List of Civs made OP by settings:

explain the rationale for denmark and lakes? Are you talking their embarkment perks...how is it better than just flatland though?

Yeah, I haven't added anyone solely on that idea, but there's been some talk about Iroquois/Aztec on heavy forest with marathon being OP as well. You have ages to war with their UU and they get massive buffs to travel and combat in the woods. I recently played Aztecs and enjoyed their OP jag promotions on my melee all game. I had 2 elite units that continued to survive and wrecked havoc every war in the heavy-forest borders with the woodsmen, blitz, and march. I can only imagine the OP upgrades that would come on marathon.

 

Yes, Iroquois/Aztec on Boreal would be even more OP at Epic/Marathon, and, as you observe, extra movement is part of that.

Mind you, I have trouble making it work, but every time has a thread trashing Denmark there will be rabid defenders asserting that they are top tier for war mongering on watery maps.

Yes, it is about the embarking. On flatland, units have move two. Cats are all-but-useless. Zerkers are okay, move three and unlock early, but not overwhelming.

At worse, embarked units have move three. So, picking vulnerable targets, you can have three or four cats just off-shore two hexes from a city. DOW, land, set-up, shoot -- all in one turn. You will probably lose a cat, but next turn the city is a zero health! Very OP. Later on, Ski Infantry can move like six tiles inland on their first turn.

I have been trying Denmark on archipelago, which is okay but not OP like I was expecting. A lakes map with extra large lakes as has been suggested on this thread for Spain should be terrific for the Denmark UA. Make the map cold for a buff to the Ski Infantry. I will be trying this for a Community Deity Game.

 

I find small continents to be the sweet spot for Denmark

 

I appreciate that tip. I think I have a good lakes map though. Went with Seas and Cold.

 

Tiny Islands with Denmark, who needs a navy when you can just sail around a bunch of 'zerks and take all the capitals?

 

I think I saw someone mention this in another thread; The Netherlands on Sandstorm Map. Really, any desert type map. Settle on river and you've got 6-9 tiles for Polders in each city. Meanwhile; other civs are suffering due to all of the barren desert tiles.

 

Denmark needs a balance of water and land which is probably why archipelago maps are bad for them. No point in having a unit that can move 6 hexes from the water on land if the land side is 2 hexes wide. So more water locations to jump out from (lakes as you said, or large islands/small continents) but enough land that the bonus movement can actually be used.

......

For the Aztecs -- marathon lets them, and any other early uu civ, have and produce those units for much longer. So any civ that has a UU which keeps unique promotions is better there.

 

While I agree with your premise in general (that marathon speed benefits civs with early unique units), I disagree with its application to the Aztecs, for reasons I stated earlier in the thread:

"Marathon speed setting is a huge nerf to the Aztecs (and to Honor, Pictish, Pracinhas, etc., basically anything that rewards you for kills). Far from making Aztecs OP, it makes their UA 1/3 as effective. The reason is that the culture costs scale with the speed setting, but the reward for kills does not. So killing a warrior for +8 culture on standard speed might be nice as it's a significant boost to getting the 25 culture you need for your first policy, but killing the same warrior on marathon speed does almost nothing to get you to the 75 culture you need for your first policy."

 

Would be interesting to see some tally all the culture they get in a marathon/raging barbs game as the Aztecs to see what the culture from kills gives overall. Yes the sp costs are 3x standard, but you also get 3x the moves and yields. So on a huge map, it should in theory even out.

 

Ottomans on any kind of map that balances water and land (IE- Continents). The UA will probably make you have a large navy after building a single ship, they'll actually have something to do (explore), and it will cost you almost nothing. Their UU will dominate the land wars because it's probably the 2nd or 3rd best UU in the game.

Basically, you'll have a massive, expendable navy while also having a large advantage on land due to the UU. Kicking butt by land and sea.

 

For aztecs, a large map (with lots of space for camps to spawn) is important, coupled with the raging barbs. I had no trouble with monster culture growth, pumping out jaguars early on on marathon, then crawling all over the map, mopping up the barbs. You get friendly with CSs easily, and coupled with early honor tree culture from barbs, it propels you through tradition tree like nothing I've seen.

 

You get 3x the tile yields and 3x the moves, but marathon does not give you 3x as many units to kill. You're much less likely to have the "carpet of doom" because you can kill the carpet faster than the AI can regenerate it. I don't know if the rate of barbarian generation scales with game speed, so maybe you have a point for raging barbs. But as it regards to culture gained from traditional wars with major civs or city-states (which I think is usually the primary source of culture over the course of the whole game), marathon is a huge nerf to the Aztecs.

Just to demonstrate the opposite in fact, I'm playing a domination game right now as the Aztecs on quick speed, where their UA is a major boon. Culture costs are 2/3, but the reward for kills is the same. I finished honor before the medieval era. That was actually a little unfortunate because I wanted to go into commerce next but I had to open TWO policies from patronage while waiting to be able to open commerce. When I did finally open commerce, I managed to go through it very quickly, which I needed to continue warmongering because I was starting to hit my happiness cap. I won the World's Fair and got my 6 autocracy tenets before even getting close to the modern era. This game was on immortal difficulty but I've won deity before and if you can still warmonger successfully on deity, this UA will be even more powerful as there'll obviously be more units to kill.

 

A couple of small, not OP, things that favouring militarists on long speeds:

- rivals have less ability to build & buy units after seeing your own carpet of doom at their borders

- burning a city is not scaled, which increases the proportion of the game where you've got plenty of wilderness for barb farming

The latter is perhaps offset by not being able to use Mids workers to cycle repair & pillage whilst on the offensive.