Greece a top tier civ? I think not

[Martin Alvito]

But with Greece you need to spend less gold on CSs. You can spend that on units instead. If I am not mistaken, having the greece UA would have been very valuable in the Rome LP that you did, with all the city states that you had and everything.

Let's do a little math here to demonstrate why Greece's UA is poor, as compared to truly strong civ abilities. Suppose that you ally a city-state and you don't go Patronage, which is the best-case scenario for the UA. You ally a non-hostile CS, losing one point of influence per turn. 500 generally translates to 65-70 influence, which means that your upkeep is somewhere between 7 and 8 per turn. Greece halves that, which means that you save between 3.5 to 4 per city-state allied.

Compare that to some of the alternatives. Cathy gets doubled strategic resources, which if resold yield an effective 3 per turn per two strategics in addition to the extra from the tile. Arabia can double luxuries with a Bazaar, which yields up an extra 8 per turn per luxury. Both of those blow Greece away. You can also make an argument for Camel Archers over CCs after the Horseman nerf.

Even China looks very good here by direct comparison; assuming that you put Libraries everywhere (and you will), every Paper Maker generates nearly as much extra revenue per turn as the discount on each ally you make with Greece. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my bonus earned on a per city basis than have to ally city-states to earn it. Flexibility is a good thing.

The other problem with Greece is that the UUs are early, expensive and along mutually exclusive early paths. Hoplites beat Warriors but not Swords, so you have a very short window there. CCs are excellent at killing early units, but aren't great against cities and obsolesce rapidly due to Pikes.

The result is that Greece is way down the possible list of Deity choices. They can be good on lower difficulties due to the longer conquest window for the UUs, but for Deity play they're a very poor choice.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

To be fair I gave them a chance and tried a couple of games on deity. Of the three U's, I'd have the say the hoplite shines the best. I was very easily able to conquer my neighbour with just hoplites + my usual tradition / honor start in all the games I played which set me up for a good empire. It's also not so far out of the way (only bronze) so it can come a quicker and more reliably than an iron rush. It's main downside is the fact that you have to hard produce the hoplites (no quick warrior - sword upgrade) but you can usually do it before they start getting walls up. Also you can still go for standard techs a lot easier (writing - philo) because you haven't had to dump 20 turns or so into iron.

The CC I still question... it's ability to generate more GGs is kind of useless. They are as hard to tech to and just as resource dependant as swordsmen. They do let you hit and run a lot... and they can sort of stand up to spearmen (at least better than regular horsemen) but I don't really see them as adding a whole lot. Between them and hoplites the choice is clear.

The UA I hadn't even used in these rush games. Yes sure it lets you ally more CSes earlier... but most of the cost of CS allies comes from the initial payout for allies. Once you have them as allies, you can throw just a pittance towards them to keep them. Greece doesn't really help here.

Personally I would love to see greece get something more towards its philo / science nature. There are few science civs in the game as it is... and greece was hardly just a war based nation. Either that or give them an addition CS bonus like say all positive modiifers are doubled.

 

[vexing]

it could be that a lot of people are just winning cheap early rush/duel maps with Alex. They do have nice early UUs.

oh, yeah. greece may be the best duel map civ, where you want to hit an upgrade ruin with your initial warrior.

i could also seem them contending in a marathon domination game. beeline to horseback riding, then use CCs to take everyone out. i'd rather use egypt though - war chariots come sooner and no horses required.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The problem with Hoplites is that they're on a dead-end upgrade path until Rifles, which is just too late. If you're sinking that much early into units, you'd like to get more than one neighbor's scalp to show for it.

Worse, those Hoplites are dead meat once Steel comes around.

Even if you're winning cheaply on duel maps, you'd usually rather have Bismarck on an Iron beeline than Alex. It's really, really hard to screw that up.

I think that we can all agree that Marathon is not Deity, whatever the label on the game says.

 

[Aspon]

i think people underestimate the effect of city states.

greece were my first deity beaters, and that was for a reason. its all very well talking about heeps of extra gold and yes if you have a brilliant economy greeces ua is a bit useless but you usually only see an economy like that near late game.

I wouldn't knock Siam either.

How anyone can knock China staggers me. 15% combat boost effectivly.

unless you go to fights without a general but if you do that your ability level is no higher then warlord difficulty at which point debating civ effectiveness is pointless.

and the choku is one of the best units in the game.

a fully upgraded general assisted choku behind musket men is a leaveful combo they dont take cannon hits well but in numbers they are leaful.

 

[Furycrab]

Well in the recent patch, Civs are more aggressive at grabbing CS allies even if they don't have a high diplomacy rating. To me it dropped the value of Greece since it's easier to keep 2-4 good allies with Siam than it is to hold 3 to 6 with Greece.

However not having to play against Alex is often a bonus on it's own... He has a ridiculous runaway AI rate.

 

[_hero_]

Let's do a little math here to demonstrate why Greece's UA is poor, as compared to truly strong civ abilities. Suppose that you ally a city-state and you don't go Patronage, which is the best-case scenario for the UA. You ally a non-hostile CS, losing one point of influence per turn. 500 generally translates to 65-70 influence, which means that your upkeep is somewhere between 7 and 8 per turn. Greece halves that, which means that you save between 3.5 to 4 per city-state allied.

Compare that to some of the alternatives. Cathy gets doubled strategic resources, which if resold yield an effective 3 per turn per two strategics in addition to the extra from the tile. Arabia can double luxuries with a Bazaar, which yields up an extra 8 per turn per luxury. Both of those blow Greece away. You can also make an argument for Camel Archers over CCs after the Horseman nerf.

Cathrine's extra strategics have no trade value after a certain point so her gold gain is only temporary. The AI will pay exactly nothing for Iron once it has gunpowder and cannons. It will pay nothing for horses once it has made them obsolete. Uranium is the only other one that gives double quantity and you have a strong disincentive from trading it in that the AI does build and use nukes.

Arabia's bonus is huge, but it also caps. Each player may still only use one of each luxury. If you already had a monopoly the net gain of their Bazaar's is exactly zero (not counting the buff they got in the last patch which is far too situational to calculate). If you did not have a monopoly, the net gain is only equal to the number of civs that don't have it.

You said yourself Greece saves 3.5-4 GPT per allied city state. So if you're going for every city state, that equate to 24*3.5=84 GPT on a Huge map.

Since this is a late game situation, compare that to Russia who would have to sell off (84/3)*2=56 Uranium since Horses and Iron are of no value on the trade market.

Arabia would have to sell off 10.5 luxuries under the circumstance that they are still friendly or Neutral. If they have been reduced to Guarded, which is likely to be the case with a lot of civs, then that number goes up. Arabia's is better but it is also dependent upon other AIs whereas Greece's UA works regardless of reputation. If you are a warmonger, Arabia's Bazaar bonus is equal to basically nothing. Same for Russia's UA.

Greece has one of a few UAs that will benefit you in any circumstance and strategy, so long as you don't disable city states.

Let's compare it to the other UAs that impact GPT.

Iroquois: With Greece saving 3.5 GPT per city state, you'd basically need 3.5 hexes of forests per city trade route to make back that gold. It totally depends on how many cities you have too.

Inca: Every 7 road hexes equals to one city state for Greece. A little less because of the free hills. So let's for every 5 hexes of road, Inca has saved as much as Greece saves per city state.

Spain: 100 or 500 gold for each discovery. A 100g discovery= 29 turns of Greek Influence. A 500g discovery=143 turns. If we're going with a huge map and Spain somehow got 10 first discoveries which isn't even possible, that would be 1429 turns of influence. That sounds like a lot but you have to remember that each city state counts as 1 turn. If Greece were allied with 10 city states that number comes back down to 143.

Songhai: An extra 50 gold per barb capture. Each Barb camp =14 turns of influence. The gold bonus from capturing cities has an unpredictable and inconsistent number that can't be calculated without a large amount of data to find an average.

Germany: Their unit maintenance just has to save 3.5 Gold per city state that Greece has. Possible but up to the player to maximize and is adjusted by social policy choices.



You can argue about the utility of the UUs ad nauseum and there is merit to both sides. I'd conclude that Greece looses some overall benefit to civs like Arabia in exchange for the ability to be useful in every situation and map. If you plan on playing with no re-rolls and intend to be competitive on every map on Diety, Greece is one of the best choices as a result.

 

[Hasire]

Who has the cash to ally with 24 city states? That takes 12,000 gold, with another 6,000 gold about 10 turn later. If you have 18,000 gold than 84 gpt is not that relevant. Who said anything about late game? Russia should have an extra ~30gpt for the entire game, which is more valuable. 20gpt does more early than it 84 does late. It takes 23 turns to buy a nuclear missile with 84 gpt. It takes It takes ~15 to buy a LS. Plus, when you go to war with civs you previously traded with they will have strategic resource penalty, which is valuable.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Yeah I agree with _hero_ on a lot of points. I think even on a pure GPT analysis Greece's UA isn't all that shabby.

The other problem is you can't really analyze a bonus like that without taking into account time. I mean if you look at France for example their UA is absolutely horrible midgame. Burial Tombs... MPMs... how many things are far superior to it. However because it comes right off the bat with no opportunity cost at all, France is considered to be a top civ by many because of what you can do with that early culture.

Similarly, Greece's bonus can be used quite a lot before other civs can get into patronage or get their gold bonuses online. So again the question then becomes what can you with those early CS allies. Say you find 2 cultural CSes. You can rip through that liberty tree and get that GE far faster than france. Other civs could only afford 1 or their benefit would vanish sooner. What about an early maritime ally to allow diversion to pure production to push out units or a wonder? CSes allies also cascade. You get one, you trade extra resources, you get more. Greece can do that better than others. Before you can dismiss Greece, you have to think about these things.

Similarly, I don't consider the investment cost of 4 or 5 hoplites to eliminate my neighbour a bad purchase. You can usually get 2 or 3 cities including a capital. Compare that to the price of settlers and workers and you aren't that bad off either.

Is Greece the universally best civ in the game? I really doubt that. However they really aren't that bad either. If you learn how to exploit their advantages sufficiently, I think they can be quite good.

 

[vexing]

the main problem with your analysis is you're not accounting for the exponential impact earlier benefits have on the game going forward, which is one of the main reasons russia is so good or spain with a couple lucky natural wonder hits is unstoppable (same as any skilldorado game). with some luck russia can hit the ground with 8 horses to sell on turn 15ish.

the UA in late game is also of little consequence on deity; civs can buy out allies from under you, the fact that your influence is decaying slower doesn't help much with that.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

the main problem with your analysis is you're not accounting for the exponential impact earlier benefits have on the game going forward, which is one of the main reasons russia is so good or spain with a couple lucky natural wonder hits is unstoppable (same as any skilldorado game). with some luck russia can hit the ground with 8 horses to sell on turn 15ish.

That would take quite the luck. You have to have a worker, upgraded the tile, it would have to be in your immediate radius as you would have had maybe 1 tile expansion at that point, and you would've had to have met a civ that doesn't have horses themselves and happens to have enough cash to trade for 8 horses.

Unless you are re-rolling all the time this is going to happen maybe 2% of the time. More realistically russia's bonus comes online about turn 30, and would require you to have 2 cities to get this 8 horse total.

By that point Greece could've allied with a CS and traded away its natural luxuries relying on the CS' instead. Thus it would have its money bonus kick in too.

 

[snarzberry]

No I did not get the opinion of Greece and China been so good from this forum I got the opinion by trying out a number of civs and using my brain to think things through.

The opinion I was referring to, which I presume you got from this forum, was not that you personally think that Greece is in the top two civs but rather your claim that the 'vast majority of deity players think it's either Greece or China'.

as for taking out civs with comp calvery it can def be done its even been posted on youtube. but as I said you need a lucky start. on my first deity beater i killed egypt this way, anyone know the software for making videos i can make videos and post them next time, note to wait a few weeks as I have a holiday then an exam coming up so after the game i finish today i wont be able to play for a few weeks

I don't doubt that you can take out one civ on deity with CCs, I know for a fact that you can. It is the second civ and particularly the capital that I think is going to be a road block for you. No need to go to the trouble to make a video just a quick play through to approx turn 80 - 90 (which is when your task will almost surely need to be completed by to have any hope whatsoever) and a save file will suffice - it'd take half an hour. If that second civ isn't already embroiled in a conflict I think it's highly unlikely that you could take them out with horseman replacements, even good ones.

On the question of a poll I don't think it's either needed to resolve this question or likely to generate any useful information, plus I am kinda sick of polls .

 

[ShahJahanII]

Let's do a little math here to demonstrate why Greece's UA is poor, as compared to truly strong civ abilities. Suppose that you ally a city-state and you don't go Patronage, which is the best-case scenario for the UA. You ally a non-hostile CS, losing one point of influence per turn. 500 generally translates to 65-70 influence, which means that your upkeep is somewhere between 7 and 8 per turn. Greece halves that, which means that you save between 3.5 to 4 per city-state allied.

Compare that to some of the alternatives. Cathy gets doubled strategic resources, which if resold yield an effective 3 per turn per two strategics in addition to the extra from the tile. Arabia can double luxuries with a Bazaar, which yields up an extra 8 per turn per luxury. Both of those blow Greece away. You can also make an argument for Camel Archers over CCs after the Horseman nerf.

Even China looks very good here by direct comparison; assuming that you put Libraries everywhere (and you will), every Paper Maker generates nearly as much extra revenue per turn as the discount on each ally you make with Greece. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my bonus earned on a per city basis than have to ally city-states to earn it. Flexibility is a good thing.

The other problem with Greece is that the UUs are early, expensive and along mutually exclusive early paths. Hoplites beat Warriors but not Swords, so you have a very short window there. CCs are excellent at killing early units, but aren't great against cities and obsolesce rapidly due to Pikes.

The result is that Greece is way down the possible list of Deity choices. They can be good on lower difficulties due to the longer conquest window for the UUs, but for Deity play they're a very poor choice.

Your so called "math" isn't exactly correct.
If you want to stay allied with a city-state, you can't wait until its influence drops to 0 to pay it again.
This makes the "upkeep" a lot higher than you said it is.
Greece cuts that upkeep in half, making it a decent civ.
Maybe not "top tier" but decent.

 

[chazzycat]

Yeah but you only have to throw that initial 500 to reach allied status once. Then after that it's 7-8per turn. Divide the 500 over the number of turns in the game (since you only do it once) you'll realize that it's not as significant as you think.

 

[Hasire]

Your so called "math" isn't exactly correct.
If you want to stay allied with a city-state, you can't wait until its influence drops to 0 to pay it again.
This makes the "upkeep" a lot higher than you said it is.
Greece cuts that upkeep in half, making it a decent civ.
Maybe not "top tier" but decent.

No, his math is exactly right. It will cost greece 4 gpt to stay allied with a city state. If anything, he is overestimating Greece's UA because if you let influence drop below 60 you still get some benefits.

 

[vexing]

Your so called "math" isn't exactly correct.
If you want to stay allied with a city-state, you can't wait until its influence drops to 0 to pay it again.
This makes the "upkeep" a lot higher than you said it is.

that's funny. his math is correct, it's slightly favoring greece more than it should be if you're paying for the initial ally.

siam: 500 gold to 70 influence, 10 turns later 500 for 70 turns
ally 80 turns for 1000 gold

greece, 500 gold to 70 influence, 20 turns later 250 for 70 turns.
ally 90 turns for 750 gold

250 gold less, and 90 vs 80 turns. it's pretty clearly less than 4 gpt.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

that's funny. his math is correct, it's slightly favoring greece more than it should be if you're paying for the initial ally.

siam: 500 gold to 70 influence, 10 turns later 500 for 70 turns
ally 80 turns for 1000 gold

greece, 500 gold to 70 influence, 20 turns later 250 for 70 turns.
ally 90 turns for 750 gold

250 gold less, and 90 vs 80 turns. it's pretty clearly less than 4 gpt.

siam: 1000 gold / 80 turns = 12.5 GPT

greece: 750 gold / 90 turns = 8.33 GPT

12.5 - 8.33 = 4.17 GPT

So is it really that clear that it is less than 4?

 

[Hasire]

It is definitely not "a lot higher than you said"

 

[vexing]

siam: 1000 gold / 80 turns = 12.5 GPT

greece: 750 gold / 90 turns = 8.33 GPT

12.5 - 8.33 = 4.17 GPT

So is it really that clear that it is less than 4?

i guess it's only clear to smarter folks. to clarify:

over 80 turns you're spending 250 less gold with greece than with siam
spending the 250 extra gold with siam, over those 80 turns to maintain the same ally status amounts to 250 gold / 80 turns = 3.125 gpt.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The math is as charitable to Greece as possible. You're correct that I'm slightly overstating things since I'm not accounting for Friends status; I'm assuming that if you dump the initial 500 into a CS you intend to keep feeding it and are able to do so.

I'm also not worrying about the initial investment, since you're making that irrespective of who you are. It's what happens afterwards that matters. It's true that if you assume a defined period of time as vexing does, the lump sum investment up front will reduce the comparative impact of the upkeep upon the results. In the limit, the numbers are as I stated. Since we're discussing half of a per turn or less, it really isn't worth quibbling about.

I think that the utility of Greece's UA when you ally most of the city-states has been adequately answered. If you've done that on Deity, you already have a winning position and the rest is boring mop-up work. What we care about is the period in the game when the outcome is in doubt.

Greece cuts that upkeep in half, making it a decent civ.
Maybe not "top tier" but decent.

If by "decent" you mean "upper portion of the bottom half", then sure, I'll buy that.

Iroquois: With Greece saving 3.5 GPT per city state, you'd basically need 3.5 hexes of forests per city trade route to make back that gold. It totally depends on how many cities you have too.

The Longhouse generates . One generally translates to about 4. You can bias the equation somewhat in favor of due to its immediacy (and the bad -> conversion factor), but Longhouses in Forests blast the Greece UA out of the water. The Mohawk is currently one of the better UUs (no Iron needed, retains bonuses on upgrade). So long as starting bias is on, the Iroquois are much better than Greece right now and it isn't even close.

Songhai: An extra 50 gold per barb capture. Each Barb camp =14 turns of influence. The gold bonus from capturing cities has an unpredictable and inconsistent number that can't be calculated without a large amount of data to find an average.

It's typically between 300-400 extra on standard speed in my experience. That's a lot of turns of CS ally savings, and you get it now instead of on a per turn basis. Songhai is one of the better offensive civs due to Mandekalu and the pillage.