Ok I've noticed that not a lot happends in this subforum so I'm going to try and kickstart it in the easiest way possible!
I'm going to list all the leaders in the game and give you my general idea on what's good, what's bad and what's ugly. Also a suggested solution.
The general idea would be that 'Good' is powerful, 'Bad' is weak and ugly is just poor/boring mechanics. I'll probably find some other point I'll have to bring up halfway into this and this whole Clint Eastwood thing will fail
anyways this will take a lot of work so I'm going to be real pissed off if people don't respond(and probably if people respond aswell) so just keep that in mind
American
Good: Both the UU and the UB are really solid.
Bad: The UA is pretty mediocre/weak.
Ugly: The UA can't carry the earlygame until you get the UU/UB.
Solution: Add something to the UA//Replace it to make earlygame less boring
Arabian
Good: The UB is decent.
Bad: The UA and the UU
Ugly: The UB and the UU lost a lot of power from vanilla, something that the UA doesn't make up for.
Solution: Replace the UA, make the UU fill a role other than being a mounted bowman that can take a hit.
Assyrian
Good: The UB
Bad: -
Ugly: -
Discussion: I just don't play Assyria enough to make valid judgementcalls, but everything about the civ seems solid enough. Maybe the UA could use an additional effect since it is rather situational but I don't really know.
Austrian
Good: UU/UB/UA
Bad: -
Ugly: Boring/slow earlygame because of startingbias and the fact that all the uniques are later midgame focused.
Solution: Honestly no idea.
Aztec
Good: UB
Bad: UA
Ugly: Probably the civ with the harshest requirements for settling, if you don't settle next to freshwater, your city is useless.
Solution: Raise the UA numbers a small bit and (if possible) make the culture from kills go to your city with the least culture (or split on all if that isn't possible) for borderexpansion.
Don't fix the problem, the cityplacement issue is completely fine as long as the UA is adjusted to make up for you placing your cities in worse locations.
Babylonian
Good: -
Bad: -
Ugly: The UB is boring and doesn't add enough. The UU is boring and doesn't have any unique promotions to carry on when upgraded. The academy nerfs made the UA pretty boring/weak.
Solution: Give the UU some fun promotion that carries on when upgraded.
Give the UB some fun effect that makes it more than just a slighly better wall, maybe a scientistslot or something.
UA shift the power of the UA, lower the bonus to great scientist generation but make the great scientists stronger, give a bonus to academies and a bonus when bulbing.
Brazilian
Good: The UI (The UA)
Bad: The UU
Ugly: The shift in culture gameplay (nerfs to hotels/airports) have made the UI pretty weak for tourism VC (But from what I've gathered it still looks like a really strong UI). The UU is just straight up boring, it has one of the minuteman's three promotions. UA suffers from being extremely weird in the current game. You can get close to infinite goldenages later on (I got up to 240 turns one game I played, and that was 240 turns remaining, no clue how long I had been in a golden age by that point). That leads to the UA being awful early on and really strong later on.
Solution: The UU is the absolute latest UU in the game if you count techs needed to unlock it requiring like 10 techs more than the Panzer (realisticly it would be more like 2 or 3 because most techs are earlygame ones that the panzer can skip). It really needs more power and more uniqueness to make up for being that lategame.
Byzantine
Good: UB/UA
Bad: -
Ugly/Discussion: The UB comes to late to help you guarantee your UA to actually work. UA is dependant on you actually getting a religion. The UU is actually really strong, but I am hesitant to put it in the 'Good' box mostly because its effects doesn't carry over at all and I think UUs like that are just boring.
Solution: Lower the power of the UU somewhat and give it a promotion that carries over when upgraded. Maybe add a +1faith/turn to the capital, but I'm not sure. Removing the pietytree from ancient era would completely wreck Byzantium.
Carthaginian
Good: UB/UA
Bad: UU
Ugly: The UA might be too powerful atm, not 100% sure but it just gives you too many things. The UU is still pretty damn boring.
Solution: Add something to the UU to make it more interesting, extra sight/movespeed, ability to enter oceantiles, ability to heal outside friendly territory, something like that. Maybe remove mountaincrossing from the UA.
Celtic
Good: -
Bad: UU
Ugly/Discussion: I don't like the fact that their UA just goes obsolete unless you decide to not improve tiles within your territory. I don't like the great musician points on the UB, it doesn't make much sense to get 2 random points per turn on any city outside of your capital, also great musicians are pretty damn weak at the moment unless you're going for tourism victory(and if you are, then you probably don't want to get them earlygame either) The UU just feels weak to me, no real idea why.
Solution: Make the UA count improved foresttiles aswell, or add some additional effect to it. Change the UB back to how it used to be or to something else. Give some love to the UU, CEP gave it double movement in hills, and that made sense to me, but anything else would probably work aswell.
Chinese
Good: -
Bad: Uniques
Ugly/discussion: Here is the deal, I was actually going to write the UB as 'Good' until i checked the civpedia while writing this and realized it had been nerfed, now I don't like it at all. The UU doesn't need as low of a ranged combatstrength as it has tbh. The UA isn't bad but it feels like it kinda forces you into a specific role.
Solution: Buff the UB, as it is the only part of China that isn't entirely warfocused. Raise the RCS of the UU and change the promotion from attack twice to the standard logistics(no idea why they have different names honestly) and nerf logistics if any reduced power is required.
Add something interesting to the UA, maybe a Yieldbonus on citadels or something like that.
Danish
Good: -
Bad: -
Ugly: Don't get me wrong, I love all the Danish uniques. It is just extremely hard to point one out as being really strong, maybe the UA but it by itself doesn't win games. There are a few things I would change however.
Solution: I would make the extra movementpoint on the Berserker carry over when upgraded. I would also give him the embarked defense promotion making you able to attack from sea with them without straight up dying to a cityattack (since AI now actually target embarked units). These buffs would be to counteract the fact that you can't upgrade your warriors all the way to berserkers anymore, something that all swordsmen/longswordsmen suffers from.
I would move the Jelling stones earlier in the techtree, maybe to writing or optics, but that's just a personal thing, the NW by itself is solid but it just feels worse than the other unique NW-replacement. I just don't know.
Dutch
Good: UI
Bad: UI
Ugly: The Dutch suffers from not having any idea what they want to do, or how to do it. They have a Naval UU but they don't have ocean startingbias so that one may end up being useless if they start in the middle of a continent. They have a UI that goes from being completely worthless to completely off the hook overpowered depending on your startinglocation. They have a UA that starts of solid enough and turns completely useless by the renaissance era. All in all this civ feels like Spain MK2, completely RNGdependant to actually get anything done. (and RNG hates me so I'm biased)
Solution: Rework polders into a coastal only improved farm. Give Dutch ocean startingbias. Rework the UA or make it scale somehow. (Don't get me wrong the UA is still a lot better than the BnW one but a lot weaker than the GnK one)
Egyptian
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly: Ehm, where do I start? The UU have nothing that carries over when upgraded leading to the interesting situation where it is actually better not to upgrade it. Yes sure you lose out on 2 RCS but you gain 1 movespeed and you save one horse. The UB I still have no actual idea what it does because it isn't written in the civpedia from the looks of it it is a temple without maintenance but which gives people extra gold when they conquer you. The UA have that interesting effect of actually being useless at both the easiest and the hardest difficulty settings, and instead being useful somewhere in the middle. Explanation would be that you don't have any problems grabbing all the wonders in the game at settler, and you don't stand a chance to get any of them on deity. Somewhere in the middle it makes you get a few wonder that you would normally have missed, and that is quite solid, but I'm honestly not sure this is enough. The extra production per city helps.
Solution: Add some promotions to the UU to make it more viable to upgrade. Make the UB do something, or if it does something please add it to the civpedia. I have no idea what to do with the UA, it is iconic and with the removal of the tradition policy it is unique. Maybe make it give you some yieldbonuses on NWs?
English
Good: UU
Bad: ?
Ugly: The combination of the UU and the UA makes England close to unstoppable or atleast that was how it was before the cruiser was added. The UU suffers from the exact same thing that the Egyptian UU suffered from, it got plenty of power but all of it is stuck on the unit, no promotions at all. This used to mean that England could crush anyone and dominate the naval game until battleships showed up almost three eras later. I still don't like the UB giving less production than the building it replaces. I also think the UB is too weak for how late into the game it actually shows up, but after playing a few coalstarved games I can instead say that it completely depends on maptype. The UA is really solid if you're playing a watermap, the extra spies are nice aswell but they don't really make up for Englands general weakness on non-water maps.
Solution: Shift power on the UU from raw strength to promotions. Buff the UB, have it make up for Englands lack of power on landbased maps.
Ethiopian
Good: -
Bad: UU, UA
Ugly: I'm going to say it right here so people don't get the wrong idea, the UB is not bad. But I honestly don't like it, I don't like any monument-replacements mostly because by their default role you're going to build them as a first building in every city anyways which means they can't have any real power.
The UU tries really hard to be defensive in a game where you can only be defensive if you're ahead.
The UA used to be all about defense aswell but in the last few patches it did a complete 180 and is now all about bullying your weak neighbors into giving you a free golden age. All in all the UA makes no sense to me at all.
Discussion: Defensive focus would be nice if you had something to fall back on, that puts you ahead of others. But Ethiopia just doesn't have that.
Solution: Add plenty of power to either the UB or the UA or both to make the defensive bonuses and focus actually worth it.
French
Good: UI
Bad: -
Discussion I just don't know how many times poor Napoleon have had to 180 his playstyle. It used to be all about conquering as many random puppets as possible and wait for your culturevictory to kick in/or just keep beating people up. BnW then changed that focus to instead being all about building wonders and strategically place your cities so your UI could earn you plenty of culture/tourism and pray to the deity of your choice that the antiquity sites didn't completely mess your planning up.
Our lord-commander then added an extra line to his UA which lead to his new playstyle, where he beats up his neighbors and steal their lunchmoney while simultaniously trying to build wonders in your capital(because cities that you conquer are not nearly cool enough to host your plunder). Yes as you might have realized by now, Napoleon is now a renaissance-viking.
Ugly: I never liked the city of light UA, and for that exact reason I dislike the new one. I don't like how you are forced to have your wonders in Paris, if you build Paris in a poor location with bad production you've pretty much screwed your UA over. The musketeer is old and he haven't aged well, he is now just 4 CS ahead of the unit he replaces, which makes him pretty much useless. I have yet to decipher the techtree and is therefore not onehundred percent sure about what yields the UI provides.
Solution: Less CS more promotions for the UU. Maybe let the UA work in all cities, but I'm honestly not sure it that is fitting. It just mostly makes me sad how the Asthetics finisher works in all cities. Othervise adding something for the earlygame to the UA would make sense, maybe 1 culture per city?
German
Good: UA/UB
Bad: UU
Ugly: I really don't like the UU, it arrives late, it doesn't actually do much when it arrives, it has zero synergy with the rest of the civ.
Beautiful: The UB is glorious the synergy with the UA is also fantastic. It gives you a clear path to diplovictory but doesn't force you to go for it, indeed you can just as easily go for any other victory-type as extra production and power in the worldcongress never hurts.
Solution: I honestly still want to replace the panzer, since it neither makes sense historically or is very useful. If that fails I would move its extra power and movespeed to promotions so it actually can remain relevant when upgraded to modern armor.
Greek
Good: UA
Bad: UU/UB
Ugly: Here is the deal. Greece have always had a very solid UA, and it is still solid, even more so now after a random buff it recieved but and the but is as always huge. Neither the UU nor the UB actually has anything to do with the UA or eachother it is like one can't really decide on what to do with Greece. The UU is focused on conquest (not that it really does a good job on that however), the UB is focused on tourism, I think, while the UA still is the solid diplo-powerhouse it has always been.
Unlike Bismarck who is focused but flexible, Alexander is diverse and inflexible(is that even a word?). The worst part of this is that Greece isn't a bad civ, the UA just carries the entire civ on its mighty shoulders.
Solution: The UB needs a buff, badly. right now it is an ampitheatre with its great slot of writing filled and with an extra 1 gold maintenance (and let me point this out, unless you're actually going for tourism victory, imho, great works that doesn't provide a themingbonus are pointless). I'd give somekinda buff to the UU aswell, as I don't think the great generals promotion is that useful, especially on a earlygameunit that you mostly use to clear out barbs.
Hunnic
Good: UI
Bad: -
Discussion: The only reason why the UA and UU aren't included in the 'Good' is because it would serve to diminish how great the UI actually is.
The huns are a complete powerhouse bent on worlddomination. They are like the old huns only instead of falling off after the ancient era they stay relevant. The UI opened up so many new possible playstyles for the huns that I've actually managed to finish two games as them, something that I've only done before on small pangeamaps. I dislike warmongering, but I don't dislike playing as the huns anymore, which should give you some insight into what I'm talking about.
Solution: Don't change what isn't broken.
Incan
Good: UI/UA
Bad: UU
Discussion: Their startingbias along with their UA/UI almost always give Inca a great start, and in civ great starts usually translates into great games. Nearby hills gives Inca great production which their UI translates into great food and their UA translates into great defense and cheap cityconnections. It is quite impossible to attack into hills against someone whose army moves like scouts. That being said I honestly believe their UU to be pathetic. Yes I bet you've all crushed legions of units with your slingers, or gotten crushed by legions of slingers. But that's just the thing, a normal archer could do the same thing, the only thing that makes the slinger great is the fact that it can move quickly in hills, something that all incan units do(with the exception of mounted archers, because reasons). The withdraw-ability isn't bad but it sure wouldn't be enough to carry this unit if it was part of any other civ.
Solution: Throw some other promotion on the UU to make it more viable. Make the freedom buffed farm policy work on terracefarms
Indian
Good: UA
Bad: ?
Ugly: The truth is I don't like either the UB or the UU at the moment, they are both rather underwhelming. The UA is awesome and fits my playstyle perfectly, It feels like a better verson of the celtic UA. The UB just doesn't provide that much, +1 production/food feels rather underwhelming, as does the increased maintenance. +1 food on floodplains feels rather situational, but I could buy it.
The UUs great sellingpoint is that it can walk two steps in hills or forest/jungle but not forested/jungled hills, but more likely, move one step and still fire. And while that is rather impressive it doesn't quite qualify for a goldstar in my book since I'm guessing that promotion doesn't carry over when upgraded(since it isn't actually a promotion). It also have slightly more RCS and even more CS making it somewhat less vulnerable to stuff trying to kill it.
Solution: A small buff to the UB aswell as lowering its maintenance would help.
Adding stuff that carries over on upgrade to the UU.
Indonesian
Good: UB/(UA)
Bad: UU/(UA)
Ugly: Indonesia really suffers from being Indonesia. The UA is great when you actually get it to work and somewhat mediocre when you don't get it to work.
The UU with its weird randompromotion varies between being pretty good to being terrible. On average it is better than a swordsman, but in my opinion the average is too weak for a unique unit.
Solution: Removing the citylimit of the UA would help. Adding something else to the UU would also help.
Iroquois
Good: UB/(UA)
Bad: UU
Ugly: First of all, the UU isn't that bad. It just really suffers from the changed upgradepath. The main reason I put it in there is because it just is straight up worse than the jaguar even counting the woodsmanpromotion that it gets from the UA, not from itself. The UB and UA are sadly extremely terraindependant but that is fine since they are both pretty powerful. Automated workers completely butchers your roadnetwork however so it would be nice to add a line for roads being maintenance free on top of forest (in friendly territory) if only to not lose gold because the workers wont stop building roads.
Solution: Add some buff to the UU. Make the UA work for civilian units aswell (woodsman promotion)
Japanese
Good
UA?)
Bad:?
Ugly/Discussion: Japan, in my opinion suffers for lack of synergy and mediocre uniques.
The UB is an armory-replacement with mediocre buffs and increased maintenance. It is also interestingly enough placed on the opposite side of the techtree from the UU so that you can't make use of how they would normally unlock at the same tech.
The UU is straight up better than the unit you upgrade it to with 1 higher CS. It also possesses the imho mediocre abilty to spawn great generals faster and is also able to build fishingboats, for some unknown reason.
The UA is the main sellingpoint of the civ, making your units slightly better at fighting while also providing some culture from searesources/atolls something that was added to create some synergy with the fishingboatbuilding samurai I guess.
Solution: Lower the maintenance on the UB, raise the other things it provides.
Rework the UU, the two alternatives I see are:
1. Lower the CS to 21(base) and add a some really powerful promotion(s) like possibly blitz, I'd also replace the great generals promotion with something useful like drill.
2. Keep the CS at 25, make it upgrade directly to Fusiliers, replace Great generals promotion with something more useful.
Korean
Good: UA/UB
Bad:UU
Ugly: The UA might now have changed but it is worse that it is in the basegame, which honestly is great considering basegame Korea was extremely overpowering. The UB is good, possibly too good. Not compared to other UBs but considering the unique circumstances. Vanilla Korea had two UUs that were both designed to ruin your day, they were both terrible and made sure you couldn't conquer cities or explore the ocean. All to balance out the fact that Koreas UA was so extremely powerful. Now replacing one of those UUs with an actual good UB might be overdoing it, but I'm confident we can make it work somehow.
Solution: If a nerf is needed I'd look at that weird mini-reserach-agreement you get when constructing sciencebuildings in your capital. It is weird, out of place and really isn't needed.
Mayan
Good: The UA
Bad: The UU
Ugly: The Mayans recently got a huge buff when Gazebo moved the their UAs trigger to calender rather than theology. I had no idea how big it would actually be tbh but I managed to fill out the entire calender (grab all different great people) before I quit the game and actually realized that it does reset when it is filled out (something I never actually managed to do in the basegame). It was getting rather late in the game (and the way time works in the game makes you get great people exponentially slower the later the game goes on. Because every turn is worth less time and every turn is worth more gameplay later on) so I'm not sure how many more GP I would have gotten from it. Anyways it is totally awesome now.
The UB is boring, both because of the effects and because of it being a shrine. If anyone could find a way to actually make an earlygame building interesting, please do tell me.
The UU is complete garbage, I have no idea how it actually stayed in the game for this long but it really needs to go. It's an archer-replacement available one tech earlier and costing 20% less production to build, that's it.
Solution: Seriously buff the UU with some interesting unique promotions, if you feel that is overpowered then move it back to hunting, honestly this is probably the worst UU in the game, mostly because you can actually find uses for the Hwacha.
Again, if there is some way to make the pyramid interesting, please tell me.
Mongolian
Good: The UU
Bad: -
Ugly: The Mongolian UU is extremely solid, with the nerfs to regeneration in enemy(and neutral) territory it is the best way to keep your army alive during a siege. In all honesty it might even be too good, but that's because the normal medicpromotion is bad.
However, the Mongols have two other uniques both which bothers me.
First of all they have a UA that forces you to anex citystates when you accidently move your army too close to them, and makes the entire civilized world hate you.
Second they have a UB that replaces bonuses of the original building, and if you are anything like me, whenever I play Mongolia you can bet on that I'm going to be stuck with tons of wheat, bananas and deer and nothing to do with them because my UB likes sheep instead. While this is just a minor issue it is going to keep bugging me forever.
Solution: I have no clue honestly, I'm not going to base changes on the fact that I don't like some intentional features of a civ.
Moroccan
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly/Discussion: Morocco is extremely confusing and extremely random.
They usually but not always start in desert which is a living hell earlygame but extremely overpowered lategame. Earlygame in a desert means you can't scout at all, and there are going to be barbs everywhere, your workers can barely move and usually gets caught by barbs. Keeping caravans alive is a living help because since no sane person would walk in the desert, barbcamps are going to keep spawning everywhere and generally just ruin your day. You are pretty much forced into the honor policytree to have a chance to deal with all the barbs/barbcamps. Not to mention deserttiles are horrible, you can't farm them, they give no yields, I think it takes longer time to build improvements on them aswell. Later on you get access to your kasbahs and the deserttiles aren't all that bad anymore. They are still not really workable but you can build kasbahs on deserthills and floodplains which makes for really decent yields actually. Lategame you get access to the policy in Imperialism that turns desertiles into the best tiles in the game and you're the only one able to build improvements on them, so you're pretty much set after that.
Alternatively you can start outside of the desert and pretty much have no uniques, which is nice aswell.
The UA gives the ability for you to trade GPT for golden age points by sending your caravans to less profitable places for increased income, usually this ends up as a net loss in gold but a plus of 1 culture and 2 GAP per traderoute and turn, which is nice.
The UU drew the short straw of being the only Cavalry replacement to still be bad after the cav itself got buffed. Don't get me wrong the unit is an improvement over the normal cav but not in any way that mean something. It fights better in desert which means if someone is insane enough to walk into the desert, you can kill him. But since normal people avoid the desert you're going to have a really fancy borderguard that for some reason also walks slowly in the desert, which makes no sense at all
Solution: Give the UU that promotion that lets it keep normal movespeed in deserts, I mean it is supposed to be somekinda sand-ninja.
I'd add a line to the UA as in CEP where your civilian units can move unhindered in desert, mostly for quality of life.
Also either this UA or the Ottoman UA needs to go, because they are basically the same.
Ottoman
Good: ?
Bad: -
Ugly: I don't know where I should start really, the Ottomans are really solid. Their UU is not as good as it used to be, but it is still one of the better ones in the game.
Their UB is really solid, and since it arrives at the same time as the UU you can really start working on your conquest. If your neighbor doesn't fall to your renaissance era push then you're not playing it right! The full power of the UU carries over when upgraded and the UB works just as well for artillery and rocketartillery as it does for trebuchets and cannons so your warfare got great stayingpower.
Your UA gives you the ability to gain golden age points from your Caravans, which is the exact same ability Morocco has.
Solution: Either this UA or the Moroccan one needs to be replaced because they do the same thing.
I'd suggest removing the GAP-from the caravanbonus and instead make them do somekinda mini-resarch-agreement when they finish instead. That way you can go for a sciencevictory if you get bored of conquest. And the number of sciencefocused civs in the game isn't that high.
Persian
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly: I don't know what to make of Persia, there is no real explanation in the civpedia about their UB so I'll just assume it's a bank with +1 happiness which is pretty decent.
Their UU is solid, it got hit pretty hard by the regeneration nerf but got buffed by the merging of the spearline with the rifleline (but then again considering lancers are really good now maybe the old upgradeline was better?) the old UU plan was to get march and then use it plus your double regen to just run everything over, but I have no clue if that still works.
Their UA recently got buffed so they kinda have more direction now outside of just getting goldenages and hoping for the best but then again not really.
Solution: Hard to say without knowing if the UB makes up for the lack of real a clear goal. Persia in GnK imho were made for culturevictory, now I just don't know. Maybe grab some things that scale with goldenages and hope for the best?.
Polish
Good: UA
Bad: -
Ugly: Poland always had that interesting thing where their UA, UB, and UU were just among the best in the game. Luckily for us the game seem to have caught up and most of their stuff is just solid now. Their UA however is still one of the better ones in the game imo. Their UU is now not the only good mounted unit in the game, but still probably the best one. Their UB isn't bad at all, it just isn't the best anymore.
Solution: Nothing, Poland is still extremely good. Just more balanced.
I'm going to list all the leaders in the game and give you my general idea on what's good, what's bad and what's ugly. Also a suggested solution.
The general idea would be that 'Good' is powerful, 'Bad' is weak and ugly is just poor/boring mechanics. I'll probably find some other point I'll have to bring up halfway into this and this whole Clint Eastwood thing will fail
anyways this will take a lot of work so I'm going to be real pissed off if people don't respond(and probably if people respond aswell) so just keep that in mind American
Good: Both the UU and the UB are really solid.
Bad: The UA is pretty mediocre/weak.
Ugly: The UA can't carry the earlygame until you get the UU/UB.
Solution: Add something to the UA//Replace it to make earlygame less boring
Arabian
Good: The UB is decent.
Bad: The UA and the UU
Ugly: The UB and the UU lost a lot of power from vanilla, something that the UA doesn't make up for.
Solution: Replace the UA, make the UU fill a role other than being a mounted bowman that can take a hit.
Assyrian
Good: The UB
Bad: -
Ugly: -
Discussion: I just don't play Assyria enough to make valid judgementcalls, but everything about the civ seems solid enough. Maybe the UA could use an additional effect since it is rather situational but I don't really know.
Austrian
Good: UU/UB/UA
Bad: -
Ugly: Boring/slow earlygame because of startingbias and the fact that all the uniques are later midgame focused.
Solution: Honestly no idea.
Aztec
Good: UB
Bad: UA
Ugly: Probably the civ with the harshest requirements for settling, if you don't settle next to freshwater, your city is useless.
Solution: Raise the UA numbers a small bit and (if possible) make the culture from kills go to your city with the least culture (or split on all if that isn't possible) for borderexpansion.
Don't fix the problem, the cityplacement issue is completely fine as long as the UA is adjusted to make up for you placing your cities in worse locations.
Babylonian
Good: -
Bad: -
Ugly: The UB is boring and doesn't add enough. The UU is boring and doesn't have any unique promotions to carry on when upgraded. The academy nerfs made the UA pretty boring/weak.
Solution: Give the UU some fun promotion that carries on when upgraded.
Give the UB some fun effect that makes it more than just a slighly better wall, maybe a scientistslot or something.
UA shift the power of the UA, lower the bonus to great scientist generation but make the great scientists stronger, give a bonus to academies and a bonus when bulbing.
Brazilian
Good: The UI (The UA)
Bad: The UU
Ugly: The shift in culture gameplay (nerfs to hotels/airports) have made the UI pretty weak for tourism VC (But from what I've gathered it still looks like a really strong UI). The UU is just straight up boring, it has one of the minuteman's three promotions. UA suffers from being extremely weird in the current game. You can get close to infinite goldenages later on (I got up to 240 turns one game I played, and that was 240 turns remaining, no clue how long I had been in a golden age by that point). That leads to the UA being awful early on and really strong later on.
Solution: The UU is the absolute latest UU in the game if you count techs needed to unlock it requiring like 10 techs more than the Panzer (realisticly it would be more like 2 or 3 because most techs are earlygame ones that the panzer can skip). It really needs more power and more uniqueness to make up for being that lategame.
Byzantine
Good: UB/UA
Bad: -
Ugly/Discussion: The UB comes to late to help you guarantee your UA to actually work. UA is dependant on you actually getting a religion. The UU is actually really strong, but I am hesitant to put it in the 'Good' box mostly because its effects doesn't carry over at all and I think UUs like that are just boring.
Solution: Lower the power of the UU somewhat and give it a promotion that carries over when upgraded. Maybe add a +1faith/turn to the capital, but I'm not sure. Removing the pietytree from ancient era would completely wreck Byzantium.
Carthaginian
Good: UB/UA
Bad: UU
Ugly: The UA might be too powerful atm, not 100% sure but it just gives you too many things. The UU is still pretty damn boring.
Solution: Add something to the UU to make it more interesting, extra sight/movespeed, ability to enter oceantiles, ability to heal outside friendly territory, something like that. Maybe remove mountaincrossing from the UA.
Celtic
Good: -
Bad: UU
Ugly/Discussion: I don't like the fact that their UA just goes obsolete unless you decide to not improve tiles within your territory. I don't like the great musician points on the UB, it doesn't make much sense to get 2 random points per turn on any city outside of your capital, also great musicians are pretty damn weak at the moment unless you're going for tourism victory(and if you are, then you probably don't want to get them earlygame either
) The UU just feels weak to me, no real idea why.Solution: Make the UA count improved foresttiles aswell, or add some additional effect to it. Change the UB back to how it used to be or to something else. Give some love to the UU, CEP gave it double movement in hills, and that made sense to me, but anything else would probably work aswell.
Chinese
Good: -
Bad: Uniques
Ugly/discussion: Here is the deal, I was actually going to write the UB as 'Good' until i checked the civpedia while writing this and realized it had been nerfed, now I don't like it at all. The UU doesn't need as low of a ranged combatstrength as it has tbh. The UA isn't bad but it feels like it kinda forces you into a specific role.
Solution: Buff the UB, as it is the only part of China that isn't entirely warfocused. Raise the RCS of the UU and change the promotion from attack twice to the standard logistics(no idea why they have different names honestly) and nerf logistics if any reduced power is required.
Add something interesting to the UA, maybe a Yieldbonus on citadels or something like that.
Danish
Good: -
Bad: -
Ugly: Don't get me wrong, I love all the Danish uniques. It is just extremely hard to point one out as being really strong, maybe the UA but it by itself doesn't win games. There are a few things I would change however.
Solution: I would make the extra movementpoint on the Berserker carry over when upgraded. I would also give him the embarked defense promotion making you able to attack from sea with them without straight up dying to a cityattack (since AI now actually target embarked units). These buffs would be to counteract the fact that you can't upgrade your warriors all the way to berserkers anymore, something that all swordsmen/longswordsmen suffers from.
I would move the Jelling stones earlier in the techtree, maybe to writing or optics, but that's just a personal thing, the NW by itself is solid but it just feels worse than the other unique NW-replacement. I just don't know.
Dutch
Good: UI
Bad: UI
Ugly: The Dutch suffers from not having any idea what they want to do, or how to do it. They have a Naval UU but they don't have ocean startingbias so that one may end up being useless if they start in the middle of a continent. They have a UI that goes from being completely worthless to completely off the hook overpowered depending on your startinglocation. They have a UA that starts of solid enough and turns completely useless by the renaissance era. All in all this civ feels like Spain MK2, completely RNGdependant to actually get anything done. (and RNG hates me so I'm biased
)Solution: Rework polders into a coastal only improved farm. Give Dutch ocean startingbias. Rework the UA or make it scale somehow. (Don't get me wrong the UA is still a lot better than the BnW one but a lot weaker than the GnK one)
Egyptian
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly: Ehm, where do I start? The UU have nothing that carries over when upgraded leading to the interesting situation where it is actually better not to upgrade it. Yes sure you lose out on 2 RCS but you gain 1 movespeed and you save one horse. The UB I still have no actual idea what it does because it isn't written in the civpedia
from the looks of it it is a temple without maintenance but which gives people extra gold when they conquer you. The UA have that interesting effect of actually being useless at both the easiest and the hardest difficulty settings, and instead being useful somewhere in the middle. Explanation would be that you don't have any problems grabbing all the wonders in the game at settler, and you don't stand a chance to get any of them on deity. Somewhere in the middle it makes you get a few wonder that you would normally have missed, and that is quite solid, but I'm honestly not sure this is enough. The extra production per city helps.Solution: Add some promotions to the UU to make it more viable to upgrade. Make the UB do something, or if it does something please add it to the civpedia
. I have no idea what to do with the UA, it is iconic and with the removal of the tradition policy it is unique. Maybe make it give you some yieldbonuses on NWs?English
Good: UU
Bad: ?
Ugly: The combination of the UU and the UA makes England close to unstoppable or atleast that was how it was before the cruiser was added
. The UU suffers from the exact same thing that the Egyptian UU suffered from, it got plenty of power but all of it is stuck on the unit, no promotions at all. This used to mean that England could crush anyone and dominate the naval game until battleships showed up almost three eras later. I still don't like the UB giving less production than the building it replaces. I also think the UB is too weak for how late into the game it actually shows up, but after playing a few coalstarved games I can instead say that it completely depends on maptype. The UA is really solid if you're playing a watermap, the extra spies are nice aswell but they don't really make up for Englands general weakness on non-water maps.Solution: Shift power on the UU from raw strength to promotions. Buff the UB, have it make up for Englands lack of power on landbased maps.
Ethiopian
Good: -
Bad: UU, UA
Ugly: I'm going to say it right here so people don't get the wrong idea, the UB is not bad. But I honestly don't like it, I don't like any monument-replacements mostly because by their default role you're going to build them as a first building in every city anyways which means they can't have any real power.
The UU tries really hard to be defensive in a game where you can only be defensive if you're ahead.
The UA used to be all about defense aswell but in the last few patches it did a complete 180 and is now all about bullying your weak neighbors into giving you a free golden age. All in all the UA makes no sense to me at all.
Discussion: Defensive focus would be nice if you had something to fall back on, that puts you ahead of others. But Ethiopia just doesn't have that.
Solution: Add plenty of power to either the UB or the UA or both to make the defensive bonuses and focus actually worth it.
French
Good: UI
Bad: -
Discussion I just don't know how many times poor Napoleon have had to 180 his playstyle. It used to be all about conquering as many random puppets as possible and wait for your culturevictory to kick in/or just keep beating people up. BnW then changed that focus to instead being all about building wonders and strategically place your cities so your UI could earn you plenty of culture/tourism and pray to the deity of your choice that the antiquity sites didn't completely mess your planning up
.Our lord-commander then added an extra line to his UA which lead to his new playstyle, where he beats up his neighbors and steal their lunchmoney while simultaniously trying to build wonders in your capital(because cities that you conquer are not nearly cool enough to host your plunder). Yes as you might have realized by now, Napoleon is now a renaissance-viking.
Ugly: I never liked the city of light UA, and for that exact reason I dislike the new one. I don't like how you are forced to have your wonders in Paris, if you build Paris in a poor location with bad production you've pretty much screwed your UA over. The musketeer is old and he haven't aged well, he is now just 4 CS ahead of the unit he replaces, which makes him pretty much useless. I have yet to decipher the techtree and is therefore not onehundred percent sure about what yields the UI provides
.Solution: Less CS more promotions for the UU. Maybe let the UA work in all cities, but I'm honestly not sure it that is fitting. It just mostly makes me sad how the Asthetics finisher works in all cities
. Othervise adding something for the earlygame to the UA would make sense, maybe 1 culture per city?German
Good: UA/UB
Bad: UU
Ugly: I really don't like the UU, it arrives late, it doesn't actually do much when it arrives, it has zero synergy with the rest of the civ.
Beautiful: The UB is glorious the synergy with the UA is also fantastic. It gives you a clear path to diplovictory but doesn't force you to go for it, indeed you can just as easily go for any other victory-type as extra production and power in the worldcongress never hurts.
Solution: I honestly still want to replace the panzer, since it neither makes sense historically or is very useful. If that fails I would move its extra power and movespeed to promotions so it actually can remain relevant when upgraded to modern armor.
Greek
Good: UA
Bad: UU/UB
Ugly: Here is the deal. Greece have always had a very solid UA, and it is still solid, even more so now after a random buff it recieved
but and the but is as always huge. Neither the UU nor the UB actually has anything to do with the UA or eachother it is like one can't really decide on what to do with Greece. The UU is focused on conquest (not that it really does a good job on that however), the UB is focused on tourism, I think, while the UA still is the solid diplo-powerhouse it has always been.Unlike Bismarck who is focused but flexible, Alexander is diverse and inflexible(is that even a word?). The worst part of this is that Greece isn't a bad civ, the UA just carries the entire civ on its mighty shoulders.
Solution: The UB needs a buff, badly. right now it is an ampitheatre with its great slot of writing filled and with an extra 1 gold maintenance (and let me point this out, unless you're actually going for tourism victory, imho, great works that doesn't provide a themingbonus are pointless). I'd give somekinda buff to the UU aswell, as I don't think the great generals promotion is that useful, especially on a earlygameunit that you mostly use to clear out barbs.
Hunnic
Good: UI
Bad: -
Discussion: The only reason why the UA and UU aren't included in the 'Good' is because it would serve to diminish how great the UI actually is.
The huns are a complete powerhouse bent on worlddomination. They are like the old huns only instead of falling off after the ancient era they stay relevant. The UI opened up so many new possible playstyles for the huns that I've actually managed to finish two games as them, something that I've only done before on small pangeamaps. I dislike warmongering, but I don't dislike playing as the huns anymore, which should give you some insight into what I'm talking about.
Solution: Don't change what isn't broken.
Incan
Good: UI/UA
Bad: UU
Discussion: Their startingbias along with their UA/UI almost always give Inca a great start, and in civ great starts usually translates into great games. Nearby hills gives Inca great production which their UI translates into great food and their UA translates into great defense and cheap cityconnections. It is quite impossible to attack into hills against someone whose army moves like scouts. That being said I honestly believe their UU to be pathetic. Yes I bet you've all crushed legions of units with your slingers, or gotten crushed by legions of slingers. But that's just the thing, a normal archer could do the same thing, the only thing that makes the slinger great is the fact that it can move quickly in hills, something that all incan units do(with the exception of mounted archers, because reasons). The withdraw-ability isn't bad but it sure wouldn't be enough to carry this unit if it was part of any other civ.
Solution: Throw some other promotion on the UU to make it more viable. Make the freedom buffed farm policy work on terracefarms
Indian
Good: UA
Bad: ?
Ugly: The truth is I don't like either the UB or the UU at the moment, they are both rather underwhelming. The UA is awesome and fits my playstyle perfectly, It feels like a better verson of the celtic UA. The UB just doesn't provide that much, +1 production/food feels rather underwhelming, as does the increased maintenance. +1 food on floodplains feels rather situational, but I could buy it.
The UUs great sellingpoint is that it can walk two steps in hills or forest/jungle but not forested/jungled hills, but more likely, move one step and still fire. And while that is rather impressive it doesn't quite qualify for a goldstar in my book since I'm guessing that promotion doesn't carry over when upgraded(since it isn't actually a promotion). It also have slightly more RCS and even more CS making it somewhat less vulnerable to stuff trying to kill it.
Solution: A small buff to the UB aswell as lowering its maintenance would help.
Adding stuff that carries over on upgrade to the UU.
Indonesian
Good: UB/(UA)
Bad: UU/(UA)
Ugly: Indonesia really suffers from being Indonesia. The UA is great when you actually get it to work and somewhat mediocre when you don't get it to work.
The UU with its weird randompromotion varies between being pretty good to being terrible. On average it is better than a swordsman, but in my opinion the average is too weak for a unique unit.
Solution: Removing the citylimit of the UA would help. Adding something else to the UU would also help.
Iroquois
Good: UB/(UA)
Bad: UU
Ugly: First of all, the UU isn't that bad. It just really suffers from the changed upgradepath. The main reason I put it in there is because it just is straight up worse than the jaguar even counting the woodsmanpromotion that it gets from the UA, not from itself. The UB and UA are sadly extremely terraindependant but that is fine since they are both pretty powerful. Automated workers completely butchers your roadnetwork however so it would be nice to add a line for roads being maintenance free on top of forest (in friendly territory) if only to not lose gold because the workers wont stop building roads.
Solution: Add some buff to the UU. Make the UA work for civilian units aswell (woodsman promotion)
Japanese
Good
UA?)Bad:?
Ugly/Discussion: Japan, in my opinion suffers for lack of synergy and mediocre uniques.
The UB is an armory-replacement with mediocre buffs and increased maintenance. It is also interestingly enough placed on the opposite side of the techtree from the UU so that you can't make use of how they would normally unlock at the same tech.
The UU is straight up better than the unit you upgrade it to with 1 higher CS. It also possesses the imho mediocre abilty to spawn great generals faster and is also able to build fishingboats, for some unknown reason.
The UA is the main sellingpoint of the civ, making your units slightly better at fighting while also providing some culture from searesources/atolls something that was added to create some synergy with the fishingboatbuilding samurai I guess.
Solution: Lower the maintenance on the UB, raise the other things it provides.
Rework the UU, the two alternatives I see are:
1. Lower the CS to 21(base) and add a some really powerful promotion(s) like possibly blitz, I'd also replace the great generals promotion with something useful like drill.
2. Keep the CS at 25, make it upgrade directly to Fusiliers, replace Great generals promotion with something more useful.
Korean
Good: UA/UB
Bad:UU
Ugly: The UA might now have changed but it is worse that it is in the basegame, which honestly is great considering basegame Korea was extremely overpowering. The UB is good, possibly too good. Not compared to other UBs but considering the unique circumstances. Vanilla Korea had two UUs that were both designed to ruin your day, they were both terrible and made sure you couldn't conquer cities or explore the ocean. All to balance out the fact that Koreas UA was so extremely powerful. Now replacing one of those UUs with an actual good UB might be overdoing it, but I'm confident we can make it work somehow.
Solution: If a nerf is needed I'd look at that weird mini-reserach-agreement you get when constructing sciencebuildings in your capital. It is weird, out of place and really isn't needed.
Mayan
Good: The UA
Bad: The UU
Ugly: The Mayans recently got a huge buff when Gazebo moved the their UAs trigger to calender rather than theology. I had no idea how big it would actually be tbh but I managed to fill out the entire calender (grab all different great people) before I quit the game and actually realized that it does reset when it is filled out (something I never actually managed to do in the basegame). It was getting rather late in the game (and the way time works in the game makes you get great people exponentially slower the later the game goes on. Because every turn is worth less time and every turn is worth more gameplay later on) so I'm not sure how many more GP I would have gotten from it. Anyways it is totally awesome now.
The UB is boring, both because of the effects and because of it being a shrine. If anyone could find a way to actually make an earlygame building interesting, please do tell me.
The UU is complete garbage, I have no idea how it actually stayed in the game for this long but it really needs to go. It's an archer-replacement available one tech earlier and costing 20% less production to build, that's it.
Solution: Seriously buff the UU with some interesting unique promotions, if you feel that is overpowered then move it back to hunting, honestly this is probably the worst UU in the game, mostly because you can actually find uses for the Hwacha.
Again, if there is some way to make the pyramid interesting, please tell me.
Mongolian
Good: The UU
Bad: -
Ugly: The Mongolian UU is extremely solid, with the nerfs to regeneration in enemy(and neutral) territory it is the best way to keep your army alive during a siege. In all honesty it might even be too good, but that's because the normal medicpromotion is bad.
However, the Mongols have two other uniques both which bothers me.
First of all they have a UA that forces you to anex citystates when you accidently move your army too close to them, and makes the entire civilized world hate you.
Second they have a UB that replaces bonuses of the original building, and if you are anything like me, whenever I play Mongolia you can bet on that I'm going to be stuck with tons of wheat, bananas and deer and nothing to do with them because my UB likes sheep instead. While this is just a minor issue it is going to keep bugging me forever.
Solution: I have no clue honestly, I'm not going to base changes on the fact that I don't like some intentional features of a civ.
Moroccan
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly/Discussion: Morocco is extremely confusing and extremely random.
They usually but not always start in desert which is a living hell earlygame but extremely overpowered lategame. Earlygame in a desert means you can't scout at all, and there are going to be barbs everywhere, your workers can barely move and usually gets caught by barbs. Keeping caravans alive is a living help because since no sane person would walk in the desert, barbcamps are going to keep spawning everywhere and generally just ruin your day. You are pretty much forced into the honor policytree to have a chance to deal with all the barbs/barbcamps. Not to mention deserttiles are horrible, you can't farm them, they give no yields, I think it takes longer time to build improvements on them aswell. Later on you get access to your kasbahs and the deserttiles aren't all that bad anymore. They are still not really workable but you can build kasbahs on deserthills and floodplains which makes for really decent yields actually. Lategame you get access to the policy in Imperialism that turns desertiles into the best tiles in the game and you're the only one able to build improvements on them, so you're pretty much set after that.
Alternatively you can start outside of the desert and pretty much have no uniques, which is nice aswell.
The UA gives the ability for you to trade GPT for golden age points by sending your caravans to less profitable places for increased income, usually this ends up as a net loss in gold but a plus of 1 culture and 2 GAP per traderoute and turn, which is nice.
The UU drew the short straw of being the only Cavalry replacement to still be bad after the cav itself got buffed. Don't get me wrong the unit is an improvement over the normal cav but not in any way that mean something. It fights better in desert which means if someone is insane enough to walk into the desert, you can kill him. But since normal people avoid the desert you're going to have a really fancy borderguard that for some reason also walks slowly in the desert, which makes no sense at all
Solution: Give the UU that promotion that lets it keep normal movespeed in deserts, I mean it is supposed to be somekinda sand-ninja.
I'd add a line to the UA as in CEP where your civilian units can move unhindered in desert, mostly for quality of life.
Also either this UA or the Ottoman UA needs to go, because they are basically the same.
Ottoman
Good: ?
Bad: -
Ugly: I don't know where I should start really, the Ottomans are really solid. Their UU is not as good as it used to be, but it is still one of the better ones in the game.
Their UB is really solid, and since it arrives at the same time as the UU you can really start working on your conquest. If your neighbor doesn't fall to your renaissance era push then you're not playing it right!
The full power of the UU carries over when upgraded and the UB works just as well for artillery and rocketartillery as it does for trebuchets and cannons so your warfare got great stayingpower.Your UA gives you the ability to gain golden age points from your Caravans, which is the exact same ability Morocco has.
Solution: Either this UA or the Moroccan one needs to be replaced because they do the same thing.
I'd suggest removing the GAP-from the caravanbonus and instead make them do somekinda mini-resarch-agreement when they finish instead. That way you can go for a sciencevictory if you get bored of conquest. And the number of sciencefocused civs in the game isn't that high.
Persian
Good: ?
Bad: ?
Ugly: I don't know what to make of Persia, there is no real explanation in the civpedia about their UB so I'll just assume it's a bank with +1 happiness which is pretty decent.
Their UU is solid, it got hit pretty hard by the regeneration nerf but got buffed by the merging of the spearline with the rifleline (but then again considering lancers are really good now maybe the old upgradeline was better?
) the old UU plan was to get march and then use it plus your double regen to just run everything over, but I have no clue if that still works.Their UA recently got buffed so they kinda have more direction now outside of just getting goldenages and hoping for the best but then again not really.
Solution: Hard to say without knowing if the UB makes up for the lack of real a clear goal. Persia in GnK imho were made for culturevictory, now I just don't know. Maybe grab some things that scale with goldenages and hope for the best?.
Polish
Good: UA
Bad: -
Ugly: Poland always had that interesting thing where their UA, UB, and UU were just among the best in the game. Luckily for us the game seem to have caught up and most of their stuff is just solid now. Their UA however is still one of the better ones in the game imo. Their UU is now not the only good mounted unit in the game, but still probably the best one. Their UB isn't bad at all, it just isn't the best anymore.
Solution: Nothing, Poland is still extremely good. Just more balanced.
), I think your focus on the weaker UUs is needed. I don't think every one needs a special promotion to pass on, but some (like the Slinger and Atlatlist) are just plain terrible and need to be shuffled around. Ideally, I'd like to see a move away from ancient-era units - perhaps moving some UUs (like those two) into the Classical/Medieval period. The Maori Warrior would be a fun sight in the Middle Ages as a powerful Longswordsman replacement.
