General Leader Discussion

[infidel88]

India is a no-brainer powerhouse -- maybe the easiest civ of all to kick ass with. Who cares if the early pantheon limits your choices? You know what you want with India, and you can't miss getting it. The UB is a hell of a lot more than good. I'll assume you haven't played with them lately, in which case, you should reserve an opinion until you do.

Of course India is powerhouse in human hands, just like Venice is. Because no AI will save 2 prophets to convert your empire within 3 turns and get a plague carrier , just like AI India will not start war against you to prevent conversion or save a prophet somewhere in case horsehocky to restore their religion.

 

[Funak]

Let's do some math. When do you get historic events? Win war (sth you try to avoid if going for sci/culture win), advance era, GP born, create wonder. Ok. So by industrial you can have like +30c/30s in capital from UA. Now let's look at Germany in industrial. 2 allied CS gives the same output. How many GP will you get from UA over the whole game? 5? With total randomness.

The numbers are far above 30/30 in industrial, maybe 3 times that number last time I played Arabia. It is not exactly how many extra GPs you get over the course of the game (your number is way too low for sure, but the percentage increase of GPs isn't exactly that big) it is the fact that you get all your GPs earlier, with some luck, a lot earlier. I once had 5 custom-houses in my capital before I reached Medieval era, that's an extreme case but even in normal cases getting your first and second engineer slightly earlier than other civs lets you get those tradition-essential wonders that you usually lose out on otherwise. More wonders, means more ua triggers which means more culture and science which in turn gives you a chance to build wonders earlier.

Arabia have a few problems, them being extremely one-dimensional, and can pretty much only go for Tradition -> Aesthetics -> Industry/Rationalism -> Freedom(this one is a bit more flexible). This makes playing Arabia pretty boring, but they are among the absolute strongest tourism civs in the game.

I think they were fine even before the Chateau buffs.

I agree with this, but then again I don't think the buffed Chateau breaks the game or anything like that. France is a powerhouse, but that's about it.

 

[Galbias]

Morocco does seem a little bit underwhelming maybe. UU is late and decent but not amazing, UI is nice but it doesn't come until Medieval and it's never going to have a massive impact since each city can only have 6 of them at most, and UA is good but it's going to be heavily limited by your trade route options and not being boxed in by an aggressive AI. An interesting buff might be to prevent Morocco from pillaging trade routes or having their trade routes pillaged; unlike Sully and Maria, Ahmad needs to send trade routes to other CS/Civs to get any benefits from his UA and it would give him some nice extra flavor (additional idea: trade routes to Morocco cannot be pillaged).

Re: India.



India is a no-brainer powerhouse -- maybe the easiest civ of all to kick ass with. Who cares if the early pantheon limits your choices? You know what you want with India, and you can't miss getting it. The UB is a hell of a lot more than good. I'll assume you haven't played with them lately, in which case, you should reserve an opinion until you do.

India does also have a significant weakness with the inability to produce Missionairies, your religious game is very heavily dependent on starting position and if you get a bad one like mine where my only neighbor was Ethiopia, you may not be able to spread or reform at all (starting with a Pantheon is nice but it won't give you tons of extra faith to spam Great Prophets with) in a situation where another Civ would still be able to. I still think they're plenty strong though, I haven't played them since the UB buff either.

 

[CrazyG]

UB is good, ok. UA for AI is a joke. And for player - it was mentioned many times - early pantheon limits your options (excluded, as totally random: god of craftsmen, open sky, sea, start+sky, nature, maybe purity, springtime and hunt). So yea, you can get pantheon at the start, but unless you save-scum or something, the list is quite limited.

I have to ask, why would you even want to pick a resource based pantheon with India? Your UB buffs farms, and you found religion very quickly meaning you have a good chance at cathedrals. After your UB is up, farms will outperform most bonus and luxury resources. You also wouldn't get any yields from those pantheons for a long time, even if you built worker first it would be like 20 turns before you can improve something. God of All and God of Wisdom are both excellent choices, and play very differently.

I think the missionary weakness is needed to make the civ fair, though I agree its a massive problem for the AI.

 

[JungleBucks]

I think the missionary weakness is needed to make the civ fair, though I agree its a massive problem for the AI.

Which is why they should be able to build inquisitors. Even if it takes a small nerf in another area (which I don't feel would really be too necessary, but it could), I think India would be far better off with the ability to build inquisitors.

 

[Funak]

Which is why they should be able to build inquisitors. Even if it takes a small nerf in another area (which I don't feel would really be too necessary, but it could), I think India would be far better off with the ability to build inquisitors.

Honestly never understood why that ability was removed. Inquisitors is key part of religious defense.

Morocco does seem a little bit underwhelming maybe. UU is late and decent but not amazing, UI is nice but it doesn't come until Medieval and it's never going to have a massive impact since each city can only have 6 of them at most, and UA is good but it's going to be heavily limited by your trade route options and not being boxed in by an aggressive AI. An interesting buff might be to prevent Morocco from pillaging trade routes or having their trade routes pillaged; unlike Sully and Maria, Ahmad needs to send trade routes to other CS/Civs to get any benefits from his UA and it would give him some nice extra flavor (additional idea: trade routes to Morocco cannot be pillaged).

I always thought Morocco was fine if not slightly underwhelming until the Kasbah got nerfed, now they just feel weak.

 

[Gazebo]

Honestly never understood why that ability was removed. Inquisitors is key part of religious defense.


I always thought Morocco was fine if not slightly underwhelming until the Kasbah got nerfed, now they just feel weak.

India was never able to use inquisitors, but the UA text didn't include that. So it was never 'taken away' except at first creation of the new UA by me.

 

[Zymos]

India was never able to use inquisitors, but the UA text didn't include that. So it was never 'taken away' except at first creation of the new UA by me.

That's incorrect though, I swear I could buy Inquisitors in my first few India games back in August. Here's my post about said nerf back at the end of August.

As for giving them the ability to build Inquisitors, do you think it would make them too strong?

 

[Gazebo]

That's incorrect though, I swear I could buy Inquisitors in my first few India games back in August. Here's my post about said nerf back at the end of August.

As for giving them the ability to build Inquisitors, do you think it would make them too strong?

May have been a bug - India with no inquisitors was on my design doc from day 1.

 

[Funak]

May have been a bug - India with no inquisitors was on my design doc from day 1.

They were definitely able to use inquisitors before. At some point they lost that ability, and some time later the text was added to the UA that they weren't allowed to build them.

Might have been a bug, as you claim, but I'm definitely not wrong here.

 

[Txurce]

India does also have a significant weakness with the inability to produce Missionairies, your religious game is very heavily dependent on starting position and if you get a bad one like mine where my only neighbor was Ethiopia, you may not be able to spread or reform at all (starting with a Pantheon is nice but it won't give you tons of extra faith to spam Great Prophets with) in a situation where another Civ would still be able to. I still think they're plenty strong though, I haven't played them since the UB buff either.

This is true, but the odds are definitely in your favor. That's why I wouldn't worry about a missionary/inquisitor fix.

Re: Ethiopia, I played a Shoshone game once, found them next door, immediately upgraded a Pathfinder, and wiped out Addis Ababa in the Ancient era.

 

[Meticulous]

I'm just going to echo what's already been said about India, they are in fact terrible and their UA is a detriment when speaking in terms of human vs. AI India (or human vs. human), which IMO are the terms one should speak in. Playing as India your biggest strength is simply taking advantage of the enemy AI. Using a prophet to convert India's cities to your religion turns their UA against them and the rest of the world. If one of the goals in VP is making the AI capable of playing as and against other civs as capably as a human does, India is an abject failure in that department because they are easy to counter when the AI uses them and the AI never appropriately counters when them in human hands.

Also about Morocco, they're one of my favorite civs in VP because I'm a big fan of their UI and the flexibility it gives you in city placement (it's great for wide or tall and depending on which you choose greatly changes where you want to found cities), but I have to say that they feel like a real cointoss civ moreso than most others for making it through the early game. All of their benefits except their UA come relatively late, and the UA requires nearby city-states or friendly neighbors. If you start next to warmongers you get the double detriment of being a civ without access to their unique unit or improvement early on and being unable to use your UA due to your warring neighbor. Maybe if the UA also increased trade route distance, then you'd have fewer situations where you can't take advantage of it due to unfriendly neighbors. I find most often when I'm next to a warmonger the double whammy of having to overcommit to defending myself from stronger early unique units with my own vanilla units and the loss of my UA leads me to fall too far behind even if I don't lose anything in the war. Getting to Kasbahs ASAP is crucial to getting ahead.

Most of the less-good civs are still very much "good enough" and in particular the AI often does best with some of the most underrated civs.

 

[Txurce]

I'm just going to echo what's already been said about India, they are in fact terrible and their UA is a detriment when speaking in terms of human vs. AI India (or human vs. human), which IMO are the terms one should speak in. Playing as India your biggest strength is simply taking advantage of the enemy AI. Using a prophet to convert India's cities to your religion turns their UA against them and the rest of the world. If one of the goals in VP is making the AI capable of playing as and against other civs as capably as a human does, India is an abject failure in that department because they are easy to counter when the AI uses them and the AI never appropriately counters when them in human hands.

You're saying they're terrible because one human strategy undoes their UA. If it's that big a problem, the simple fix would be to make the UA impervious to prophets. But I think India has other problems in the hands of the AI. Given how much of it is auto-pilot (the UA and UB), it should do well enough except in those cases when the human kneecaps its religion... but it doesn't.

Most of the less-good civs are still very much "good enough" and in particular the AI often does best with some of the most underrated civs.

And vice-versa... like with India. If forced to choose, I'll pick a civ performing well human vs AI rather than the opposite, because my good time means more to me than that of the AI's. If there's a relative clunker or two in my starting 8, it'll seem pretty normal to me.

 

[Galbias]

If anything, it might help to increase Gandhi's religious flavor so that AI Gandhi will go for a religion more aggressively and is less likely to fall prey to a neighboring religion. This seems fair since his UA in Vanilla didn't have a religious component, and Gustavus's UA and flavor were both changed in VP.

 

[Legen]

Alternatively, India could prioritize the Resilience Enhancer belief, so that rival prophets are a liability against its religion. The belief also makes India's Prophets cheaper and stronger, which helps dealing with the lack of inquisitors. Not much that a player can do against AI India with Resilience, even worse if the religion spreads to the player's cities.

 

[Gazebo]

Alternatively, India could prioritize the Resilience Enhancer belief, so that rival prophets are a liability against its religion. The belief also makes India's Prophets cheaper and stronger, which helps dealing with the lack of inquisitors. Not much that a player can do against AI India with Resilience, even worse if the religion spreads to the player's cities.

It already does that (India's UA has very specific preferences in the DLL).

 

[Forsti]

Looking at the power rankings made by other users, Ethiopia doesn't seem to get the love it deserves. JungleBucks (Dec 2) rates 23 civ's over Ethiopia and 14 below it. Dawnbringer (Oct 31) considers 18 civs better than Ethiopia and 18 worse than it. On Enrico Swagolo's most recent list (Oct 18), 23 are placed above Ethiopia and 12 below it. The overall impression on Ethiopia seems to be that it's a (lower) mid tier civ. I, however, strongly disagree with that statement. For me, Ethiopia is and for a long time has been a top tier civ and I can only come up with 2 or 3 civ's that could be considered better than it.

Stele is (one of) the strongest unique buildings in the game. With any other civ, you must make a decision between early shrine and early monument. The former increases your odds to religion and a solid pantheon significantly and the latter doubles your culture, which is a yield that has a strong tendency to snowball. With Ethiopia, you don't need to make this decision, since stele gives you the faith of shrine and more culture than monument. You are basically guaranteed to get a religion early since you have 2 buildings that give you faith.

The importance of the free techs from UA seems to be underrated. If your aiming for science victory, their importance should be obvious. If you're looking for any other victory, they also serve a purpose. You can focus more heavily on your preferred victory type and, to some extent, neglect science as a yield and still remain as one of the most literate civs. The synergy between the free techs and cultural victory is particularly good, since you should be getting lots of culture anyway and science is often the limiting factor that prevents you from building a world wonder. This happens particularly on reneissance, where you have great wonders like Uffizi and Leaning tower of Pisa on both sides of the tech tree.

Overall, the combination of Ethiopia's UA and UB is amazing. They help you considerably on early to mid game culture and science, which helps you securing the key wonders and allows you to snowball to victory. Mehal sefari is something I don't have personal experience with mainly because I only remember finishing one game on Ethiopia and I won a cultural victory around the time I opened rifling. Late unlock is obviously the worst part of the UU and I personally dislike units with combat bonus on owned lands, as you don't want to be fighting there in the first place. On the other hand, the importance of a UU is significantly smaller than that of UA and UB and this is particularly true on more peaceful and passive civs like Ethiopia.

Usually, I have chosen tradition as my opening policy tree with Ethiopia and focused on a strong capital and specialist. Since I nowadays consider tradition a bit lacking and authority OP, I decided to try authority Ethiopia. As always, I chose immortal difficulty, continents map type, standard game speed and standard map size. I ended up enhancing my religion before anyone else had founded thiers, having 22 techs (Education from medieval and all classical techs except metal casting) on turn 89 and 8 policies on turn 98. There is no other civ that can do all this. I didn't even neglect my army. It wasn't massive but big enough to defend my lands. I was quite surprised to notice that it was the biggest in the world, since usually AIs would have more units by that time of the game.

Spoiler pictures :

 

[Gazebo]

Looking at the power rankings made by other users, Ethiopia doesn't seem to get the love it deserves. JungleBucks (Dec 2) rates 23 civ's over Ethiopia and 14 below it. Dawnbringer (Oct 31) considers 18 civs better than Ethiopia and 18 worse than it. On Enrico Swagolo's most recent list (Oct 18), 23 are placed above Ethiopia and 12 below it. The overall impression on Ethiopia seems to be that it's a (lower) mid tier civ. I, however, strongly disagree with that statement. For me, Ethiopia is and for a long time has been a top tier civ and I can only come up with 2 or 3 civ's that could be considered better than it.

Stele is (one of) the strongest unique buildings in the game. With any other civ, you must make a decision between early shrine and early monument. The former increases your odds to religion and a solid pantheon significantly and the latter doubles your culture, which is a yield that has a strong tendency to snowball. With Ethiopia, you don't need to make this decision, since stele gives you the faith of shrine and more culture than monument. You are basically guaranteed to get a religion early since you have 2 buildings that give you faith.

The importance of the free techs from UA seems to be underrated. If your aiming for science victory, their importance should be obvious. If you're looking for any other victory, they also serve a purpose. You can focus more heavily on your preferred victory type and, to some extent, neglect science as a yield and still remain as one of the most literate civs. The synergy between the free techs and cultural victory is particularly good, since you should be getting lots of culture anyway and science is often the limiting factor that prevents you from building a world wonder. This happens particularly on reneissance, where you have great wonders like Uffizi and Leaning tower of Pisa on both sides of the tech tree.

Overall, the combination of Ethiopia's UA and UB is amazing. They help you considerably on early to mid game culture and science, which helps you securing the key wonders and allows you to snowball to victory. Mehal sefari is something I don't have personal experience with mainly because I only remember finishing one game on Ethiopia and I won a cultural victory around the time I opened rifling. Late unlock is obviously the worst part of the UU and I personally dislike units with combat bonus on owned lands, as you don't want to be fighting there in the first place. On the other hand, the importance of a UU is significantly smaller than that of UA and UB and this is particularly true on more peaceful and passive civs like Ethiopia.

Usually, I have chosen tradition as my opening policy tree with Ethiopia and focused on a strong capital and specialist. Since I nowadays consider tradition a bit lacking and authority OP, I decided to try authority Ethiopia. As always, I chose immortal difficulty, continents map type, standard game speed and standard map size. I ended up enhancing my religion before anyone else had founded thiers, having 22 techs (Education from medieval and all classical techs except metal casting) on turn 89 and 8 policies on turn 98. There is no other civ that can do all this. I didn't even neglect my army. It wasn't massive but big enough to defend my lands. I was quite surprised to notice that it was the biggest in the world, since usually AIs would have more units by that time of the game.

Spoiler pictures :

Yeah, Ethiopia can be absurdly strong if they get their culture rolling. In most AI games Ethiopia does very, very well (unless they are KO'd by an early warmonger).

 

[infidel88]

Ethiopia

My rant with Ethiopia:
- UA is 5 free techs. With a lot of luck and long game, 6. And thats it. England get that easily from their spy (with some bonuses and pissing off neighbor), Babylon gets pretty much the same with free scientist and 50% and on top of that they have additional bonus. One could do math, but I believe Korea is also better in pure science and on top of that they have +50% to ALL GP;
- UU - you said it yourself. Comes too late to be relevant;
- UB - ok, it's great, no one can argue; comes at the start of the game, is way better than normal monument, gets zounds of free faith, helps no matter if you go wide or tall;

Still - together there are far better civs. Myself - I love to start next to Ethiopia AI. It's like 'thank you Heile, you're building all those nice wonders for me '.

 

[Txurce]

Yeah, Ethiopia can be absurdly strong if they get their culture rolling. In most AI games Ethiopia does very, very well (unless they are KO'd by an early warmonger).

That's certainly true in my games. Never mind the free techs -- the advantage of a steamrolling religion can't be underestimated when it comes to both science and a culture.