"Flavorful" Civs to play as

amphreded

Chieftain
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In your opinion, which civs have the best flavor? "Flavor" is dictated by the synergy of civilization's UA/UB/UU/UI, start bias, and preferred victory type, on any kind of map that adds to the civ's strength. Bonus point if the civ's unique traits allow players to benefit from playing a non-standard setups (such as tradition opener to fast NC) in higher level difficulty. For example, honor opening as The Huns for early war domination, or Sacred Site with Byzantium.

First and foremost, I'm an immortal player, so I'll rank my favorites based on this difficulty. Certain strategies, like Sacred Site, will not be as viable in Deity.

Flavorful and effective:

Venice - one city. commerce becomes extra powerful. buy city-states. though might not be the most fun to play as all the time (settling new cities is fun and challenging), gotta give it to Venice for being very unique.

Arabia - UA allows Arabia to spread home city's religion by double. this allows for your game to revolve around commerce and piety. can play peaceful but be aggressive with religion spreading - I even use missionaries and great prophets to convert other holy cities to Arabia's own religion. pissing people off with the spread of your religion? send them enough caravans and trade off luxury from bazaar to subside war incentives. in case war breaks out, camel archer, a very strong UU, comes live around the same time as religious expansion.

Flavorful but not as effective or as flavorful:

Polynesia - good civ on small continents, small islands and other water-based maps. ability to embark and sail through the oceans can potentially be very advantageous: finding ruins, city-states, other civs, natural wonders and prime city settling spots. Moais, in my opinion, isn't the best UI, but if lucky with coastal positioning of land, can be quite powerful and flavorful to commit.

Spain - not as flavorful as some other civs since finding natural wonders and have them be in good spots highly depend on luck. however, that feeling of discovering a good NW and the challenge of rushing a settler to secure the spot make it flavorful to me. conquistador is also an interesting unit that can serve many purposes.

Aztec - while Attila and Shaka might be more effective for domination, Montezuma's unique mix of culture/domination makes it flavorful. constant warring not only gains your units experience, but also adds to culture. jaguar is a great strategic UU. floating garden good too.

Shoshone - is effective but not as flavorful. pathfinder's ability to choose options out of ruins is very strong. but the flavor of Shoshone, for me, stems from Great Expanse UA. additional territory upon settling makes one want to open liberty instead of tradition. on any map with room to expand, Shoshone is fun to play since you can soak up tiles fast.

Assyria - siege tower coupled with UA to gain technology upon conquering a city makes Assyria flavorful. personally I don't find Assyria that effective in immortal since it's rather hard to maintain early war fares. however, Assyrian science/domination, like Aztec's culture/domination, is quite unique thus flavorful. royal library is hard to implement though.

Celts - pictish warriors to me are very flavorful, but too short-lived to be effective. upgrading pictish warriors, while keeping foreign territory bonus and no movement cost to pillage, loses its most flavorful aspect - gaining faith per kill. still, druidic lore is a good UA that guarantees you top choice for pantheon. settling new cities while considering forests for faith can be a minor, but fun element of game play.

Byzantium - extra belief creates many options for style of plays. can however fall behind on faith generation, thus not the most effective civ for what it's supposed to be.


Have yet to play / play enough to make judgement:

Austria, Germany, Persia, Indonesia, India, Mongolia, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, The Ottomans
 
Portugal would rank up there for me.

Just a nice wholesome Maritime Commerce Civ. tons of gold from trade routes and awesome exploring with the Nau, not to mention the extra gold from it. Then the Feitoria, which is an excellent UI.

I feel impressions of new world exploration, colonial enterprise and gold coins clinking when playing Portugal. Its kind of hard to describe I guess, but all their unique elements just mesh incredibly well.
 
@fallout3dc:
I've played many games with Inca before, and he's very strong in mountainous maps. I didn't list the Inca in the flavorful list because while terrace farms potentially give huge boost to food, hyper growth doesn't really bend game play in a unique way. UA units ignore terrain costs on hills is very good, and can potentially be flavorful in times of war - but I've mostly played peaceful / hyper growth with the Inca, so cannot judge how fun it would actually be.

@Astennu
Been meaning to give Portugal another go. Nau seems really unique. Portugal's unique elements do indeed seem to mesh well, and link well to the actual history of Portugese colonialism.
 
@fallout3dc:
I've played many games with Inca before, and he's very strong in mountainous maps. I didn't list the Inca in the flavorful list because while terrace farms potentially give huge boost to food, hyper growth doesn't really bend game play in a unique way. UA units ignore terrain costs on hills is very good, and can potentially be flavorful in times of war - but I've mostly played peaceful / hyper growth with the Inca, so cannot judge how fun it would actually be.


Inca 'starts' with production, and then gains massive food. You don't consider that as making him a top-tier civ? He also has access to many wonders as building by them is perfect. He plays so well with Tradition and internal caravans. Huge economy for buying science buildings, produce early buildings in 1/3 of the time, growth comes ON tiles with heavy production already, observatories, easy 4 settlers by turn 60 with NC by turn 80. UA units ignoring terrain cost makes him I would argue one of the most versatile civs in the entire game. You can use that aggressively, or even defensively. The only thing not going for them is that terrible archer replacement, but otherwise they perfectly synerize.
 
Indonesia--while its playstyle is a bit too random for me, Kris Swordsman promos and "spice island" luxes for building offshore are certainly flavorful.
 
Might I suggest the Zulu? I literally feel like I'm an African Warlord playing with him. Really the swarm mindset of elite troops is quite a different play style from other warring civs.
 
Yes, Zulu are awesome. It's kinda fun having 3-movement infantry melee that take down cities and troops without ranged or siege support. The extra throw and double xp makes them elite ludicrously fast. The Ikanda support encourages flanked movements en masse and chews through enemy. The -50% support to melee always encourages me to double my melee task force over other games and churn out as many impi as possible. Upgrades translate straight to rifleman so might as well.

Another favorite: England. Longbow, Ship of the Line, +2 movement to ALL boats, it's terrifying and all works together seamlessly for sea invasions. Drop a Longbow on shore on some remote hill and he can hit the city, Ship of the Line can zoom in with +7 movement and devastate coastal cities. Longbows converge on inland cities and burn them. Yes please! Extra spy is less flavorful but pretty useful for a warmongering game as it keeps you up in science if you get behind.
 
My top five current favorites in this topic:

1. Incas
2. Zulus
3. Arabia
4. Sweden
5. Songhai
 
Inca 'starts' with production, and then gains massive food. You don't consider that as making him a top-tier civ? He also has access to many wonders as building by them is perfect. He plays so well with Tradition and internal caravans. Huge economy for buying science buildings, produce early buildings in 1/3 of the time, growth comes ON tiles with heavy production already, observatories, easy 4 settlers by turn 60 with NC by turn 80. UA units ignoring terrain cost makes him I would argue one of the most versatile civs in the entire game. You can use that aggressively, or even defensively. The only thing not going for them is that terrible archer replacement, but otherwise they perfectly synerize.
I think OP is asking more for unique playstyles rather than top-tier civs. Sure Incas are a top civ, but their gameplay doesn't stand out that much - it's just your "standard routine done better". Look at OP's opinion on the Shoshone.

OT: I think this thread may help. Personally I think the most "flavored" civs are Venice and unit-spamming civs. Assyria should also be quite unique and effective on Immortal.
 
Hey thanks for the link to the other Sagax. And yes, I'm not asking of opinions for top-tier civs, but rather civs that are fun and effective enough to play non-standard style.
 
Polynesia not as effective? Polynesia on Archipelago can get, with decent terrain, a peaceful 3-city tourism of 800+, and more if you can get a lot of wonders. With just hotels you can get to 250.

I think 400 culture a turn counts as flavorful :p. Plus, there's nothing more fun than starting with 4 scouts and exploring the whole world while everyone else wanders around their little islands.
 
"Polynesia on Archipelago"

- proceeds to explain how Polynesia can be game-breakingly powerful on Archipelago.

changing the map type is, in my opinion, cheating. I do love Polynesia though, just for the rafts entering ocean.
 
Out of all civs Venice has been good to me so far (once I understood where to focus).

I got sucked into building all the wonders though, because it's easy when you're ahead in tech and money. Mercenaries are useful in early game, very cheap and strong. Happiness is not an issue. But most fun is getting all the gold discount buildings/policies and then having lots of gold to buy things and merchants of venice conducting double gold trade missions or buying city states. Much different from usual struggle of having to build your own cities (city states are always located in good positions)
 
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