I'm trying to play thru all the civs 1 at a time to see how the balance is - so far I have played (on the current version 0.15) all the Good civs, so here is my take on how they played (all games on Prince, Aggressive AI, Permanent Alliances enabled, Standard world, High Sea Level, all victory conditions enabled, Continents):
Bannor: Won around 450 by domination, using Sabithiel. I built 5 cities quickly, built up my military and beat the Calabim down (they only had 2 cities, cut off by me from the rest of the continent). The Elohim decided to attack me while I was consolidating and building up my infrastructure and took one of my cities before I made peace. I researched so that I founded the Order, went on a Crusade and spent around 120 years just fighting until I conquered the whole continent (allying with the Sheiam, who went Order and were then Good like me). I used Flagbearers (one in each stack), but the Demagogs I didn't even try because I didn't like the idea of losing them when I changed from Crusade. (Maybe they could be changed so they are always Enraged and die after they attack instead, to make them something like medieval cruise missiles? Give them some collateral damage as well, tone down their strength and then there'd be a case for using them in bulk to overwhelm the defense like a horde of, well, fanatics.)
Anyway once I crushed my continent I loaded up some Queen o' the Lines with a hero stack and a bunch of national units, and invaded the primitive Khazad, thereby triggering domination. All in all, pretty easy except for the backstabbing Elohim at the beginning.
PROS: Donal Lugh is an all-around good hero to have, especially with the recruiting that let me roll on with my offensives a couple times when usually I'd have to pause to wait for reinforcements to come up and secure my conquests. The strong defense came in handy when I was at war with three different civs at once, as I could hold on two fronts while demolishing my third enemy, ending up defeating my opponents in detail. Of course the only reason I was fighting three civs in the first place was because I was on Crusade and couldn't make peace...
CONS: None really, I enjoyed playing them and think they are an ideal war-mongering choice.
MALAKIM:
Another domination victory, this one near 500. I just slowly oozed my way to first place by chipping away at my neighbors, then overwhelmed them one at a time in set-piece invasions. I went for Runes, got it, and everyone on my continent converted to it, while across the sea the Ljolsfar started Leaves, and the Hippus went Octopus Overlords. So I had time to build up a big tech lead over everyone except my designated alliance partner, and once I had Bambur jacked up I just used him along with the Nilhorn giants (instead of catapults) and the Baron to beat everyone else into jelly. The continent was big enough that as soon as the Kuriotates accepted my perma-alliance, we won domination without ever crossing the sea except on exploration missions. I was helped quite a bit by Orcus ravaging my neighbours, and I killed him with Bambur when he made the mistake of coming to try the same on me, which made Bambur pretty well unstoppable.
PROS: Not much other than being Financial, which along with Runes makes you plenty rich.
CONS: Not fleshed out really yet, so no Cons as yet.
ELOHIM:
Domination around 500 again, using Varn. I went Runes again, built a bunch of Soldiers of Kilmorph and declared war on the Calabim who had just founded Octopus. Somehow they had stacks of Drown already, but luckily I was holding a forested hill on the border while waiting for my giants to come up before invading, so I quickly reoriented and fought defensively until they were exhausted, then counter-attacked and took one city before making peace. I then built craploads of Axes and a Bambur again (Bambur is the shiznit indeed), and cleaned out the Calabim's other three cities. I then went into builder mode until I got Corlindale, allied with the Amurites and proceeded to crush both the Grigori and the Doviello in short order. I wanted to try to get a Tower of Mastery victory because I had plenty of mana nodes and was only missing 4 types after building the Soul Forge, but after I saw how long it would take to build the Rites of Oghma I forgot that notion, built up a huge army and invaded the Clan's lands over the ocean and took a couple cities from the Khazad as well to dominate.
PROS: The Defensive trait more or less saved me, as otherwise the Calabim Drown would've probably taken one or two cities and I would have been out of the game before it really began. Corlindale is not bad, although I certainly would never sacrifice him just to make peace - if you are that badly off you need to resort to this, you are undoubtedly going to lose anyway, so you might as well go down fighting... The spell is a good idea, it's just I doubt anyone would ever use it because losing a hero is such a psychological crusher. Maybe if he just lost all his XP instead?
CONS: Not really fleshed out, so no Cons apply as yet, except that I didn't use the Monks because by the time they were available, I already had plenty of Paramanders - I guess they'd be ok if you were using a religion that didn't have holy warrior types, but then I'd be beelining for iron and making cheap Macemen instead. Maybe if they started with Mobility 1 there'd be a role for them...
LUCHUIRP:
Another domination victory around the early 600's, although I could have finished it much faster - I just wanted to see what the late game Golems were like, because I had never played these guys before, ever. I played as Garrim, and this was by far the easiest game to win. I went Runes yet again, was by the Calabim yet again, and this time I waited until I had Wood Golems, and I just buried them with numbers. Once they were down, I sent Barnaxus up North where the dragon was and had him level up against barbs coming out to raid. After he got to Combat 4, I churned out Iron Golems from my capital and sent good ol' Bambur out in one stack with the Baron, and Typhoid Mary with another stack, and we took out the Bannor with the help of Kuriotates in short order, although Sabby had the Wood Elf and some Druids that were running around taking settlements from the K's until I sent a stack of Iron Golems to end that foolishness - by this time Barny had Combat 5, so my Iron Golems were effectively 18 strength and I didn't even have to bother with sieging, mostly the golems would attack at around 55-60 percent even against dug-in crossbowmen in cities, so I could use the heros just to pick off anyone dumb enough to run around in the open.
As the K-man and I were at around 2200 points when our perma-alliance came thru, and the Grigori were in third with around 1300, the game was more or less already over. I just dawdled around until I got as far as the Bone and Arcane Golems, then filled up some Queens and busted up the Illians for kicks, thereby putting us over the top.
PROS: As long as it levelled up Barny before going to war, even the AI could manage to win wars quickly without much in the way of strategy. These guys get good units, and they get them from start to finish, so this is another fine war-mongering civ. I never made one mage 'cause I figured I wouldn't need them due to my melee units being so overpowering, and I was right.
CONS: Barnaxus is pretty weak so you have to be careful and it takes time to level him up. If you aren't lucky enough to have a barb city near you might lose him to an astute or lucky enemy (I know I'd happily lose a whole stack to kill him if I was on the other side). The Clay Golems (workers) take a long time to build, so you do lag a bit in the very early game if you try to spam cottages. I don't think they would synergize well with Octopus Overlords, although Leaves or the Order might be ok. (Ashen Veil is not an option for anyone that I've found as yet).
KURIOTATES
A cultural win in the early 600's - I dunno if you could pull off a domination win, even with perma-alliances unless you gave all your conquests to your partner, which rather takes all the fun out of it.
I built only my three main cities and no settlements, putting one city due east of my start and another SW of the capital on the ocean. I spent a long time thinking about city placement so that I would get full advantage of the 3 space radius and be able to build really big cities. I was near a river with floodplains on the start, so I moved south two spaces so that I would have SEVEN such floodplains in my hinterlands for the capital, with practically everything else being forest or forested hills. I built my second city between two gold-bearing hills, with lots of forest and hills to the west and south, and plains and desert (to be terraformed and forested later) to the east and north. The last city, on the ocean, was backed with plains and couple hills, with jungle to the south that had dye, rice and reagents.
I figured Leaves was the way to go as I wanted to pump my cities so that they would be utter monsters, and with all those floods nearby my capital I had enough cottages to make founding Leaves first quite easy. My first Scout got lucky, found Animal Husbandry, and got enough XP to get Subdue Animals, and I captured lions, tigers, and even a Bear (once my Scout was upgraded to a Hunter on that last one). So I was able to skip some early defense buildup and put animals as defenders instead, which further accelerated my growth.
I beelined for the Nature techs and changed to Guardian of Nature, after which I had enough forests for happiness that I could just make those cities grow, grow, grow. Just after I made a defensive pact with the Elohim, the Sidar AND the Lanun got into a war with us, but I already had the Baron and Kyra along with the giants, so I held off the Lanun to the North with axemen in the forests while my heroes, and some archers of leaves barely managed to keep out a huge stack of around 15 rangers and Soldiers of Kilmorph that Morgoth had apparently been itching to use on me. He did ravage my whole western kingdom, and he actually was down to fighting my Adepts as defenders when he threw his stack at my city (Kyra and the Baron were both worn down and I had retreated them out of the city to heal, and I had had to use Ravenous Werewolves as stop-gap city defenders along with my archers and a couple hastily redirected axemen and the adepts).
However, he did fail in his effort, and one of my werewolves now had the Orthus Axe he had been using. I killed the remaining Rangers with Kyra and a freshly minted Yvain, and then slaughtered every last one of his invaders with the pumped-up wolves. It was then time for the offensive, and I burnt down his nearest city, after which he sued for peace. I then turned my wolves against the Lanun, took one of their cities as well, made them pay me well to stop attacking, and gave the captured city to the Elohim.
Both the Lanun and the Sidar only had 4 cities each to start, so this put them each at three with nowhere to expand, and they were essentially toothless thereafter. The Infernal were down near the south pole, with the Elohim completely blocking them from me, and the Illians were off on a small continent with the dragon in their jungle. I perma-allied with the Elohim and while the other 4 civs fought amongst each other I grew the cities and pumped out the Great People. I wanted to hold off winning until I made the Gold Dragon, so I didn't touch the culture slider until the end-game and deliberately left the sea-side city languishing in the culture race to do so.
I built Genesis and used my druids to make lots of forests (and eventually Ancient Forests) on grasslands, and my capital at the end of the game had a size of 47, my military city (to the east) was 33, and the seaside city was 32. The capital had enough great people that with the proper civics it was putting out 943 culture points and 174 great people points per turn, every turn, and that was when IT WAS GENERATING SCIENCE, NOT CULTURE!!!!
Anyway, I built the dragon, used him against the barb dragon to level him up a bit, then sent him to run around the Illian continent and raze all their improvements. I was hoping to level him up really high, however, since none of the Illian units were divine (he had no religion at all - I had founded Leaves and the Cult, the Elohim founded the Order, Morgoth founded Runes and eventually Octopus Overlords, and the Infernal founded the Veil - NONE of which ever spread to any of his cities), none of them could resist fear and the Dragon barely ever was successfully attacked. So I eventually got bored, cranked up the culture and put an end to it.
PROS: Early game you can dominate the tech race no problem. The dragon is utterly cool and a great pillager. You can make really big cities. You can get lots and lots of Great People, and build lots of wonders. The best builder civ by far.
CONS: You will lose the tech race starting in the middle of the game and it is hopeless by the end. The dragon is way down the tech tree, so if you go for cultural victory you will never see him unless you deliberately delay your win, and if you are going for a non-cultural win you would be better off with pretty well any other civilization. If you start in a crappy spot, you are pretty well gimped because you need to get your three main cities going quickly to take advantage of your strengths and push out your borders.
OVERALL:
The Luchuirp and the Bannor are both very well thought out and fun to play, although the Luchuirp have a decided edge in power. The Malakim and Elohim are pretty vanilla, and it shows in their gameplay. The Kuriotates are an interesting change and challenge, but you essentially are limited in your victory options with them.
BALANCE SUGGESTIONS:
The Luchuirp need some kind of counter to their golems - maybe an anti-golem promotion available their enemies to give them some kind of chance, kind of like how the vampires can be countered with the Undead-slaying promotion?
Bambur is by far the most useful religious hero - he comes early enough and is strong enough to dominate the middle game, after which the end game becomes moot. Both the OO and the Leaves need to have their early heroes be as good as Bambur and as easily available - maybe Kyra could still be on a horse, but have spells as well as or instead of her withdrawal promotions, because right now she is pretty well useless except as a mobile reserve inside your borders. Saverous, while good, comes long after Bambur has already promoted himself well past Saverous' level, and the AI seems to have some reluctance to build him as well - I didn't see him even once in the five games I played. As far as the early heroes of the Veil and the Order go, again the horsemen are pretty marginally useful, and you have to wait so long to get them that "early" is only that way compared to the extremely late "late" heroes... I'd rather have the cavalry heros all slinging spells, so at least you feel the wait was worth it.
Cavalry overall are relegated to near uselessness - I never build any (except for heroes), and never miss them. The AI likes to use them ineptly to pillage, so that my units can get some easy experience, so I guess it isn't all bad. They'd be far more useful if they got automatic bonuses of one type or another - I was thinking maybe Cover promotions so they could be used against archers, or if they ignored terrain costs they might actually manage to do more than laughable damage to infrastructure.
Rather than a hard limit on the Kuriotates main cities, how about forcing a 1 city - 2 settlement ratio on them? Or make it so that certain techs increase the limit, so maybe they start with 2 cities but have a possible 5 or 6? As it is, they are powerful in the early game but weak after that - while the Bannor and the Luchuirp are powerful all the way thru, which doesn't quite seem right.
The naval component seems kind of neglected - other than Krakens, which are awesome but are rarely seen. Maybe make Queens of the Lines straight warships at a 9 strength and give them Bombard, add Frigates at 7 strength but a couple more speed, and automatic Sentry promotions as scouts and escorts, and bump up the carrying capacity of Galleons to six units like the Queens were. Then add Turtles which can be summoned by Leaves civs and act like strength 6 submarines; make it so you can promote level 5 Drown into Sea Zombies which can walk on the ocean and have 7 strength, or build them by sacrificing any level 5 unit to the sea; Runes civs get Dwarven Submersibles which are essentially faster and weaker subs than Turtles but can carry 1 unit; the Order gets Castles of the Sea which are very slow but fire off Meteors with a 2 range, and the Veil get Dread Noughts which are essentially vortexes which have a 12 strength but are destroyed after they attack.
