Best unique ability?

[Vordeo]

I voted for China, but did anyone stop and took notice of how well thought out some of these UA names are?

They are, generally. Alot of them capture historical traits of the civs very well, and many just sound cool in general.

Except for Babylon. 'Ingenuity'? Really?

 

[Jamuka]

I think it's pretty clear that Songhai has the best ability. Maybe if military victory gets 'nerfed' that will change, but for now, Songhai is the best.

Dishonorable mention(utter rubbish):
Gandhi: Population Growth -- Good for late game expansion, but late-game is soo unimportant...
Augustus: Glory of Rome -- Their UUs are good, but horseman are better, so...
Washington: Manifest Destiny -- Saves a descent bit of gold, but not enough to matter early on.
Catherine: Siberian Riches -- Selling resources brings a bit of small coin. Horses are to common to be an issue 90% of the time, so resource limitations rarely come into play with other civs.
Elizabeth: Sun Never Sets -- AI rarely builds a navy
Harun al-Rashid: Trade Caravans -- +1 gold per trade route...really...thats it?; gameover before oil makes impact
Montezuma: Sacrificial Captives -- Has to kill a unit every turn to get half of what the French get for doing nothing.
Suleiman: Barbary Corsairs -- Waste time building a boat to get units I will disband for small coin. Um...no thank you...
Hiawatha: The Great Warpath -- They're kidding right...it doesn't even work outside your own territory

Sadly, I think this list is really accurate. I dont really understand what they were thinking with some of these. Maybe Montezuma is victim of a spreadsheet error?

 

[Vordeo]

I think it's pretty clear that Songhai has the best ability. Maybe if military victory gets 'nerfed' that will change, but for now, Songhai is the best.

Warmonger-wise, China and Japan are waaay up there.

 

[syllogism]

I suppose Gandhi's ability is "utter rubbish" if you rush all the AIs every game as that's apparently how some of you play Civ. His ability essentially halves unhappiness as unhappiness from number of cities is miniscule and can be effectively reduced.

 

[rune42]

Ghandi's ability is meh once you realize keeping happiness above 0 is easy to do, even for 100+ city empires.

Ever wondered why hospitals/med labs were gotten so late in the game? Its to help maintain the population in cities around the 10-15 mark. What is the significance of that mark you may wonder? 15 happens to be the maximum amount of happiness you gain from buildings. So even before luxuries, SPs, natural wonders, and city wonders come into the equation, you should be able to maintain positive happiness just from happiness buildings alone.

Basically, Ghandi's ability is only useful for large empires with a hospital/med lab in every city. Or saving a couple gold from not having to build all the happiness buildings. Meh.

 

[syllogism]

Ghandi's ability is meh once you realize keeping happiness above 0 is easy to do, even for 100+ city empires.

Ever wondered why hospitals/med labs were gotten so late in the game? Its to help maintain the population in cities around the 10-15 mark. What is the significance of that mark you may wonder? 15 happens to be the maximum amount of happiness you gain from buildings. So even before luxuries, SPs, natural wonders, and city wonders come into the equation, you should be able to maintain positive happiness just from happiness buildings alone.

Basically, Ghandi's ability is only useful for large empires with a hospital/med lab in every city. Or saving a couple gold from not having to build all the happiness buildings. Meh.

Yes except all those happiness boosting buildings cost 200+ a turn to maintain if you really have a large empire. Furthermore, you can spend the hammers or gold (assuming you bought the buildigns) on something else. Some of the buildings can only be built rather late too.

 

[delra]

Ghandi's ability is meh once you realize keeping happiness above 0 is easy to do, even for 100+ city empires.

What difficulty?

 

[Andoo]

I found the Persia's one most consistantly powerful and versatile. It also has some kind of a snowball effect. More golden age allows more improvements to get more golden ages which gives you more great people to generate more golden age that leads to more golden age policies etc etc ...

 

[rune42]

What difficulty?

Largest amount of cities I owned in a single game before time ran out was 20+ on Emperor, with Iroquois, pangaea, standard map size. Stockpiled well over 100+ net happiness per turn from all the happy buildings(not having to build many roads saves a crap ton of gold when your empire stretches almost half the map) combined with SPs, luxuries, and wonders. Kind of made me feel bad for taking rationalism over piety. Mandate of Heaven would've been nice.

I don't see the relevance of difficulty, though. I'm pretty sure difficulty has no bearing on your own civ's happiness value.

 

[CerberusAlpha]

I hope someday we can look back on this poll and laugh at how quaint our opinions were.

 

[WaKKO151]

i voted based solely on The unique ability. By far the best UA in the game where a 1HP warrior can rape anything it come in contact with and die trying.

 

[delra]

If France can have same result as Japan and India... result makes no sense.

 

[Optimizer]

Some balance suggestions to improve underpowered abilities:

Askia: Keeps ability. Units get no river crossing penalty.
Augustus: +50% production bonus instead of +25%
Bismarck: Loses ability. Gets Wirtschaftswunder instead: +1 Production for each resource.
Catherine: Keeps ability, also gets "Scorched Earth": Enemy units are weakened in Russian territory.
Elizabeth: Land and Sea units get +1 movement.
Gandhi: Half unhappiness from population. Normal unhappiness from number of cities.
Harun al-Rashid: +2 Gold from trade routes
Hiawatha: Keeps ability. Melee and Gunpowder units get Drill I.
Suleiman: Can assimilate barbarian land units as well.
Washington: Keeps ability. Naval units get +1 sight, just as land units.

 

[delra]

Askia: changes little
Augustus: overpowered beyond imagination
Bismarck: Becomes Arabia without Bazaar. Lol.
Catherine: Like it.
Elizabeth: One extra over what they have now?
Gandhi: No need, he's extremely powerful without that buff.
Rashid: I'd say +10% (there's a wonder giving 20...).
Hiawatha: Why gunpowder?
Suleiman: Would be cool. I agree here.
Washington: I'd rather them get something completely different, preferably economic (gold bonus maybe, +25% called Wall Street).

 

[King Jason]

The thing about most good UA's is that they appear to replicate wonder or policy effects, and usually to a better. India get's 50% redux to pop unhappy, there's a policy for 20%... France - 2 culture per city, policy - 1 culture per city. Cyrus has an improved Chichen Itza for his UA, Greece has a better Patronage bonus as his UA, Egypt get's a 20% bonus to wonders, the policy is 33%... Russia has a slightly improved Fascism policy.

Even some of the bad ones do it too; England is like the Great Light house and Naval tradition policy combined except without the sight increase attached.

Not all UA's share this similarity, but most of the one's that don't are bad ones. So I think a potential way to approach UA suggestions is to replicate policy or wonder effects; but better. For example, I think Delra is on the money with Arabia in suggesting their trade bonus be similar to Machu Pichu. I'd go even further and make it similar to both Pichu and the trade union policy.. You could make it 10% trade yield increase and a 10% decreased road maintenance cost. That right there seems like a great economic ability to me.

The beauty of some of these great UA's is that they stack with their existing wonder or policy counterparts. So you can either ignore the wonder or policy and get by on your ability, or stack the effects to maximize your benefit.

For example, Darius doesn't need the Itza, but it's a damn fine addition to his game.

 

[H4run]

Askia: changes little
Augustus: overpowered beyond imagination
Bismarck: Becomes Arabia without Bazaar. Lol.
Catherine: Like it.
Elizabeth: One extra over what they have now?
Gandhi: No need, he's extremely powerful without that buff.
Rashid: I'd say +10% (there's a wonder giving 20...).
Hiawatha: Why gunpowder?
Suleiman: Would be cool. I agree here.
Washington: I'd rather them get something completely different, preferably economic (gold bonus maybe, +25% called Wall Street).

why gunpowder? because its wild wild west

is Monty not need to upgrade? 1 culture per enemy kill? i got arround more then a thousands culture to go, he need to kill plenty thousand of unit to reach sp, or at least kill 1000 of unit, or say 500 to be helpful.

Monty : erase the ability, change with gold resource are 2 time in ammount also it give 5 coin for the capital. Remember why the ehm ehm interest with aztec because they rich and full of gold. Add another, 10 percent for wonder, dont forget they got nice building and pyramid also.

what do u think?

as Arabic, yeah, they need a fix. +1 per trade route are just not enough, it dont even scracth the economy itchy, i prefer 10 percent to trade route, that give him an advantage and fair.

 

[Slvynn]

voted Egypt

 

[Antarion]

You do realize this thread is about who has the best UAs right? So you really think these UAs aren't crap compared to the above ones.

Secondly, you can read me the print of the Civ manual if you want, its not making them any better.

+1 hammer is better than nothin, but hardly helps when it matters, which is before you ever even know where iron is...; so +1 from a horse resource that happens to be in your city circle isn't helping much.

So reducing unhappiness has nothing to do with growth...huh? Go play the game and see how much your civ grows while in the red...; the ability is actually a negative when it matters, which is the early game. So India's UA is actually worse than nothing.

Yes I've done a intercontinental invasion...it took 3 turns, one of them getting in the water. have you played the game at all? The AI hardly builds ships, much less use them correctly...

The Arabian ability needs no further comment. Even you couldn't make a real argument for it.

mate you have no clue about the game, do you? stop playing your pangea matches and u will see how elisabeth will shine.

every nation is of course more then their UA and none of them sucks completly. my favour nation is even england, their high mobility as soon as you get optics is such a big advantage (im talking about embarked units ofc). just build few cities like every tradition nation (imho best suited tree first for england) and grab enough land from your COASTAL cities, max 1 out of 4 cities is a non-coastal one.
then grab your longbow men and old off enemies from far away and try to take without any casualities an enemy city (range 3 is better then any city bombardement).
and never forget to abuse your fast movement along the shores in early game. you dont need horsemen when your longbowmen can move 4 tiles across the sea even before the steam engine.

 

[Antarion]

Even some of the bad ones do it too; England is like the Great Light house and Naval tradition policy combined except without the sight increase attached.

thats simply not right! both the lighthouse and the naval tradition give only a boost to the MILITARY navy. lizzys strength is the early boost to her embarked units PLUS the first combat ship. for real superior nave btw i prefer playin ottomans first, while lizzy just dont need roads at first (maybe never if you can get to harbors really fast)

 

[Brawndo]

I'd say Siam, India, Persia, and Rome all have very powerful abilities. Siam's is almost broken with the age scaling of resources - my cities were getting 12-18 food per turn in the industrial age from Maritime city-states.


Ottomans and Germany are by far the worse. Every time I hear someone try to defend either, they always give some ridiculous scenario that requires a very specific map-type and raging barbarians turned on.