Civ 4 BTS Who is the best Leader to play?
- Thread starter rosynelson
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Bit disappointed, i would have expected @lymond to jump on that Fast Worker statement
Ha..kinda same as Rah...I was beaten to the punch. And really, based on the other comments by the poster, when one clearly has so much to learn about the game I didn't feel it worth it at this point to give a dissertation on the merits of the fast worker, and India for that matter. I mean Gandhi is such a terrible leader
6K Man
Bureaucrat
I’m probably going to send this forum straight to hell (and me with it) with this statement:
The Fast Worker is a terrible UU. Not in of itself, because 3 move units are amazing and roading hills and forests in 1 less turn is great. It’s a terrible UU because it’s an ethnic stereotype come to (digital) life.
Janissaries, Jaguar Warriors, Praetorians, Immortals, Navy Seals and Hwacha all existed. Sure, they may be depicted incorrectly from a historical perspective in Civ4, but at least you can read a history book or go online and see what they were based on. Now go and google “Indian Fast Worker”.
The Fast Worker is a terrible UU. Not in of itself, because 3 move units are amazing and roading hills and forests in 1 less turn is great. It’s a terrible UU because it’s an ethnic stereotype come to (digital) life.
Janissaries, Jaguar Warriors, Praetorians, Immortals, Navy Seals and Hwacha all existed. Sure, they may be depicted incorrectly from a historical perspective in Civ4, but at least you can read a history book or go online and see what they were based on. Now go and google “Indian Fast Worker”.
Hamilton321
Prince
My favorite is Napoleon, partially because of my historical affinity with the Napoleonic period, partially because he is charismatic and organized which are two of my favorite leader traits and partially because when Napoleon's my leader it adds so much to roleplay when I cuirassier rush my way across the continent.
Where to put Stalin though? Clearly the weakest Russian leader (for me), and probably in the bottom 20% of all leaders.
Hmm, it would be an interesting exercise to rank all the leaders and see how much those ranks differ between players, especially for the ones playing deity.
Hmm, it would be an interesting exercise to rank all the leaders and see how much those ranks differ between players, especially for the ones playing deity.
My bottom 10 (i.e.~20%) was relatively easy to come up with, order not so easy obv.
I'm assuming deity/normal/fractal and the leader in question in human hands. Aiming for highest win%, so I think these leaders give me the least chances to win. It's of course fully possible to get a quick nice win with these leaders, too!
I'm assuming deity/normal/fractal and the leader in question in human hands. Aiming for highest win%, so I think these leaders give me the least chances to win. It's of course fully possible to get a quick nice win with these leaders, too!
Spoiler :
Fish Man
Emperor
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Putting Qin above Mao, or that low in any case, is just
to me. With ind, chu-ko-spam is actually pretty obtainable a lot of the time - Oracle MC, quickwhip a forge, get GE, enjoy 1000BC machinery. And not to mention the fact that ind is a better trait than exp, as well as the fact that China has the best starting techs in the game.It certainly might bePutting Qin above Mao, or that low in any case, is just
. I do like EXP better than IND, that I know. Maybe I just don't know how to use IND well, or how to use the chinese UU. Good starting techs are of course nice, but with weak traits like PRO+IND... You know one of the toughest maps I've wrestled a lot a few years ago was Qin isolation, so maybe I do have a bias against him because of these memories. 
edit: I also dislike going for Oracle (maybe too much?) because losing it often hurts due to tech path.
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This just sunk into me. 1000BC is T75. It's possible to get a T50 Oracle with Qin on a good start. However, getting a 100% GE takes 34T in a city that both has a forge and is able to run a specialist (i.e. at least size 2). I appreciate your comments, but please, some accuracy.
Of course, attacking with Cho-ko-nu's say T100 is great, if you can do it and if you happen to have a map where attacking is a good idea and so on. I do agree that these niche strategies are fascinating.
Fish Man
Emperor
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This just sunk into me. 1000BC is T75. It's possible to get a T50 Oracle with Qin on a good start. However, getting a 100% GE takes 34T in a city that both has a forge and is able to run a specialist (i.e. at least size 2). I appreciate your comments, but please, some accuracy.
Of course, attacking with Cho-ko-nu's say T100 is great, if you can do it and if you happen to have a map where attacking is a good idea and so on. I do agree that these niche strategies are fascinating.
OK, I concede my dates are quite bit off. I meant 1280-ish BC MC, probably. An ATTACK date of around 500-250BC is also great to aim for, in my limited experience. If AI doesn't have longbows, great, they're already dead. If they DO have longbows, the great thing about PRO is you instantly get cover with barracks, and then the collat takes care of the rest.
Besides the niche strat, though, you have to admit the only bad thing about him is PRO. The starting techs are the BEST in the game bar none, ind is a great trait even by itself, pavilions are good for winning mid-game culture wars so that you have at least control of your first and second rings, and chu-ko-nus are definitely a top-10 UU. So Qin isn't a one-trick pony, unlike Ser Schnekt who definitely got shafted in terms of...well, almost everything.
I'd like to say a bit more about ind. I'll admit it IS a bit hard to leverage. However, I consider it really good because it halves the cost of the most expensive of the essential buildings of the game (forge, the others being granary and library), gets you 1.5x more failgold which is huge if you can leverage it right, AND makes going for wonders without the resource viable. Marble-less GLib, GLighthouse, stoneless Mids, and ofc Marble-less Oracle (though the latter's pretty cheap anyways) are the ones that come to mind. This makes the trait hugely versatile, and in fact I'm of the belief that despite the many other things that make HC OP, ind is one of the major contributing factors.
Speaking of traits, a bit off-topic, but still relevant because we're ranking leaders; here's my tier list of the traits (within each tier there's no ranking). Starting techs, not to mention UUs and UBs are something I gotta think more about.
A-tier, AWESOME to the point where they're game-changing in more than a few circumstances:
Financial
This one is self-explanatory; an economy is basically half of how you get things done in civ, the other half being production (mainly driven by chops/whips, hence why food is king; unfortunately there is no trait that enhances growth), and financial directly and significantly helps in that regard. A lot. Something to consider about this trait that not many others might have thought about is the fact that its impact is felt predominantly in the early game, and its effect is stronger there than most might regard. +1 commerce on 2-commerce tiles (there will be few tiles giving higher than that except for mining resources until calendar or you grow your cottages) is essentially +50% commerce. Think about that. 50% is a HUGE bonus. If the only tiles your capital worked for commerce was cottages and coast, this would be like having a free academy for 10 turns, with the relative effect staying but diminishing afterwards. And this applies for EVERY city, everywhere. +1 in the context of 2 is why financial is so good.
Philosophical
Also self-explanatory; GP are how you execute deity-level strategies like bulbing lib to get MT or chem to get steel while everyone's running around with longbows, directly helping you win the game. As well as well-timed golden-ages to churn out a GM or 3, switch civics, etc. Phi directly helps you in reaching those goals in a timely and decisive manner (you don't have to worry as much about GP pollution since "fewer" GP points can be used to obtain a greater effect, meaning you can afford to run "just" scientists and merchants), meaning it is on-par with fin in a lot of cases, if not outright better. Plus cheaper universities are nice for fast space wins, but I know not everyone cares about that
.B-tier, GREAT but nothing gamebreaking, can turn losses into wins in a handful of circumstances but mostly just make the game significantly easier:
Charismatic
You only get 4 happiness in early-game. So +2, again effectively +50%, is a REALLY big deal. This can turn the tide of an isolation game, where otherwise a needed detour to monarchy is so expensive it puts you too behind. The other big deal is cheaper promotions, which shortens several "critical points" - making getting CR2 on siege 1 battle away after barracks, combat 3 on mounted obtainable with barracks + stables + theo + vassalage, and CR3/march/all the good high-level promos much easier. Usually a "quality of life" thing, but sometimes attacking someone who's about to run away with the game or who already has a better or bigger army, this type of thing makes all the difference. This is actually my fave trait on iso, since those two situations - terrible happy cap and being forced to attack stronger opponents, some on the brink of getting the Big Three nasty industrial era units (infantry, machine guns, artillery) - pop up especially often on iso maps. In my experience a 6-happy cap at minimum is needed to reach optics in a timely manner in iso, meaning with cha you don't ever need to go monarchy if you're alone.
Industrious
I believe I've said all I needed to on that. Extremely versatile, and if it DOES help you get that game-changing wonder once in a blue moon where you otherwise wouldn't have, it is gamechanging once in a blue moon.
Creative
Effectively a free border pop early game is HUGELY helpful, and so are cheap libraries. That being said, without cre there are still plenty of ways to reach 10 culture, libraries are still pretty cheap whips compared to, say, forges (2 or 3 pop), and it's rare that you need the extra speed and border pressure to really win. Still, those situations do come up - most notably the recent low sea level Pericles map where we had to muster all our cultural might just to fight back Sally's stupid madrasas and holy city culture.
C-tier, GOOD but overwhelmingly just quality-of-life things that are a "win harder" factor; can't really turn a loss into a win on a crappy start all by themselves 99% of the time:
Expansive
I know, I know @sampsa - this is heresy. But consider this: granaries and workers are already easy 2-pop whips, some of the cheapest things to churn out despite being the most important. And +2 health is, I think you would concur, mostly irrelevant for most of the game. Besides, worker production is only sped up +25%, which means that if you whip those really the only effect is a bit more OF. There's hardly a case where getting a worker or granary out slightly faster tips the balance decisively in our favor, nice as those things may be. So while there's nothing wrong with expansive, it's still not really as impactful as I think a lot of other traits are.
Imperialistic
Same applies to settlers. 2-pop whip instead of 3-pop whip, horray. Unless you're desperately competing with Justinian for city sites, though, it's hard to see how this would be THAT useful. Sure, snowball effect, but at the same time there's absolutely nothing else here that would increase the output of that second city significantly, like most other traits. And faster GGs - good for turbocharging axes/HAs during an early rush. Otherwise, a slightly faster medic is the only benefit of this, after which all other GGs can be settled or turned into secondary medics/sacrificial steamrollers regardless of how fast they come.
Organized
The civic upkeep reduction is not insignificant, especially as the game progresses - and the faster building of 3 quite important buildings is definitely really good. But those 3 buildings come into play only situationally (some games I don't build a single courthouse, other games don't even last into the industrial era so definitely no factories). And smaller civic upkeep essentially means reaching key techs 2-3 turns faster, MAX. So, not really a zinger to me. I WILL concede this is the 2nd best trait to have, perhaps, on deity marathon corps space games - an incredibly niche category, though.
Aggressive
The much-maligned agg is actually far better than it looks on paper. Fast barracks solidifies early rushes, as does a free promo on some units. And it's GREAT for barb-killing and fogbusting, tipping the odds of a forested warrior vs archer from 44% to 64%-ish (again my numbers may be off). And it's better than cha sometimes, since it saves however much XP is needed for the NEXT promo. Still - this only applies for the less important units of a rush (anything EXCEPT the siege and mounted, go figure), and barracks are cheap anyways. Plus you can always go early AH/archery or just find copper to neutralize barbs. So, again, quality of life thing.
D-tier, BAD; offers little to no help the overwhelming majority of the time:
Protective
You knew this was coming. @Lain demonstrated an instance where it was insanely helpful, and there ARE other cases like China's Chu-ko-spam or Toku's superrifles, but honestly, at the end of the day, how often are you gonna be stuck semi-iso with Genghis?
(I might copy this to its own thread just to spark some discussion)
Well, yes. PRO is bad and IND is ok in my book. Agree that the starting techs are clearly the best (instead of the usual belief that agri+wheel is best).
So I think it comes more down to which leaders are worse. I think Qin is much better than say Roosevelt, but I do value good traits like FIN/PHI/CRE/CHA/EXP quite high. The next tier of leaders past say Hammurabi are already pretty solid leaders compared to Toku/Charlie/Saladin-tier.
I'll comment your thread on Strategy and Tips, as it's probably the right place for serious discussion.
Orion Pax
Warlord
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Yeah that is quite an efficient warring/building combo. When I load the box on a Pangea map with all the belligerent AI, Nap seems to stay most dangerous deeper into the game than the rest. Good starring techs too.
And +1 more on the Fast Worker love. Never obsoletes, can build from turn 1, and in use continuously.
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