Arabia 22
Aztecs 21
Babylon 22
Byzantium 14 (-2)
Carthage 23
China 25
Egypt 6
England 20
Ethiopia 16
France 13
Greece 22
Inca 26
Iroquois 8
Japan 14
Korea 24
Maya 26
Mongolia 12
Netherlands 23
Ottoman Empire 17
Persia 17
Roman Empire 22
Russia 22
Siam 18
Sweden 3 (+1)
I'm astonished at how much hate Sweden is getting. An extremely powerful UA and one of the best UU's in the game (Caroleans). The Hakkapelitta is pretty crap sure, but the other bonuses more than make up for it. By far my favourite Civ in the game.
I like Sweden more and more despite only having played them to best effect once, but there is a definite trend here for people to prefer the civs with passive bonuses or that fit their existing playstyle, rather than those that reward more creative approaches (I always use my GPs to do X, so I don't want to use them to do Y"). There's a lot of "I can already do X, why do I want to do Y instead?" reasoning (e.g., why trade GPs when I can spend money/complete quests) by people who don't register that you can do
both, and in so doing get a far superior bonus.
Also bear in mind that a lot of people do still have trouble managing diplomacy effectively - I can reliably spend much of a game getting a Babylon-equivalent bonus for all my GP generation, but a lot of people struggle to maintain lasting friendships with more than one or two civs. Also, in this and the Wonder thread alike, people seem to ignore/forget bonuses to GP generation altogether - focusing on Babylon just for its early GP, seeing Pisa as just a free GP with no other effect, thinking of Sweden as just "give GPs away" and neglecting the "make more GPs" aspect, or even the fact that with Patronage a single GP gift that will keep you allied with a CS for 30 turns (other effects notwithstanding) will more than pay for itself in the GPs you get back from your ally.
Which shows a depressingly "American" bias. Rather than give units or Ux's that showcase historically important parts of the culture, the developers chose the things (at least in France's case) that are iconic American media representations. (I know Dumas's book is French, but it exists in the minds of the American consumers because of American/British media.)
It is a mass-market game and always has been (Zulus as a civ??), so it's certainly defensible to a degree, but I think in France's case it's taken to an extreme. Napoleon is an obvious choice from a PR standpoint but also a genuinely good leader choice for the civ. The Musketeer takes a bit of swallowing, but the book is sufficiently iconic to justify it, not really something that's true of the Foreign Legion. France is seen as a cultural hub (although more specifically, Paris is seen as a major cultural centre, so possibly a more appropriate UA would have focused on culture bonuses for the capital). It just seems that with France everything is about pandering to popular expectations, something not as true of (say) China - everyone knows of repeating crossbows and the Art of War, fewer of Wu Zetian, and while the country is indeed popularly known for developing the first paper currency, that is a genuine achievement that's quite reasonably reflected in the UB.
) but you also have to remember that this game is primarily made by/for Americans so you cant expect every thing to be totally perfect.
