Best Multi-Player Civilization

[OctavianFlu]

I am curious, for those who play Multi-Player, which civilization you think is the best, and provide a brief reason why.

We all know Rome has the best early game UU, and many people get frustrated playing against them, but I find Hammurabi Agg/Org of Babylon the best overall civ, as his UU can quite easily defend against any early game melee rush, and is killer against dogwarriors, and a pretty good hill/city defendor. The trait enables him to defend against Rome, and take on any non-agg civilizaition, and his UB which which gives 1 & 2 combined with monarcy&aqueduct his cities can grow big and fast.

What do you all think??

 

[TeraHammer]

Vanilla player.

I like to play inca best when playing teamers. Agg is nice on front, never the mention the quecea (except against your hammurabi perhaps . Fin is great in the back. Lately I also like to play rome, spamming cities first with ORG, and an occasional praetorain for special operations (really i dont use them that much), and building a massive civ to conquer the other team. EXP is nice too for city development.

I'd rather not play rome on ffa, because people will eye you too carefully. I like playing the elizabeth (phi/fin) because of general uses or an IND civ if I wanna build wonders.

I like to play with swords, an in my opinion undervaluated unit in mp vanilla. They come in handy with special operations.


To reply to hammurabi, I find aquaducts too costly in most cities to be of practical use.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Hamurabi is great, one of my favorites as well...
for situation where there will be a lot of warring I also like:
Montezuma jags r great and top traits
Mansa Munsa same great UU and traits
Shaka great UU and propably the best UB
Justinian if the game gets to knights he is simply overpowered

 

[hiddie]

It depends on the map, but if you play archipelago, islands, lots of continents etc: Willem van Oranje is the way to go. His replacement for the Galleon is HUGE. The Dikes come in late but they give an extra hamer to all sea and river tiles... Also Creative/Financial is one of the best trait combo there is.

Huayna Capac is good as always, but he's better in single player.

I've seen Roosevelt kick some ass too.

 

[fugazi]

Sitting Bull drives aggressive players nuts, I can tell you that just build your cities on hills, build some walls and bam.

 

[oyzar]

Personally i like mali. Early choking skrims and powerful traits. Add in a significant ub and you got a great civ. Willhelm is probably the best on largish watery maps still though(small continents or even smaller landmasses(islands)).

 

[burlicconi]

mansa has excellent traits, and his UU and UB are pretty awesome. Mint comes relatively early in the game and never obsoletes... also, skirmisher is great for both defense and offense... spiritual is good for pitboss, less for regular multiplayer game, because of blazing timer...

 

[Chinetter]

For islands games Wilhelm is pretty damn good, though you do need to be prepared to take advantage of his critical window of advantage with the East Indiamen ships. If you have some macemen ready to load up when you hit astronomy...nasty. And meanwhile being financial of course you're on the way to riches.

For the most-common online format (fairly-crowded Pangaea FFA), Gilgamesh is pretty tough. Creative means you can use culture to make your neighbors' lives awkward and deny them key resources without having to build libraries or religion buildings. (Or can be _extremely_ annoying if you do build libraries.) Meanwhile he's protective so if you grab archery right off you can be quite aggressive about early city placements without even building barracks, so long as you stick to hills anyway. And then the Sumerian UU is an improved axeman, blunting the threat of praetorians and some of the other early UUs which often wreak havoc in Pangaea games. Then by the time you're building crossbowmen and longbowmen you do have barracks in place, so with those Protective free promotions for archery units...bad news for those around you! Put it this way, when I'm in a Pang FFA and playing a different civ, seeing Gilgamesh as a close neighbor makes me groan -- if that player is skilled I'm in trouble.

 

[Colossian]

I am curious, for those who play Multi-Player, which civilization you think is the best, and provide a brief reason why.

We all know Rome has the best early game UU, and many people get frustrated playing against them, but I find Hammurabi Agg/Org of Babylon the best overall civ, as his UU can quite easily defend against any early game melee rush, and is killer against dogwarriors, and a pretty good hill/city defendor. The trait enables him to defend against Rome, and take on any non-agg civilizaition, and his UB which which gives 1 & 2 combined with monarcy&aqueduct his cities can grow big and fast.

What do you all think??

Starting location is more important. Without iron, Rome sucks. Far from iron, Rome sucks, too. No food in capital, Rome sucks, too.

 

[TeraHammer]

In vanilla, exp/org is a very decent combo for building many large cities. Rome is still good.

 

[Munch]

If you know you are going to be isolated, a Philosophical leader is a great choice. Why? Well, you won't need a military so can run pacifism for Great Person spamming. Neglecting military allows you to build wonders too, and expand at your own pace. Having no barbarians helps.

I played my first multiplayer game last night on Islands, choosing Peter (PHI/EXP) of Portugal. Having stone in my coastal capital helped my get the 'mids and Maoi for an early production powerhouse, popping a great engineer to build the great library in my second, food-rich city (spamming specialists with National Epic). EXP works well for early workers and synergy with representation.

It's not all about Financial leaders!

 

[TeraHammer]

i like playing peter too in one city challenges

but how is the synergy between exp and repres?

 

[Munch]

i like playing peter too in one city challenges

but how is the synergy between exp and repres?

I had to think about this for a while.. oh yeah, EXP raises your healthy cap and Representation your happy cap, so you can get larger population. EXP on its own isn't normally enough to allow a larger population in the ancient or classical eras. With Peter this just means more specialists for spamming great people!

 

[TeraHammer]

Yeah true

 

[Martinus]

I'm surprised noone mentioned Hannibal. While, admittedly, he does not get a great early unit, his Charismatic on top of Financial makes him, imo, Mansa or Willem on steroids.

 

[Wejer]

Starting location is more important. Without iron, Rome sucks. Far from iron, Rome sucks, too. No food in capital, Rome sucks, too.

Luckily, this sounds worse than it actually is.

When I play Rome on Small/Temperate/Pangea I almost always find Iron at most 6 squares away from my capital. It is easy to just send a settler there with 1,2 archers to grab, hold and then build your praetorians.

But if for some reasons I get unlucky, I see no shame in using axemen instead (for the time being...)

 

[TeraHammer]

yeah I agree, it is your play that is bad if you can't adept to situations.

 

[damnrunner]

Vanilla Civ

I find aggressive to be the most useful trait. I especially like to promote amphibious units and raid weakly defended cities in the enemy's rear. Financial is my 2nd favorite trait for obvious reasons.

On a FFA pangea map will pick Alex as I find the early elephant rush to be one of the hardest to defend against. On an island map I will pick the Incas.

With "Always War" Mali can be appealing. And with "One City Challenges" I will take Qin since wonders are particularly useful in those games.

With team games it all depends on your teammates. It can be useful to pick civs with different starting technologies or traits/UUs that compliment each other.

 

[TeraHammer]

Lately I start to like Tokugawa to build up an immense war machine in teamers. And the samurai is a respectable UU. Once I had a samurai with about 40 experience points. He was a double woodsman, and fortified near a close enemy city, my enemy attacked with his catapults. Bless them first strikes!!!
Multiplayer tends to go to civil service pretty quickly too