[R&F] Elimination Thread Results

[Kmart_Elvis]

Over this past year, we've done Elimination Threads for all 4 Unique Abilities/Infrastructure/Units for Rise and Fall Civs. This is the thread to analyze and discuss the results. For reference, here are the threads, each showing the final results and the intense debate we had in deciding them.

Civilization Ability
Leader Ability
Infrastructure
Unique Units

I have made a spreadsheet showing how every civ scored on each of these 4 metrics, and then tallied a total score of those metrics here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...7PpcCQFtYKsm_SxX0cwA4JFGak520-buxnPRg/pubhtml

I wanted to compile all of our elimination threads to come up with a list based on overall rank of the civs. There are a couple of problems with this though. The idea is to rank every civ on each of the 4 metrics, then simply add them up. The lower the score, the better; just like golf. However there are a couple of civs that have two unique units and thus make 5 total metrics. It's rather difficult to determine how to score them in this context. Someone like Macedon has one really amazing unit, and another mediocre one. Do we average them out? Or do we just score their best one, since that is the "primary" unique that you would be building? I know as Macedon, I build Heteroi and rarely build Hypasists. When you play America, there's at least a reason to build Rough Riders, but no reason to build P-51 Mustangs since the AI doesn't build aircraft. So, I opted to give the civs with dual units the higher score of the better unit and ignore the lesser one.

Even then, a dual-unit civ has an extra unit. That has to count for something. Does that make them better? Even if it's weak, it's still a unique unit. Again, since I have no idea how to count for this, I just opted for their higher, more used unique.

Second, just because a civ is ranked poorly in one area doesn't reflect on the average truly. A perfect example are the Aztecs. Their leader ability, civ ability, and unique unit are rated quite high. Their building is abysmal. So if you take all 4 metrics into consideration, with equal weight, it really draws down their score which is rather unfair. Anybody who plays the Aztecs knows their strategy plays on the Civ Ability, Monty's ability, and Eagle Warriors. @Legacy of Smiles has worked with me on this and has suggested doing a weighted score. This sounds the most objective, but how to go about this, I am not sure.

But, this does not mean this list is worthless. We have a good standard of what the best, great, mediocre, weak, and trash civs are based on these results. They shouldn't just be taken for their exact worth. You can make an argument that the #5 Civ is better than the #3. But, you'd be hard pressed to say the #20 Civ is better than #3. This is simply a reflection of averages, and shouldn't be considered hard gospel but a showing about how the civs are compared to each other over all.

With that said, here are the totals added up (obviously lower the better):

Greece - Gorgo 39
Australia 42
Indonesia 46
Macedon 48
Zulu 49
Nubia 51
Aztec 52
Rome 52
Greece - Pericles 53
Sumeria 53
Mongolia 56
Arabia 58
Russia 58
Persia 59
Netherlands 63
Cree 65
Japan 70
Mapuche 70
Poland 71
Scythia 71
France 75
India - Chandragupta 76
Brazil 77
Germany 79
Kongo 83
Norway 84
Korea 86
England 87
Spain 87
Scotland 88
America 91
India - Gandhi 95
China 96
Khmer 106
Egypt 124
Georgia 132

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

This next list is a compilation of every civ's highest unique. We simply take their highest score out of the 4 uniques. For example, Indonesia's highest unique is their infrastructure, the Kampung, thus they get 1. Georgia, being so horrible, has their best metric being their Civ Ability...which is rated 30.

Fun Fact: Georgia is so damn bad they finished in the bottom 5 of every metric. They literally have no redeeming quality. Let's hope that Gathering Storm at least makes them decent at diplomatic victory, because it's sad to see a civ so underpowered as them!

1. Australia (Civ), Rome (Leader), Indonesia (Infrastructure), Nubia (Unit)
2. Greece (Civ), Scythia (Leader), Russia (Infrastructure), Sumeria (Unit)
3. Japan (Civ), China (Leader), Cree (Infrastructure), Macedon (Unit)
4. Kongo (Civ), Aztec (Leader + Unit), Korea (Infrastructure)
5. Arabia (Unit)
6. Netherlands (Civ), Zulu (Leader)
7. Scotland (Civ), France (Leader), Germany (Infrastructure), India (Unit)
8. Mongolia (Civ), Persia (Infrastructure)
9. Brazil (Unit)
11. Mapuche (Unit)
12. Poland (Infrastructure)
14. Spain (Unit)
16. America (Leader), Norway (Unit)
17. England (Infrastructure)
20. Khmer (Unit)
28. Egypt (Infrastructure)
30. Georgia (Civ)

 

[BrotherInJah]

Can you share raw data before aggregation of macedonia's uu etc?

 

[Legacy of Smiles]

Nice to see this is out, good job!

My ideas for a weighted average are still pretty poor (only idea really is exponents) but if you reverse your list so the higher the better you should have better luck with civs with 5 or more uniques.

I'll post more in depth later.

 

[monstercat]

Looks great, but surprising to see Indonesia so high. Will there still be elimination threads after GS with the new content?

 

[Lord Lakely]

This looks pretty representative. The caveat is that you will always get whack results if you try to tabulate every Civ's strengths. I tried rating the Civ abilities/strengths in Excel once and I ended up Australia, Russia and Arabia as the top three, all three of which are strong, but don't feel as the defacto strongest to me. Korea? Mid-tier according to my list because their only high score was for the Seowon. In reality? One of the of the strongest Civs in the game. Aztecs? High, but not the highest because other Civs have stronger abilities towards all the victory types. In reality? Arguably the best Dom/Science Civ, etc.

One of the hard parts with rating abilities is that it strips them of the context in which they can be good. Like, the Kampung is a great Tile Improvement but it doesn't actually *directly* help Indonesia win the game. Cathérine's Flying Squadron looks weak on paper, but it's an excellent ability to prevent the AIs from winning non-Religious victories in the hands of a human player. Playstyle also plays a part: I usually do really well with Khmer if I roll them, but struggle with Scythia.

 

[Naeshar]

I agree with the rankings.
It's a good display how cool or specific a civ is, with the most vanilla ones at the bottom, at least from the CFC community view. Georgia obviously has no strong points, America one (and is 5th last), while Rome stands out, not because its abilities are any special, simply impactful enough.
When looking at the ranking from top to bottom, I see a specific gameplay fading to a general (vanilla) one. It's like saying GJ, FXS! with these civs.
I wonder how will GS civs come out in a similar ranking, will you organize it again?

My guesses so far: (civ between)
Hungary 64 (Poland-Persia)
Maori 54 (Mongolia-Aztec)
Canada 80 (Korea-France)
Inca 66 (Mapuche-Netherlands)
Mali 76 (Germany-Scythia)
Sweden 87 (America-Norway)
It's more of an awesomeness comparison than a power comparison. Of course even the original scores will change, since the update brings new mechanics.

 

[Hans Castorp]

Interesting results. The only two big surprises to me are Korea, which I would have thought would have averaged out about the same as Japan, and Scotland, whose civ ability though strong obviously could not make up for very weak entries on the other criteria. Poland look curiously high. A 19 point gap on leader ability alone between Chandragupta and Gandhi seems, even allowing for Gandhi's ability being weak, a tad excessive. Chandragupta's ability isn't terribly amazing in itself. Indonesia, though I entirely understand. Playing them on an archipelago map currently, I am at 560 faith per turn in the Renaissance. It's a delight!

 

[Disgustipated]

ahh poor Georgia.

Indonesia seems way too high, but people really loved their unique infrastructure for some reason. I love it too, but it doesn't win you games. So that skewed their ranking quite a bit.

And Gorgo. Certainly a strong civ and leader, but hard to justify them being at #1. As you said, the exact position is highly debatable, but their rough position seems to match.

Poor Khmer, nobody seems to like them. I like to go reliquaries cultural victory with them. They aren't useful for much else unfortunately. I would still rank him above Gandhi who is just abysmal and only has a good uu going for him.

And America is a bit low given how powerful they are at cultural victory (and protecting themselves long enough to get it).

And Scotland. They are one of my favorite civs. Well if no one else likes you, I still do.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

All hail Georgia! Champion of the Georgia Tier! It takes a truly special civilization to be be considered the worst in everything.

 

[Wingednosering]

First of all, thanks for compiling these lists. I've been looking forward to this thread.

Second, I think this is about as accurate as can be expected without weighting. Example: 1x modifier for each civs best ability, 0.75x for next ability and so on and so forth. Even that would be pretty skewed though in cases like Korea.

Georgia really seems like it was an afterthought. Tamar's leader screen was the weakest in R&F, it looked like she had copy/pasted animations initially, the civ design is awful and their balance is all out of whack. It really fees like Georgia was included more as an inside community joke than a passionate need on the part of the developers, which is a real shame.

One other thing that isn't completely factored into these lists is availability of uniques. As an example, Indonesia is stupidly powerful with all of their abilities, but try assessing those same abilities on Pangaea. They certainly won't be top 3 that way.

Sometime I would really like to see an elimination thread for the most fun, since that rarely aligns with power.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Sometime I would really like to see an elimination thread for the most fun, since that rarely aligns with power.

I imagine Korea would be right at the bottom of the list.

 

[bbbt]

Georgia really seems like it was an afterthought. Tamar's leader screen was the weakest in R&F, it looked like she had copy/pasted animations initially, the civ design is awful and their balance is all out of whack. It really fees like Georgia was included more as an inside community joke than a passionate need on the part of the developers, which is a real shame.

Between Georgia and then Canada in GS they definitely give the vibe of "requested by marketing, not developer excitement"

 

[Plaidman]

I've been looking forward to your final compilation - well done Kmart_Elvis! I agree with your reasoning regarding UUs, I think only counting the better scoring unit makes the most sense.

Second, just because a civ is ranked poorly in one area doesn't reflect on the average truly. A perfect example are the Aztecs. Their leader ability, civ ability, and unique unit are rated quite high. Their building is abysmal. So if you take all 4 metrics into consideration, with equal weight, it really draws down their score which is rather unfair.

In order to accommodate cases like these, have you considered dropping each Civilization's worst category score? That would eliminate the need for complicated weighted scores, and it makes sense gameplay-wise: like you said, a civ's strategy plays on it's best uniques, and the worst ones generally get avoided.

 

[Alexadamz]

Between Georgia and then Canada in GS they definitely give the vibe of "requested by marketing, not developer excitement"

Like Brazil for Vanilla. I really enjoyed having my country in Civ V, and their late addition to the game was nice, in that they really sync with the BNW features. And then they tried to make them Vanilla Civ VI and they are really underwhelming - though the Amazon adjancies is really good for culture, as they get some of the best TS in game. Seing what they did with the Ottomans, who were a big gap many players felt in Civ VI, I can only but curse they didn't make Ottomans Vanilla and Brazil a GS Civ. But that is just a feeling from someone from the country. At least the music is good, really catchy, even if not as good the War Theme at Civ V.

All hail Georgia! Champion of the Georgia Tier! It takes a truly special civilization to be be considered the worst in everything.

Not everything! At least they have a nice theme, to which I am listening just now. Those polyphonic vocals are amazing!

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Not everything! At least they have a nice theme, to which I am listening just now. Those polyphonic vocals are amazing!

A fair point. Great theme.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I find Georgia perfect for playing. Other than the Golden Ages ability, she gets no relevant bonuses for my play style, which helps minimize the number of things I have to avoid doing so as not to gain an unfair advantage over the AI.

In many ways, the game's better with a combination of significantly stronger and weaker civs. When you're learning the game, you can play as the stronger ones. When you're more experienced, you can play as the weaker ones against the stronger ones. This would be easer still if the dev team would introduce a game set up option to exclude certain civs, so you could customize your opponents by relative strength without having to know exactly which opponents will be in the game.

 

[pgm123]

I find Georgia perfect for playing. Other than the Golden Ages ability, she gets no relevant bonuses for my play style, which helps minimize the number of things I have to avoid doing so as not to gain an unfair advantage over the AI.

In many ways, the game's better with a combination of significantly stronger and weaker civs. When you're learning the game, you can play as the stronger ones. When you're more experienced, you can play as the weaker ones against the stronger ones. This would be easer still if the dev team would introduce a game set up option to exclude certain civs, so you could customize your opponents by relative strength without having to know exactly which opponents will be in the game.

I think Georgia is a lot of fun to play. She's terrible, but fun.

Egypt is my least favorite civ and the only one I consistently re-roll. I'm surprised Khmer aren't a bit better by the results, but I don't think they're strong.

 

[Disgustipated]

I may actually play Georgia post GS release. Concentrate on getting a religion, convert city states, pump them with envoys to get suzerain, and win diplomatic victory. So at least they are viable for one other victory condition post GS. Still wish they would give the walls a little love though.

 

[pgm123]

I may actually play Georgia post GS release. Concentrate on getting a religion, convert city states, pump them with envoys to get suzerain, and win diplomatic victory. So at least they are viable for one other victory condition post GS. Still wish they would give the walls a little love though.

As someone who often builds every level of wall just to pass the time, I find Georgia's UI disappointing. Maybe as Medieval Walls more people would build them, but later walls need to be improved overall.