OK so I play single-player, Immortal or Deity, Standard everything, like to switch it up with map types.
1 Austria (Maria Theresa):
So I thought this UA would be immensely powerful, and on paper it is, but it just doesn't work for me. I'd be interested if I'm unique here. I was so excited about this overpowered UA that when I first got Gods & Kings I played Austria a bunch of times at Immortal or Deity. In every game, the AI fought me for influence with City-States harder than they ever had before. Even aggressively pursuing quests and spending every spare dime buying influence, the AI just seemed willing to go broke to keep control over their City-States. That left the UA virtually unusable, so Austria amounted to a UB that is weaker than the building it replaces and a UU that's a slight improvement on a unit you probably shouldn't be building in the first place.
Has anyone else had this problem? If the UA did what it says on the tin, I'd rank Austria much higher.
3 Byzantium (Theodora): The two uniques come too early to be useful, leaving Byzantium all about its UA. The UA bonus is extremely powerful when you're one of the first to found a religion. . . but comes with a Civilization that has no competitive advantage in generating early faith, no advantage in generating extra production to pump out earlier Shrines and Temples, no advantage in generating extra science to reach Faith buildings earlier, no advantage in generating Culture to run the Piety tree early, and no advantage in generating extra population to aid with any of the above.
Byzantium's UA is COMPLETELY DEPENDENT on having a strong early game, because if it's not one of the first to found a religion, its UA is as useless as its UUs. . . yet the Civ has one of the weakest early games around. And unlike, say, Siam, which has a weak early game but whose UA and UB help it to catch up and slingshot into the lead in the late game, if Byzantine misses out on its chance to found one of the first religions and grab some dope beliefs, it has absolutely no ability to catch up.
If you've got the Celts, Ethiopia, the Maya, or any strong early-game Civ that decides to focus on religion in your game, you're probably screwed. At higher difficulties levels, if you manage to found a religion at all, all the good beliefs will be taken.
Byzantine has to count on a lucky ancient ruin faith pop, because hard-building a religion with no actual advantages in doing so will require you to pursue Piety first, missing out on the early game advantages of Tradition and Liberty, and require you to devote an awful lot of resources to hard-building faith that are going to leave you under-developed elsewhere and behind in science and culture.
All that being said, the only reason Byzantium gets a 3 instead of a 1 is because on those lucky games when the stars align and you get a religion, you can be a real beast.
Finally. . . why is this Byzantium's UA? It's one of the least historically sensible in the game.
5 Carthage (Dido): The Quinquereme is useless, the Forest Elephant is kinda cool, and the Harbors are kinda situational. Extremely powerful on Archipelago, a big turd on Pangaea, where eventually you'll want to connect even your coastal cities with roads for logistical/defense purposes.
9Ethiopia (Haile Selassie): The Stele is one of the top 3 most powerful UBs in the game, guaranteeing you an early religion (probably the very first), your pick of beliefs, and the high early faith per turn (a Stele is worth a Shrine AND a temple, basically for free since you were gonna build a Monument anyway) to help you spread that religion. The UB alone is worth Ethiopia getting into the highest tier. The UA is both a good historical representation of Ethiopia's rich history as a lone holdout against imperialism, as well as a good complement to Ethiopia's strategy of being a tall turtle. The UU is unimpressive but, unlike some UUs, at least actually a big improvement on a unit you were probably going to be building anyway and very complementary with the UA.
2 Sweden (Gustavus Adolphus):
If you're not playing for a Diplo victory, it's hard to think of a situation in which I would consider 90 influence points with a CS to be a BETTER USE of a Great Person than simply using that GP as intended, unless you just have a ton of Great Generals and Admirals, and Sweden's +10% Great Person generation with DoFs doesn't help generate extra GGs and GAs. The Carolean is an improvement on the Rifleman, but not by enough to make a difference, and the Hakkapellita is hilariously bad.
I guess if you follow the Patronage tree and aim for the Diplomatic victory, Sweden's pretty good, but I always disable Diplomatic victory because I find it ridiculously easy and always trigger it even if I'm intending to pursue a different victory. Any Civ can win a Diplo victory, because that victory condition is broken and unless Alexander's in your game, the AI doesn't know to try for it. So for being one of the best at doing the easiest thing in Civ 5, Sweden gets a 2.
7.5 The Celts (Boudicca): I do love me a synergistic Civ, and Boudicca is built for religion. She'll almost always get the first one, and get her pick of beliefs. Trouble is, unlike building-based religion bonii, Druidic Lore goes obsolete as soon as you want to improve some forests, so I like to keep some Pictish Warriors alive to farm barbs and act as "Finish Him!" mop-up troops even in advanced wars.
Having your pick of religious beliefs gives the Celts the flexibility to pursue any kind of strategy they like, and flexibility is really pretty rare for the top-tier Civs (Babylon goes for tech lead, Mongolia goes for Medieval rampage, Venice goes for commerce, etc.), so I'm rating the Celts a little higher than I normally would just because it's fun to have more of a blank slate.
The Ceilidh Hall is also a fantastic UB. Free happiness is dope, and allows Boudicca to play a lot wider than most Civs, especially if her religion is designed to complement a wide strategy.
3 The Huns (Attila): Got nerfed in BNW because early war became less of a viable strategy. I also think the Huns are more attractive at lower difficulty levels, because at higher ones the AI starts with extra units and techs, meaning the human player needs a little time to outplay and catch up, but the Huns demand immediate early war.
I would give them a 4, but I'm docking a point for the simple fact that "the Huns" were not a civilization. The closest in-game comparison to the Huns would be Raging Barbarians with horse units. The fact that the game developers could not even find any City names, because the Huns didn't build cities, is sufficient evidence that they were not a civilization. It's not clear the Huns even had a written language. Being historically important does not make a group of people a civilization.
7 The Maya (Pacal): Long Count's Great People count against your total for generating new Great People. I'd be interested to have an in-depth discussion on this with someone who's experimented with them more, but in my own brief experimentation I found that due to Long Count 1) only allowing you to generate a particular type of Great Person once before resetting and 2) all Long Count-generated Great People increasing the total cost of new Great People, I actually ended up with fewer Great Scientists, because I was forced to spawn a Great Merchant that increased the bucket cost for more Great Scientists (I consider GMs to be abjectly inferior to GSs). Depending on how it's handled and exactly how it works, this could be the rare UA that actually hurts a Civ. Open to debate, and my ranking will move up if I'm convinced otherwise.
That being said, while the UU is unimpressive, the UB is one of the top 3 in the game and easily merits the Maya a "7" rating entirely on its own. The Pyramid not only generates +2 Science at a time when your entire civilization is probably generating around 7 - 8 science, but it also generates 2 Faith per turn instead of the Shrine's 1 fpt. Makes the Maya an excellent candidate for early City spamming. One of the few Civs that can be the first to found a religion AND an early tech leader.
If the Long Count Great People were truly free (ie., did not increase your bucket cost for new Great People), the Maya would be an 11.
6 The Netherlands (William): The UA is typically only that useful in the early game; the way the map generator spams several iterations of the same luxury resource in a small area, by the midgame you've probably got more multiples of a luxury resource than you've got willing trading partners. However, it can be DAMN useful in the early game.
The Sea Beggar is fun to play with, but not game-changing in any way.
I wish the Polder came a lot earlier. It's fine how it is one floodplains, but fully utilizing the thoroughly awesome Polder means just leaving those unproductive Marshes around until you get Guilds, which can be a pain and really hurt early growth. Basically, Netherlands with a Flood Plains start is an "8" Civ, and Netherlands with a Marsh start is a "4" Civ.
), the Civilization Rankings thread comes to you!
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) is less boring than Sipahi/Hussar/Winged Hussar as it gives GGs extra Movement and Hakkas extra strength, it feels more active. The UA doesn't fit with this mid-game domination theme, as everybody starts hating you and friends denounce you. 90 influence is rarely useful...
