No love for the Cree?

[KayAU]

I consider the Cree to be pretty good. Their advantages come into play early, and are all generally useful. I also personally find them quite enjoyable and fitting for my playstyle. I do sometimes find myself without an immediate safe target for the free trader, but it's still a trader I didn't have to spend precious early production to get.

With regards to the Okihtcitaw, while I do like them, I find it requires a lot of effort to level them up to where they would be a good combat/recon combination unit, and you are probably better off using your hammers for regular military units. Providing you with a free Okihtcitaw at the beginning would go some way towards improving it, reducing its cost would be even better. However, if I got to choose one change to the Okihtcitaw, I would give it this additional ability instead:
The Okihtcitaw gains full experience from combat with barbarians, regardless of level.
This would let you level up a bunch of them to where they would be really useful, and make them a real force in a military confrontation. You would still need to make an active effort to make them work, but I think it would be a fun effort.

 

[Casualty of war]

Almost certain Golden Classical Era which means you can Monumentality spam the countryside, a UI that turns bad dirt into great and counts as an improvement, a Trade Route quirk that makes third ring luxuries easy to reach and shared maps with Alliances which lets you circumnavigate the world without building a boat. The Cree encourages you to make different development choices as you progress but they are ridiculously powerful. And fun to play.

 

[steveg700]

They have a trade route bonus. There is something of an unwritten rule in Civ VI design that trade route bonuses should be crappy because there is no way to cap how many trade routes one city can send or receive.

Having said that, many players consider the Cree a strong civ, so we should not conclude there is no love for them. Probably will be more love post-Storm with the insertion of the skirmisher.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

The Cree are my fave civ... especially if you choose Abundant resources.

 

[Pietato]

but If I take Lautro for example, that UI is just so much stronger and reliable

Cree have the best UI in the game.

 

[Rolaran]

I think the automatic shared visibility is underrated actually. If you can get multiple alliances going, you quickly have a better view of the world than anyone else, and become very difficult to take by surprise. Your scouts can smoothly transition to "filling in the blanks" that other civs haven't gotten around to yet, increasing the odds of finding stray goody huts and whatnot. Also there's the undocumented bonus feature of being able to see allied spies, including ones assigned to your own cities- counterespionage becomes less reactive and more preemptive when you can see your so-called friends loitering around your commercial hubs and whistling nonchalantly ;-)

 

[Archon_Wing]

Cree have the best UI in the game.

I think the 2 housing is quite useful. Not under normal circumstances, but sometimes you will have lots of crappy tundra/coast with no way of improving housing. Many other civs are going to be hosed under these circumstances, but Cree won't.

But I think that's their main strength along with Germany, and that is they're pretty much immune to bad starts. Of course, this is probably lost on people that reroll if they don't see 3 luxuries and a nearby CS at the start.

 

[Ferocitus]

The easiest wins I have had (against 20+ other civs on giant Terra Maps) have been as the Cree.
For me they are just ahead of Australia, Brazil, Korea, Scotland, Russia, and Germany.

 

[Gali]

I do love the Cree. They are a builder's paradise. Plenty of food housing easy border growth. The new Pingala will allow them to shine a bit. I also love putting them in my games. they don't go crazy on a wonders or religion or endless warmongering and are consistently one of the strongest AIs in the game so they add a bit of challenge

 

[ShakaKhan]

Thanks for the replies. Many are stating that they think they are very good as I do, and question where I came to the conclusion of there being no love for the Cree. After picking up R&F, I wanted to see what people thought about how the different civs compete in that environment, so I looked at @Archon_Wing 's thread "Power ranking the civs" In that there were several posts with a tier graphic. Now I apologize if I'm taking it out of context as some people have a tier meaning all are equal on that tier, while others have the tiers ranking the civs from left to right, but here's what was listed there:

MonsterCat has them 4th out of 6 tiers, 24th out of 36 overall
LordLakely has them 3rd out of 5 tiers, 23rd out of 26 overall
weraptor has them 4/5 tier, 32/36
archon wing has them 3/6 tier, 19/36
Lily lancer has them 3/5 tier, 20/36
Jewelrunna has them 18/36

So 3 people have them about smack-dab in the middle of the pack, 2 people have them about 2/3 of the way down, and 1 person has them in the bottom ninth of the ranking.

The description of how to use them at the top is quite a specific scenario and to me limits their strategy.

Not really, the whole tradehub thing can apply to any map, it just means you have to organize your districts for one city in a particular way, which means that one of your cities probably won't have your victory condition district until much later in the game. But all your other cities will have it, so the tradeoff of missing it in one city for the benefit of having all other cities get a big production boost is worth it to me. Also for new cities, settling them and then building or buying a trader somewhere else and sending it to the new city to send to the tradehub to get a big production boost and minor growth boost helps them hit the ground running, and our approach to evaluating decisions in the game usually incorporates how quickly you can get a return on your investments.

It's also noteworthy that I'm currently playing emperor difficulty to get a feel for the mechanics of R&F, but I am definitely no stranger to the deity game. This approach is more suited towards lower-level play, but the Cree's bonuses are advantageous, IMO incredibly advantageous at Deity. One of the main differences between deity games and emperor games is that deity requires you to spend much more production on units, you need some infrastructure to not fall even further behind, but too much emphasis on infrastructure will get you steamrolled. Emperor games you can usually just build the initial city-conquering group and upgrade them as the game progresses while your production is dominantly or even exclusively on infrastructure. This being the case, the ability to add hammers to a flat tile is quite beneficial.

Also, don't get me wrong, they aren't my fave civ, Persia gets that nod. It's just, again, after looking at some of those tier lists on that thread, they seem pretty out of place. Some of the other more-or-less consensus evaluations I also have some disagreement with (like Scythia's drop - she used to be hand's down everyone's top civ, and now she is somewhere in the top quarter of the rankings. I know she took a nerf, but still, 2 for 1 fast units, that bonus applying to a ranged unit that can actually keep up with your cavalry, the most consistently applied combat bonus of any civ, some healing on kills and a UI pumps more gold and faith in... should be really high up. oops-tangent), but the Cree's evaluation, by quite a few, seems the most out of place to me.

The other thing that bothers me about the argument that they don't have a victory condition specific bonus is that they have a bonus which is the derivative of ALL victory conditions - production. Space race games need high science - so how do you get more science? By building more cities, campuses, and campus buildings. And how do you do that? With production. Domination games need stronger units and more units - so how do you get those? With production. Religious games need more faith - and how do you get more faith? More cities with holy sites and their buildings.... which needs production. And culture games need more great people points, culture, or science and resorts (my favorite VC because there's different routes to it) EITHER WAY, how do you get more of the things that will bring you to victory? Production. I'm not saying that the Cree can out-science Korea, but they have an easier time generating more when they find themselves lacking (bad example because of the 1/2 priced districts, but I hear that's going away soon.) Also, space games aren't just about beakers. Culture games aren't just about tourism. In every game, you have to deal with DoW's, increase your science, build defense, and so on. Having more production, or more gold/faith to supplement your production, helps every aspect of the game, and they get bonuses to both.

 

[NegativeZero]

The other thing that bothers me about the argument that they don't have a victory condition specific bonus is that they have a bonus which is the derivative of ALL victory conditions - production. Space race games need high science - so how do you get more science? By building more cities, campuses, and campus buildings. And how do you do that? With production. Domination games need stronger units and more units - so how do you get those? With production. Religious games need more faith - and how do you get more faith? More cities with holy sites and their buildings.... which needs production. And culture games need more great people points, culture, or science and resorts (my favorite VC because there's different routes to it) EITHER WAY, how do you get more of the things that will bring you to victory? Production.

Having more production, or more gold/faith to supplement your production, helps every aspect of the game, and they get bonuses to both.

The Cree, when compared to the top tier civs, are generally unfocused but that doesn't stop them form being a great civ. Their early bonuses gives them much more consistency no matter their start, but they don't have that killing edge or bleeding edge to out compete a streamlined civ.

The Mekewop is a great UI with generous yields, but when compared to say the Aztec's ability to speed up districts with builder charges it cannot compete. The Aztec's production ability out competes the Cree's through better distribution and relocation of production without limiting factors like 1) growing pop, 2) working good tiles, 3) having X resource(s) around. If you consider lumping The Cree's other abilities that indirectly increase production (housing, gold, # of routes, etc.) when comparing them to Aztec's builder charges, how many abilities do you consider it taking to match such a singular strong bonus?

In many tier lists, the Cree are "middle of the pack" because there are quite a few great civs in 6.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

The Cree, when compared to the top tier civs, are generally unfocused but that doesn't stop them form being a great civ. Their early bonuses gives them much more consistency no matter their start, but they don't have that killing edge or bleeding edge to out compete a streamlined civ.

The Mekewop is a great UI with generous yields, but when compared to say the Aztec's ability to speed up districts with builder charges it cannot compete. The Aztec's production ability out competes the Cree's through better distribution and relocation of production without limiting factors like 1) growing pop, 2) working good tiles, 3) having X resource(s) around. If you consider lumping The Cree's other abilities that indirectly increase production (housing, gold, # of routes, etc.) when comparing them to Aztec's builder charges, how many abilities do you consider it taking to match such a singular strong bonus?

In many tier lists, the Cree are "middle of the pack" because there are quite a few great civs in 6.

Or as I'd put it, it's not difficult for an experienced player to win any victory condition in Civ 6 playing any civ. A civ that's just generally all round good, like the Cree, therefore doesn't really stand out from the pack compared to civs that are hyper-good at one particular thing. That's just the way our brains work.

If you played 100 games as each civ, evenly distributed across all of the different victory types, your average win time with the Cree might well be the best of the lot. Power rankings aren't based on objective evidence across all victory types, though. They're based on subjective opinions and tilted towards civs who are really good at one particular victory type.

 

[Archon_Wing]

archon wing has them 3/6 tier, 19/36

That is heavily skewed by things like Korea, Sumeria, Nubia, etc.

It's more like these civs need a nerf while the ones in the middle are actually fine.

The other thing is Civ 6 balance is pretty good besides the outliers. There's actually a huge gap between the bottom tiers and the ones immediately above. The power curve actually leans to the high side for most.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

The Cree are my favorites. I don't know if they're the "best" but who cares.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Or as I'd put it, it's not difficult for an experienced player to win any victory condition in Civ 6 playing any civ. A civ that's just generally all round good, like the Cree, therefore doesn't really stand out from the pack compared to civs that are hyper-good at one particular thing. That's just the way our brains work.

If you played 100 games as each civ, evenly distributed across all of the different victory types, your average win time with the Cree might well be the best of the lot. Power rankings aren't based on objective evidence across all victory types, though. They're based on subjective opinions and tilted towards civs who are really good at one particular victory type.

That does bring up something that makes me favor them more than others may. Since there is no ingame HoF in Civ6, I like to keep a notepad document outlining my victories and I keep a folder of "finished games" that has the last turn save file. In order to not confuse different games of the same civ, I'll add a Roman numeral to subsequent entries (the second time I play the Aztec, it was Montezuma II for example, the next Aztec game will be Montezuma III.) More importantly, I like to have each civ win all four victory conditions on a particular map type before moving on to the next map type. This is a bit of an obsessive compulsion, and admittedly backfires when I'm on the third or fourth run with a civ and I've (only in my own crazy mind) locked myself out of a victory condition that that particular map is optimal for. But like you said, experienced players can win any victory condition on most maps, I can usually pick my victory on deity before looking at the map and get there. I think we all have our little habits and preferences in how we play, sometimes full-well knowing that it detracts from optimal play, but we just prefer playing that way.

That said, my compulsion to win all four victory types on a single map type before moving on to the next map type does make me favor civs that are well rounded. To some it may seem foolish to play Kongo for anything other than CV or Mongolia/Zulu for anything other than DV, but that's how I like to play, and it can be quite interesting playing a civ streamlined for one VC and go another route with it.

 

[Disgustipated]

Looking at all my turn time victories when I played each civ during civ of the week (with similar map settings), Cree were in the middle of the pack for cultural victory. Maybe a little less than little. But I still think they are quite strong from gold generation alone. My only game where I had over 100,000 gold was with the Cree. Granted I could have gotten it in other games had I just not spent my gold on anything (like my domination games with 100+ cities), but I did this with a moderate amount of cities. I still have my save game with over 110,000 gold. This was shortly after Big Ben (which gave me over 50,000 gold).

 

[Pietato]

MonsterCat has them 4th out of 6 tiers, 24th out of 36 overall
LordLakely has them 3rd out of 5 tiers, 23rd out of 26 overall
weraptor has them 4/5 tier, 32/36
archon wing has them 3/6 tier, 19/36
Lily lancer has them 3/5 tier, 20/36
Jewelrunna has them 18/36

These people have no idea how to actually play the Cree. I only play deity, and the Cree are fantastic.

I think the mekewap confuses most people. Once you have researched Cartography, it generates an extra 2 gold for EACH luxury it is adjacent to.

I think the 2 housing is quite useful. Not under normal circumstances, but sometimes you will have lots of crappy tundra/coast with no way of improving housing. Many other civs are going to be hosed under these circumstances, but Cree won't.

But I think that's their main strength along with Germany, and that is they're pretty much immune to bad starts. Of course, this is probably lost on people that reroll if they don't see 3 luxuries and a nearby CS at the start.

- Best gold.
- Best trade routes (debatable).
- Best housing.
- No need for farms.

 

[Patine]

"it just came out, we're so stoked about it, Attack of the Clones is better than Empire"

Sorry, I apologize up front, as I know this is COMPLETELY tangential to the thread's topic entirely, and I fully acknowledge that and take any flack willingly, but I noticed this here, and not on the "Everything About Star Wars" Thread. I'm just curious what exactly debate about "Attack of the Clones" you're making a throwaway reference to?

 

[ShakaKhan]

Sorry, I apologize up front, as I know this is COMPLETELY tangential to the thread's topic entirely, and I fully acknowledge that and take any flack willingly, but I noticed this here, and not on the "Everything About Star Wars" Thread. I'm just curious what exactly debate about "Attack of the Clones" you're making a throwaway reference to?

LOL! Thanks for this. Really made my day(a day in which I happened to have a root canal no less.) The
throwaway reference, as you quite accurately put it, was that many of us were overly accepting and positively appraising many of the elements of the new civs and mechanics on release and later acknowledged the flaws in our appraisal due to the newfound novelty. Similarly, many of the reviews and appraisals of AotC were extremely positive, as it was only the second addition to a franchise in 25 years that we were desperately seeking. Later, we realized that our positive appraisals were completely coerced by nostalgia and our need for more material on the dynasty. Even Kevin Smith stated that "this is the best movie since Empire" in reference to a movie that is now almost consensually considered the worst of the franchise, with horrendous dialogue (I wish I could just wish away my feelings), an emphasis on political progression as a major plot point, and so on. If you'd like to continue the discussion, I'd welcome a private message, but as you said, it's quite off-topic and I'd prefer not to derail the thread.

 

[Patine]

LOL! Thanks for this. Really made my day(a day in which I happened to have a root canal no less.) The
throwaway reference, as you quite accurately put it, was that many of us were overly accepting and positively appraising many of the elements of the new civs and mechanics on release and later acknowledged the flaws in our appraisal due to the newfound novelty. Similarly, many of the reviews and appraisals of AotC were extremely positive, as it was only the second addition to a franchise in 25 years that we were desperately seeking. Later, we realized that our positive appraisals were completely coerced by nostalgia and our need for more material on the dynasty. Even Kevin Smith stated that "this is the best movie since Empire" in reference to a movie that is now almost consensually considered the worst of the franchise, with horrendous dialogue (I wish I could just wish away my feelings), an emphasis on political progression as a major plot point, and so on. If you'd like to continue the discussion, I'd welcome a private message, but as you said, it's quite off-topic and I'd prefer not to derail the thread.

Please send me a PM, because, strangely, I'm actually of opposite feelings about AotC, and the prequels in general, than the vast majority of people I hear and meet, and would be glad to discuss it with someone whose more mature than many I meet, who try to shut me down with Jar-Jar Binks quotes.