BNW Deity Tier List

[Justice1337]

I still haven't heard anything about how maintenance costs are irrelevant. The logic just seems to be, it's possible w/ or w/o a bonus to maintenance costs, so they must therefore amount to zero. By that logic, any bonus is irrelevant and Babylon == Denmark. After all, it's possible to win with Denmark.

The point is, reduced maintenance costs save Gold. They save more Gold the more units you build. Build enough units at a late enough era, and they may amount to the best Gold bonuses under that style of game, on volume.

The problem isn't just with lack of analysis. It's the idea that you can just eyeball it, play games over and over under the style you prefer, and anything that doesn't seem like it would benefit that style is taken as zero. It's an extremely subjective, emotional approach. One result is that there's no analysis to debate. Another result though is that you're bound to be wrong an awful lot because you're not looking at things yourself either.

I do think that a strictly mathematical approach to this game is not appropriate, because not every single thing in it can be modeled quantitatively. But offering zero quantitative input and jumping to what makes you feel good is worse. The ideal is somewhere between the two, that takes into account both practical and quantitative aspects.

 

[Cromagnus]

I still haven't heard anything about how maintenance costs are irrelevant. The logic just seems to be, it's possible w/ or w/o a bonus to maintenance costs, so they must therefore amount to zero. By that logic, any bonus is irrelevant and Babylon == Denmark. After all, it's possible to win with Denmark.

The point is, reduced maintenance costs save Gold. They save more Gold the more units you build. Build enough units at a late enough era, and they may amount to the best Gold bonuses under that style of game, on volume.

The problem isn't just with lack of analysis. It's the idea that you can just eyeball it, play games over and over under the style you prefer, and anything that doesn't seem like it would benefit that style is taken as zero. It's an extremely subjective, emotional approach. One result is that there's no analysis to debate. Another result though is that you're bound to be wrong an awful lot because you're not looking at things yourself either.

I do think that a strictly mathematical approach to this game is not appropriate, because not every single thing in it can be modeled quantitatively. But offering zero quantitative input and jumping to what makes you feel good is worse. The ideal is somewhere between the two, that takes into account both practical and quantitative aspects.

There does need to be context. If you're only concerned about turn time of victory, then yes, unit maintenance costs are somewhat irrelevant, as are any units past the industrial era. If you're, however, starting with the statement "I want to win with tanks and bombers", then all of a sudden it really does matter.

But, the point, IMHO, is that if you're really efficient about domination, unit maintenance costs are in fact irrelevant because you make about as much in pillage and city capture as you spend, and it doesn't even matter if you run with a negative economy in that context because the game will be over before you actually hit 0.

The problem is, everyone's coming at this from different assumptions about warmongering. I don't bother much with late era warmongering anymore for one simple reason. Once you get to the point where you consistently outpace the AI in tech by the industrial era, even on Deity, then all late era warmongering is *trivial* because you're fighting with superior units. So, if you're good at the foundations of SV, the only context in which war is difficult enough to even warrant attention is earlier eras... a totally different ballgame in which unit maintenance costs are moot.

EDIT: More on the unit maintenance cost point... an efficient warpath doesn't involve many units. You can win with like 6 artillery and 2 cavalry, plus a few xbs at home if you're worried about counter-attack. This is a fairly trivial amount of unit maintenance.

Germany and Zulu's reduced unit maintenance cost is IMHO a misguided UA, because it doesn't affect unit supply. So, if Germany goes out and captures tons of barbarians in the early game, his gpt is fine but he's running with a 70% production penalty. Maybe it's my own interpretation, but it seems pretty obvious the reduced maintenance cost is to make up for the extra units you get that way.

But, as it turns out, it's better to use those barb camps as a way to relieve pressure on your build queue instead. You don't have to build as many archers and meatshields if you're capturing them, freeing you up to build other things in your cities... so the unit maintenance cost isn't an issue. If, on the other hand, you approach Germany's UA as a way of building up a massive army of panzers, well, yes, it matters... but again, see my point about later era domination being trivial. IMHO though half of the civs UA and UU are trivialized by the fact that it's easy to get ahead of the AI on science. And the other half are trivialized by the fact that the ancient->medieval ranged units are superior to all other UU. Melee and siege were heavily nerfed by the boost to city defense. The game is just horribly imbalanced in this way. So any discussion about the value of a non-ranged UU is somewhat meaningless in that context... So, what context do you mean? In a world where civ was balanced? Yes, unit maintenance costs matter in that reality.

 

[Justice1337]

Ok, so now you've changed the analysis from "I don't need it to win" to "I'm not broke without it", so it's worth zero. I've never had to delete a unit due to Beaker loss while playing Venice, so having double Trade Routes is worth zero?

How many GPT at what stage of the game before it's a non-trivial amount of Gold? There are some number of games where a unit maintenance UA will allow you to make a purchase, pay maintenance costs, use an ITR instead of an outside route, work a mine instead of a TP, etc. That's what a Gold bonus does. I don't rate any back-loaded Gold savings bonus as on par with a Tech bonus, but that is what a Gold bonus is. For the amount of Arabia and China fans there are in this thread, I wouldn't expect extra Gold to be scoffed at, whether you're on a builder style game or not.


On the composition of 2 Cavalry, 6 Artillery as well, I think we just wandered into the rabbit hole of situational play. A naked DoW against a single builder civ with that composition will certainly get it done. But everywhere else, there is some amount of units to chew through before you even take your first shot at a city. Late game diplo for a warmonger, and this number is usually pretty big. Personally, I've never played a Domination game where I would've scoffed at free units or free Gold. If I have too many for one area of the map, heck, going in from two fronts at once or two AI's at once even makes victory quicker and easier.

Some games you won't "need" that bonus. In fact, most all games are winnable with no bonus. But the bonus is there.

 

[Buccaneer]

In my domination game (no UUs), I often relied on a small, elite army (archers-CB-XB with some support units). I did not care about economy much, just used the gold from captured cities to fund the upgrades plus a few city-states to help out. I pretty much was running a negative gpt and since no one would trade, I kept all of my luxuries for happiness. And once I got my little army plowing through, what I had in my capital didn't matter much because it was way behind my front lines (i.e., it would take too long to get units to the front). Of course, they key (as in most games) was science - getting to Construction and Machinery as quickly as possible. The rest is just bonuses.

 

[Cromagnus]

It's not a whole lot of extra gold until the later eras... In which warfare is trivialized by tech advantage. And 6 artillery *is* two armies. On t150 they go through units like butter. I usually finish with more like 9. (Third army)

At most, we're talking 12 artillery for 3 armies, and so we're saving maybe 18 gpt... (I forget, is unit maintenance 3gpt each in the industrial?) But at what cost? Getting artillery 15 turns later than Babylon? Ariaba's UB generates a whole lot more than 12 gpt empire-wide, and does so a whole lot earlier. No comparison.

Not to mention that gpt should never be an issue for Germany... If you're playing later era warfare you should be maxing your hanse benefit and therefore you have many CS trade routes. I'm not saying it has no value whatsoever. I rather like Germany. I just don't think that efficient warfare involves a lot of units, so if you're getting a lot of value, you're probably doing something else wrong.

The best thing about Shaka and Germany isn't the unit maintenance cost, but yes, the bonuses are nice. They synergize well with warmongering. Not disagreeing with that. I just don't think it's as valuable as, say, the inca's improved movement in hills or any number of other Civ's UA. I am rather partial to Impi and Panzer though.

 

[Cromagnus]

In my domination game (no UUs), I often relied on a small, elite army (archers-CB-XB with some support units). I did not care about economy much, just used the gold from captured cities to fund the upgrades plus a few city-states to help out. I pretty much was running a negative gpt and since no one would trade, I kept all of my luxuries for happiness. And once I got my little army plowing through, what I had in my capital didn't matter much because it was way behind my front lines (i.e., it would take too long to get units to the front). Of course, they key (as in most games) was science - getting to Construction and Machinery as quickly as possible. The rest is just bonuses.

Well put. That's been my experience too.

 

[Light Cleric]

I think the sadder thing is that there's some games where you can sit with basically no army for forever, tech past the AI, and fight through them with no resistance. The AI was defanged and weakened far too much in BNW. I kinda miss the G&K Fall Patch AI, psychotic as it was; it was MUCH more difficult to handle and you were toast if you went without building an early military.

 

[Justice1337]

Three Artillery is enough for an entire front? Are we playing Deity level here? Three Artillery cannot even kill one Rifleman in one turn, and if you're not seeing more units than that or tech as good as that, then you must have forgotten to put "8" in the difficulty box.

 

[direblade99]

Three Artillery is enough for an entire front? Are we playing Deity level here? Three Artillery cannot even kill one Rifleman in one turn, and if you're not seeing more units than that or tech as good as that, then you must have forgotten to put "8" in the difficulty box.

Hey I'm just putting out there that cromagnus is good enough to win deity domination before t100, he probably is just really good at using artillery or something.

 

[hai 1]

Germany has a lot of things going for it... Even if the reduced unit maintenance is the least important, I'll still gladly take it It's hard for me to see how it is useless... It's certainly better than nothing. Even if you play the hanse right, are capping cities & pillaging for some spoils of war, have small, elite squads instead of a gigantic diety ai-esque army, and generally do not have gpt issues... Why wouldn't you want a little more?

 

[adwcta]

I'm going to make three points here about different things.

1) This tier list is really not for people who can always clear the map in 100 turns, or hit the end of the tech tree in 200 turns. Their experiences, in terms of what's "good" is not relevant here, because nothing they do increases their win%. It's 100%. And, this list explicitly does not take into account turn times. I've said this before. This list is for people who are playing Deity or getting into Deity and are trying to win in different ways, without a 100% mastery of the game. It is only in this area, that any civ bonuses can increase a player's win%. Cro is right, science is incredibly good for this (on almost every VC), which is why the 3 civs that get a science bonus are all in the top tier. (As a side note, I often use only 3 Artillery per army... I don't think that's uncommon. Artillery is just that good, I support with 1-2 Cavalry and 1 Lancer). But, just because someone can clear the map in 30 turns, does not make that a base assumption of this list.

2) Gold maintenance is important for most deity players. For someone who can't clear the board in 30 turns, less gold upkeep means more gold, which they can build more units, get more CSs, build infrastructure to help tech to the next era. Hell, for someone who CAN stop the game whenever they choose, the fact that they don't need the gold doesn't mean extra gold for extra units isn't still useful. Germany gets 25% off all land units (including workers?). Ottoman gets 67% off ship exploration units. These bonuses provide nice early game gold. It's not China, and it certainly isn't Babs, but neither of these civs are in the upper tiers. We're more talking about whether to move Ottoman down, or Germany up.... one tier. Regardless of what we do, they would be no higher than middle tier. Comparisons to Portugal (a gold civ) are much more apt. And, while neither measure up to Portugal (Ottoman would need a 100+ unit navy to even touch Portugal), they do have other things going for them, especially Germany. I am not going to move Ottoman up, because while their gold savings is nice, it forces you to play a certain way (like Greece, but even less flexible, because city states can do many things, but a navy can really only do one), and it saves you less gold than Greece's UA (the breakpoint is something ridiculous like 50 ships). The UUs compensate somewhat, but overall I would still consider Ottoman weaker than Greece. Germany (and Persia), I am struggling with because +% hammers is SO hard to value. ::sigh::.

3) Thank you tommy for explaining and clarifying your position. Everyone else, seriously, no need to purposefully annoy tommy or be annoyed by him. He clearly doesn't like to explain himself in long detailed paragraphs like we do. That's fine. Claims will be given more weight if they are supported by reason and experience. tommy's in the position where he's not fond of giving detailed reasons, and his experience is unique because he is too good at the game. This means his views are not weighed very heavily (see: point #1). When he does give explanations, I take the reasoning behind them very seriously, because he clearly knows the game mechanics better than any of us here, or, because this is a turn based game, we would all be rolling around in sub 200 turn science victories and clearing the map in a 30 turn fidget rush. When he does not give reasons, or if his reasons are only applicable to play that most deity players cannot achieve, then they will not be weighed heavily. In fact, they will then be weighed the same as if an player posts here saying "I only play on Immortal, but I think...". It's not nothing, but I'm not going to go anywhere with it without more voices.

 

[Buccaneer]

I almost never use more than 3 Artillery per army solely because that's usually all the room I have for placements in attacking a city.

 

[Cromagnus]

I think the sadder thing is that there's some games where you can sit with basically no army for forever, tech past the AI, and fight through them with no resistance. The AI was defanged and weakened far too much in BNW. I kinda miss the G&K Fall Patch AI, psychotic as it was; it was MUCH more difficult to handle and you were toast if you went without building an early military.

Agreed. I miss how much more difficult Deity used to be, especially with regards to victory. The AI is almost incapable of winning.

Three Artillery is enough for an entire front? Are we playing Deity level here? Three Artillery cannot even kill one Rifleman in one turn, and if you're not seeing more units than that or tech as good as that, then you must have forgotten to put "8" in the difficulty box.

That's kinda my whole problem with Deity since BNW. They broke Deity. The AI usually doesn't have Riflemen when a savvy player techs artillery, because the AI loses steam on science so fast. They don't work their university slots, they spam useless cities, and somehow, despite their 85% tech costs, they manage to fall behind a player who focuses on education. And there's no fangs (as mentioned above) to punish players for focusing on education, all of which reduces deity to a "tech as fast as you can" game.

Hey I'm just putting out there that cromagnus is good enough to win deity domination before t100, he probably is just really good at using artillery or something.

No, I'm not like a master of artillery. It's pretty hard to go wrong with range 3 indirect fire units. And when you get artillery by 1000 AD, and the AI barely has muskets, they can't do much about it. I'm typically facing XBows and swordsmen... on t150 that actually makes sense, but not on deity. The AI should tech faster.

To adwcta's point, I recognize that things are different when you can throw down sub-t200 wins on a regular basis. I think though, as I've mentioned, for players who aren't there yet, and want to learn how to win on Deity reliably, it's a much better use of their time to practice the fundamentals of SV or early domination. What is a tier list for if not to educate people on where to start if they want to tackle deity? I mean, other than the argument over which civ is better, the value it ultimately provides is it answers one of these two questions:

1) I suck at <insert victory condition> on Deity, where should I start?
2) I've gotten some Deity wins in at <insert victory condition>, and I think I'm ready to try a civ with more subtlety to their Unique traits, but I don't know who to choose, or who to avoid. (IE "middle-tier")

Sure maybe sometimes people say "I don't know how I want to win, so I want a civ that is generically powerful" This is just an odd mindset to me. I always look at a civ and think, "what would they be good at?"

But, beginner deity players should really be focusing on the fundamentals of early domination, or SV. (Because every other VC on Deity starts with effective science game)

Why early domination? Because a single game of civ takes hours. A lot of warfare can be learned with archers, and the time investment to t100 is a lot less. I also think there are certain civs that are easier to learn with. For any victory but early domination, a science civ is the most forgiving. Even a little tech headstart is more forgiving on mistakes. And for early domination, there is a short list of civs that are just easier to succeed with, and yes, I think if you're struggling on deity, those are the ones to start with. Arabia & The Mongols are the easiest to start with, IMHO, then The Huns, then England, (especially on continents), China, Egypt, and to a lesser degree, the Zulu and the "free movement in rough terrain" civs. (the Inca and the Aztecs)

With everyone else, for the most part, you can't make as many mistakes. Now, once you've pulled off early domination with one of the easy-mode civs, then sure, graduate to a civ that has one of these UU/UA that gives some less blatant advantage. But, if I came in here and looked at that tier list, I wouldn't know which civ to pick even in those conditions, because aside from the 3 or 4 civs that are excellent at every VC, it's not clear by tiering what they're good at.

Which is why I don't think it's all that useful to rate civs on a single scale. Some civs are easier to win certain victory conditions than others. More importantly, some civs are easier to *learn* certain victory conditions than others.

If someone wants to do continents domination, going to a generic list of top tier vs middle tier civs isn't helping them. *'s and ^'s don't clear it up the way a list organized by victory condition and map type would. IMHO.

If this list is for beginner Deity players, then it would be more useful to point them to Deity strategy guides. If it's for intermediate diety players who want to get better, a lot of these UU/UA have less impact on the game than focused efficient play does. So, to some degree, tommy's right... arguing about which UU/UA is better is pointless when most players just need to work on their fundamentals. And once you have those fundamentals down, a lot of these UA/UU and UI are only *theoretically* as useful as you measure them to be, and not *actually* that useful... as a result of various game imbalances, AI fails, etc.

For example, (broken as it may be) ranged units > all until the AI hits the Industrial Era, and then Artillery/Frigates > all until the Atomic era, at which point bombers & battleships > all, and that leaves a lot of UU/UA in the cold. And when you factor in that the AI is pitiful at science now, the only thing that matters after ranged units is how good you are at science. And all of this pales in comparison to how effective you are at managing your first 60-70 turns. We could argue UU/UA all day, but some guy who comes in and looks at the tier list, sees babylon at the top, and gets pwned trying to win with Babylon is not going to be any better off.

I'm not saying it isn't worth discussing the finer points of various UU/UA, but the tiers are of less value out of the *context* of a specific map/era/VC. IMHO.

And the subtlety of something like Germany's 25% reduced land unit cost just is so far down the list of things that matter. (I thought it was 50%... even less meaningful than I thought)

 

[Justice1337]

The fundamentals of play are discussed elsewhere. If your style is to push early as possible Education, using the mid-era tech lead to get either military or more science, then that guide is out there. If some other strategy, then the guide is out there too. If you just like one civ, then there's a guide for each. That's not the problem.

The problem is where people: a) appeal to their own authority instead of using analysis, b) offer their style as the "correct" way to play a Single-Player TBS with multiple catch-up mechanisms and alternate VC's, or c) make distorted or blatantly incorrect factual statements in support.


So, it's one thing to suggest that maybe you should Oxford/Bulb to Artillery to fight a few AI's on musket tech (the only way to get there by T150 w/o a food-heavy Mountain/Jungle start btw), but it's another thing to say that any other possible Domination style is wrong, or that any bonus that doesn't get you to Education as fast as possible is therefore worth zero.

As adwcta's guide on the "small" playstyle shows, it is really hard to vindicate any pre Turn 100 strategy as wholly superior to others, at least on the metric of reliability (not speed). So any and all discussion that calls out as an unequivocal error not going tall enough or getting Education fast enough early game is the very definition of sidelining, counter-productive discussion.

It's not that people not in lockstep with that don't understand the mechanics. There's a guide for that. It's that they don't want the lemming-talk, ez mode fanboi'ism sidelining the discussion about other things. One of those things important in the tier list discussion is to provide an opportunity for players to reassess civ's that they may not have played, may have been misplaying, or may have been underrating. It's not so much to reinforce that Science civ's are the best by such a margin that others are role-play only. It's not the purpose to try to peddle the idea that Education by Turn 100 is the single correct way to play civ. Certain people think that's the point of every single thread in the forums. Saying "if you play civ my way, you don't care about a bonus like that" is just the next version of that. And some version of it or another comes up every time someone wants to analyze any point whatsoever outside of that rubric.

 

[Buccaneer]

The thing that I have to keep reminding myself is that this is a "deity" tier list, not immortal or some other level where those that really don't know how to play the game (nor care to) can make an argument that a civ's placement is wrong because that was not their experience. Deity is a different animal.

 

[adwcta]

The thing that I have to keep reminding myself is that this is a "deity" tier list, not immortal or some other level where those that really don't know how to play the game (nor care to) can make an argument that a civ's placement is wrong because that was not their experience. Deity is a different animal.

Deity eliminates certain Immortal strategies (early wonders and religion come to mind), but it doesn't prescribe just one or two ways to play the game. Plenty of play styles are still viable and secure on Deity. They are all weighed in the evaluation of a civ. Tall tradition philo acoustics radio science games and wide liberty cb/frigate or artillery/battleship/bomber wargames are all well and good, and they are considered, but they're not the only things we evaluate.

That's also why I don't think you can break things out by VC, because its all connected.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Thorak]

I would say the list is still kinda useful in the fact that it gives a guideline for the power of the civs. I disagree with some of the rankings but mostly I agree with the list.

The first thing that I feel is not taken into consideration in this list is that you will usually play a civ suited for a certain setting. Ranking Polynesia/Indonesia based on pangea type maps is not fair as you will most likely not play those civs at those maps. All the same it's not fair to rank the Huns based on water type maps as you will most likely play it on pangea-types or possibly continents.

The second thing is that the list is based heavily upon a peaceful playstyle. I feel like the warmongering civs are not getting so much love. Exactly as Cromagnus tells you: There are really 2 types of victories, science and early aggression. Culture, diplomacy and any late game win is dependent on how quickly you can tech. There are also some UU:s/units that singlehandedly can shift almost any war into your favor (camel archer, keshik, artillery, bombers, nukes, battleships and so on). Your list represents the late game win rather well, but the early conquering is rated rather low.

If I would divide it into different lists, I would make one list with (early) domination victory in mind and a separate for all the other wins.

 

[Cromagnus]

Don't get me wrong, I wish they hadn't broken the game. I wish there was a point in discussing the advantages of one civ's melee UU over another, but archers > all, so that's one example of an entire aspect of the game that the *devs* have made somewhat pointless to discuss. Similarly, they've made science focus by far the most efficient, effective *and* reliable route to victory, which diminishes a great number of UAs. Again, I wish it weren't so, but it is. (And I don't buy the whole "tech rush isn't reliable" or "early warmonger rush isn't reliable" thing. It is.)

Unfortunately, and this I will concede, it is nowadays true that you don't need to play optimally on Deity. Deity is supposed to be, as I've said so many times now, "so hard only the best in the world will beat it", and it's only since BNW came out that this hasn't been the case. Slow and steady *should not win the race*... But, since it now does, you're right. Strategies that are sub-optimal are worthy of discussion... but only until if/when they come out with a balance patch to make Deity difficult again.

Deity should be so hard that sub-optimal strategies fail. I agree that there shouldn't be only one optimal path, but that's the dev's fault if there isn't. I've brought up the point many times that it's counter-intuitive that science focus for the first 170 turns, not culture/tourism focus, is the best way to win CV. At least in prior incarnations of CV, cpt was what mattered, and insane cpt could be achieved without going any further than the industrial era. Meaning that there was actually an alternative approach. It's the same issue with diplomatic victory. Diplomatic victory is just a tech rush. It used to be you just needed the United Nations and great faction with the CS. This was better, because you only had to hit United Nations before someone launched, rather than hit near-future tech. Again, a victory condition that was more about faction than tech. This made sense. Domination is the only victory type that remains that isn't SV, where focusing on war from the get-go is actually a viable strategy. Which is yet another reason I favor it these days. Because once you're bored of SV, you're bored of 90% of CV and Diplo games.

Anyway, I'm agreeing that there should be more than one way to play the game, but in the current state of Civ5, since the AI doesn't punish tech rushing, tech rushing has devalued all other approaches. IMHO, on Deity, in order for it to be hard, the AI has to be more aggressive AND win faster, and if both of those things were true, it would actually be a much better game.

You'd have to be efficient AND defend yourself effectively, and it would be less feasible to win entirely peacefully. If the AI were about to launch, you might have to invade. And that's what it was like in G&K on Deity. You were frequently forced to nuke an AI to buy time for your own SV, or invade, or whatever. You couldn't just sit there and turtle with 4 units until your guaranteed win.

But, I can understand why some people would prefer to play as if this weren't the case. As if it weren't more efficient to ignore half the UU, UA, etc. and just focus on science. Believe me, I wish it weren't so. But as soon as you get competitive and play hof or gotm (or mp I assume) a lot of these discussions become moot. This isn't about fanboy anything, it's about effectiveness. And due to the the devs failure with the AI and VC balance, there isn't a balanced set of viable strategies. IMHO.

 

[adwcta]

I do give early domination very little credit. In all of these maps, you need both land and water. Can you really finish everything off that quickly? Or, I should say, can most deity players? I fully admit my biggest weakness is mid-game wars on land or early game wars using any non-ranged unit. That could be a bias, but I think its really more as a reflection of the maps.

What civs do early conquering? Zulu, Huns, Assyria? Are Mongols and Arabia early game or mid game? China, England and Arabia are all ranked pretty high.

I've said it before, if you're not on Pangaea, you can't end the game with early wars, at least not reliably on Deity (and that lowers the security of the playstyle). That's why its not a thing on this list. I treat early war bonuses as a bonus to expansion (with guaranteed diplo cost, except maybe Huns on one particular map), not a victory condition.

I'm guessing you agree with the relative rankings of the early-mid warmongers, but you just want to move everything up a tier. Unless lots of people start stepping forward and saying that they can end land-water balanced games without universities, I don't think I'm going to move everyone up. No special treatment for ending the game early.

If you're arguing relative, I might move things around.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Cromagnus]

Pangaea is the hardest map type to clear with all-out domination. That's what I keep trying to say. Anything that works on Pangaea works better on continents, because you have less civs to knock out before you run out of steam. Yes, you then need to tech navigation, but anyone with 4 capitals and multiple wonders can do so easily enough to finish off everyone else. And since you get a fresh diplomatic start it's much less headache to do so then on panhaha.

I think more people would realize naval domination with frigates is easy if a) they tried it more, and b) they oxford-rushed frigates. When I read most posts on here, I'm seeing that people are taking their sweet time before attacking, waiting for "the right time", so they end up teching frigates too late and having to tech to battleships instead. It really does come down to "doing it wrong"...

If your goal is battleships, tech to battleships before attacking, but do so quickly. If your goal is frigates, tech to frigates quickly and make sure you have good production and gold to build and upgrade galleas. This isn't complicated, but I rarely see accounts of people doing this. Instead, people are exhibiting typical peaceful builder tendencies up until they feel they have overwhelming advantage, which delays things, takes away tech advantage and generally makes the strategy less reliable.

Point is, it's trivial for an any early rush civ to win on any map type.... And it is reliable once you practice the strategy. I feel like a lot of the disagreement on this point comes from people who haven't invested the time to get better at early domination, hence they feel it's unreliable. Of course it's unreliable until you're good at it. But, it's really not once you are. And once you can do it on panhaha, everything else is cake.

And I say this coming from the perspective of someone who played almost exclusively peaceful builder for most of civ 4 and civ 5. My attempts at warfare were always tentative and I always wanted to build a massive army before attacking, to ensure victory, not realizing that a) I was losing valuable time with my tech advantage by doing so, and b) I was paying huge maintenance costs to have those troops sit around while I built up. I'm not knocking the civ player who does this, but I assume that like me, they started out doing mostly builder strategies and so are generally uncomfortable with early domination, because it goes against their comfort zone of early builder mode, and have yet to learn the importance of speed, timing and attacking effectively with smaller amounts of troops. And of course all this takes practice, that doesn't mean it's unreliable.