg Spanish have higher demand for Gold/Silver/Gems, IIRC). Also, the starting techs a civ might receive are influenced by the characteristics of the civ in question.

 

[Magic_gorter]

IIRC I read somewhere that the best starting position is given to white and the "worst" to purple. With the best starting position I mean lot of grass and other good ground. So when wanting to grow fast in the beginning white might be a good choise....but chosing purple you have less trouble of the beakers vs keyciv...

 

[BC1871]

If you want better/more custom civs, then I suggest downloading some of the newer scenarios.

 

[EnglishEdward]

If you play purple on a small map and not much land with 7 civs,
you can get stuck at the top of the map in the North Polar ice cap.

 

[BaconLad]

Hi,

If you would prefer to avoid militaristic confrontations and concentrate your efforts exclusively on science then my advice would be to play a large map with lots of islands, pre selecting your starting location before hand to ensure you can isolate yourself away from everyone else.

"What is the best civ to play as?"

If you're not planning on developing any sort of militia then I would presume you will be the weakest civ. IIRC the white civ would be your "key civ", so don't choose to control them or else you would become your own "key civ".

"If you play purple on a small map and not much land with 7 civs,
you can get stuck at the top of the map in the North Polar ice cap."

The game selects starting loactions in order of the civ colours.
1) white, 2) green, 3)dark blue, 4) yellow, 5) light blue, 6) orange, 7) purple.

The white civ will always get the best locations - purple will always have the worst.
In comparison the white civ will usually start with fewer techs than the purple civ.

"From my experience, Babylonians are a good science civ."

This is probably because (being the green civ) your starting location would of been very good. None of the civs are better or worse for science (just remember the "key civ" guide)

 

[randyripoff]

One of the things I love about Civ II is that there's really not that much of an advantage in terms of taking one civilization over another. You're not pigeonholed into taking a specific civilization for any reason other than you like it.

That was an "improvement" I didn't care for with Civ III.

 

[Catfish]

Some people actually like asymmetrical gameplay. I do. You don't get pigeonholed into selecting one particular tribe when the designers get the balance right. I've never played Civ3, though. Don't mind Civ4. In Civ2, aside from the key civ issue (an exploit really) and the quality of starting position (as a result of turn order), the only difference between the tribes lies in the behaviour of the AI, ie, aggressive/rational, expansionist/perfectionist, civilised/militaristic.

 

[Sub]

As far as I understand it, the level of technology for a civilization will be compared to the purple civ. If that civ has more technologies than the purple civ, they'll research at a reduced rate. If they have less, they'll research at a faster rate. The purple civilization will always research at the same rate.

It's a silly solution for the problem of the purple civ getting their starting location picked last. A much better solution would have been to simply randomize the order of who gets picked when. One game purple might be the first to

 

[rrhal]

Civs take their turn in an order determined by the color. white goes first. If you land on Alpha Centari on the same turn as another civ they will beat you if their color went first. There is a file that lists the order of the colors but it eludes me now.

 

[Magic_gorter]

As far as I understand it, the level of technology for a civilization will be compared to the purple civ. If that civ has more technologies than the purple civ, they'll research at a reduced rate. If they have less, they'll research at a faster rate. The purple civilization will always research at the same rate.

It's not always purple. It all depends how strong you are. If your powerrating is supreme you're the best civ and your techs will be compared with the purple one. If you're the weakest your techs will be compared with white.

So every powerlevel is linked to a color (going from weakest to strongest):

Pathetic - white
Weak - green
Inadequate - dark blue
Moderate - yellow
Strong - light blue
Mighty - orange
Supreme - purple

 

[Prof. Garfield]

It's a silly solution for the problem of the purple civ getting their starting location picked last. A much better solution would have been to simply randomize the order of who gets picked when. One game purple might be the first to

The solution for poor starting places is an extra settler and/or extra starting techs. The key civ was a way of evening out the tech race somewhat by penalizing civs that had a lot of techs and giving a bonus to civs that were behind. The biggest flaw in it (in my opinion) is the fact that if you are missing certain colours, they count as having 0 techs in the key civ calculation.

 

[Snowstorm]

Do the civilisations have different traits when theyre controlled by the ai? i remember reading somewhere that each civ can be expansionist/build and such, but cant find any hard data that backs this up.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Do the civilisations have different traits when theyre controlled by the ai? i remember reading somewhere that each civ can be expansionist/build and such, but cant find any hard data that backs this up.

Yes. This can be clearly seen when playing a game through to the late game, at least in the difference between perfectionism and expansionism. The defaults can be found in one of the text documents used to run the game.