Poll: What's the strongest Civ for humans in 5.0 alpha

[Chippy Smith]

why are all border growth strats broken right now? has baseline border growth become faster in this alpha version?

Other poster mentioned the current bug, but that's not why, has been strong for a while. Tradition's "Sovereignty" gives a stronger bonus that what the text says, and that is not a bug. Devs have said they will try to address it going forward, but issue is that there isn't a current agreed upon way to make it fair for those going Tradition normally while also limiting the power of border blob/whether it makes sense for the AI to also be able to go partially into one tree.

For clarity, filling out authority, going 2 into Tradition to grab sovereignty, then (usually) going 4 into Fealty for Fiefdoms is what others mean when they say "border blob." Other parts of strategy may include grabbing wonders like Angor Wat/religious beliefs to increase culture gen/border growth. Can also grab the opener for Tradition early if needed for extra pop, but you really want to get Imperium unlocked ASAP in border blob, and part of that is filling out Authority fully so early Tradition grab only makes sense depending on situation.

 

[pochesun]

Its so hard to define "strongest civ" really. Some of them have incredible start and can snowball from there, like Celts, Songhai or Huns. Some have robust mid game like Iroques or Austria or Brazil, and some are crazy late powerhouse like Arabia. Some are very decent over the course of the whole game like Poland and Eithiopia.

I guess its commonly aknowledged that those who have strongest start are the strongest, but what if one fails to get a good start?

 

[pineappledan]

Some people on the discord are convinced it's now Huns

 

[jmmendesp]

Have had great results so far with Greece, using Hoplites for early expansion then transitioning into city state diplomacy. Chancery gives you a ton of production while the Parthenon gives you a ton of gold.

 

[redrum68]

Some people on the discord are convinced it's now Huns

Yeah Huns are now either broken or S tier with the +10% unit production per war Ulticur change in 5.0.

 

[MIS]

We need another poll! I grouped the last 14 together based on AI win rates from version 4. Some say Huns. redrum puts Spain and Mongolia into Broken. Maybe I'll wait until I finish my current game (Russia), then play Inca (I restart if I get a non-thematic start), Babylon (I like to turtle), then ask again.

 

[Psilonemo]

Yeah Huns are now either broken or S tier with the +10% unit production per war Ulticur change in 5.0.

I wonder how different things would be in a humans only game, since human beings would prioritize certain targets unlike the AI.

 

[ElliotS]

I'll add that unlike AI humans can restart if we don't like our Start, which makes Inca even better in human hands. You're never going to need to play a game with 1 mountain in the tri-state area.

 

[CppMaster]

I'll add that unlike AI humans can restart if we don't like our Start, which makes Inca even better in human hands. You're never going to need to play a game with 1 mountain in the tri-state area.

That's cherry-picking, though. Every restart is like losing the game.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

role-playing one city challenge with Attila is quite fun, its certainly not a viable way to balance them but just in case ...

 

[looorg]

After having a bit of test of quite a few of them. For the early game? France. Accept no substitute. There is only one. Yes I'm bleeding 56 gold, give or take a gold per turn or so. It's a none issue. So many brutes and barbarian units. I technically only have 13 units (that require maintenance), but then have a "shadow army" of another 109 units that are off the books so to speak for a grand total of 122 units. Yeah. Not sure how this was intended to be abused ...

.

 

[azum4roll]

All units require maintenance. They're only supply-free.

 

[looorg]

All units require maintenance. They're only supply-free.

That is basically a none issue. You can just roam the world extorting citystates for gold. Going negative gold and then everyturn you get gold so you never really run out. I think in the last 200+ turns I have only gone negative gold total once and lost one unit. That was a miscalculation on my part, I invested to much and thought I was going to get the gold back the next turn. But I dropped to far below and did not notice. So eventually I just resorted to that every few turns I give away units to the city-states. Or I disband a few inside the border to cover the cost of the entire army. But it still now bloated well beyond 200 and all the AI are either scared or desperately trying to be friends or complaining that there are large amounts of units hanging out just outside their borders.

It also results in a lot of culture. My culture value per turn is about 3-4 times my science value. The +1 culture and +1 tourism for every 10 military units. That counts all the units, just not the once in supply. So I'm dominant vs all the other civs already and could if I wasn't in the Medieval era have a culture victory. But it's currently turn 337 (marathon, deity) and my culture per turn is +702 and my science is +180 and my tourism is +415. I have 11 social policies while the AI are at about 8. My gold pile is 1612 but I'm losing 78 gold per turn. But it's not really a problem.

I have 17 supplied units. But the army is now: 5 scouts, 34 brutes, 4 spearmen, 2 hand axes, 1 slinger, 30 archers, 96 more spearmen (I think they are shown twice cause some are mine and some are barbarian), 8 horsemen, 1 warrior, 23 swordmen, 1 archer, 1 knight, 11 comp bow, 1 skirmisher, 7 pikemen, 1 trebuchet, 1 trireme.

But then perhaps it's just me. But the scale seems a bit off the charts. Much more brutal that any of the others I tried so far and I think I have done a 200-300 turns start with all of the my now. Nothing was as crazy as France.

 

[andersw]

That is basically a none issue. You can just roam the world extorting citystates for gold. Going negative gold and then everyturn you get gold so you never really run out. I think in the last 200+ turns I have only gone negative gold total once and lost one unit. That was a miscalculation on my part, I invested to much and thought I was going to get the gold back the next turn. But I dropped to far below and did not notice. So eventually I just resorted to that every few turns I give away units to the city-states. Or I disband a few inside the border to cover the cost of the entire army. But it still now bloated well beyond 200 and all the AI are either scared or desperately trying to be friends or complaining that there are large amounts of units hanging out just outside their borders.

It also results in a lot of culture. My culture value per turn is about 3-4 times my science value. The +1 culture and +1 tourism for every 10 military units. That counts all the units, just not the once in supply. So I'm dominant vs all the other civs already and could if I wasn't in the Medieval era have a culture victory. But it's currently turn 337 (marathon, deity) and my culture per turn is +702 and my science is +180 and my tourism is +415. I have 11 social policies while the AI are at about 8. My gold pile is 1612 but I'm losing 78 gold per turn. But it's not really a problem.

I have 17 supplied units. But the army is now: 5 scouts, 34 brutes, 4 spearmen, 2 hand axes, 1 slinger, 30 archers, 96 more spearmen (I think they are shown twice cause some are mine and some are barbarian), 8 horsemen, 1 warrior, 23 swordmen, 1 archer, 1 knight, 11 comp bow, 1 skirmisher, 7 pikemen, 1 trebuchet, 1 trireme.

But then perhaps it's just me. But the scale seems a bit off the charts. Much more brutal that any of the others I tried so far and I think I have done a 200-300 turns start with all of the my now. Nothing was as crazy as France.

Thats a crazy amount, are they supplyfree after upgrade?

 

[looorg]

Thats a crazy amount, are they supplyfree after upgrade?

No. So I only upgrade my supplied units. All the others are what you manage to take from barbarians and in wars with the AI. There was a lot more brutes but they where the first to be gifted away. The only brutes left are those that have been promoted many times. So they are now waiting for the Musketeers tech. Then I'll massuppgrade some suitable once. The others will probably just be around for a long time as sort of "stats and yields" units. Not for frontline. Still they can stand in a spot and cover a spot so that I can capture units with a better unit. But they can't be used for say siege war anymore. An archer or a warrior/brute by now gets one shotted by a city.

 

[ElliotS]

I mean you did just mention you're playing on Marathon, which does make that strat a lot stronger. That said it's still good work by you. I think it's cool that France can make the worst unit type good.

 

[looorg]

I mean you did just mention you're playing on Marathon, which does make that strat a lot stronger. That said it's still good work by you. I think it's cool that France can make the worst unit type good.

One could argue that I'm tilting things in my favor, but then I have used the same settings for years and I use them for all civs. It's just sure the mileage varies from civ to civ. I'm also running raging barbs, which I always do. It's just a real snowball in that regard. Every camp you find is usually 1-2 new units and the gold and culture and all that (I'm authority for obvious reasons). You need at most 3 units to "surround" the enemy to ensure the capture, less if you have some mountains or other blocker tiles. So it escalates quickly. A few of the AI are really good with the barb rage to. But yes it mostly benefits me more then them.

That said I now started to lose a few. The mid-games lets all not be friends anymore phase have started and there are wars all over. A surprise declaration from someone (looking at you Askia!) drags in a city-states and then quite a few units might die in a turn from the initial attacks. But then just like a Zombie-movie what was once theirs eventually becomes mine and I refill my shadow army.

I wasn't so surprised about the army or army size. I think German used to have this ability or something similar in an earlier 4UC mod. I think it was that anyway. So it had the same issues. I was more surprised here that I had not initially thought about all the free culture and tourism they would just generate from standing around. It's been a few more turns since the last post and I'm now almost making +1000 culture per turn. Paris alone is pushing 120 of those.

It does have its drawbacks to. I basically can't really invest gold in things such as buildings. It might sound like a lot of your have thousands of gold. But that might just represent about 10 turns until bankruptcy. So you can't really sink a hundreds of thousands of golds into rushing buildings or civilian units. You have to hard build everything in that regard.

 

[CppMaster]

Ok, so marathon speed and raging barbarians are quite deviation from standard setting to which is the game balanced. It probably will be much weaker on quick speed and chill barbarian.

The most important question is how balanced is it on standard settings.

 

[looorg]

Ok, so marathon speed and raging barbarians are quite deviation from standard setting to which is the game balanced. It probably will be much weaker on quick speed and chill barbarian.

The most important question is how balanced is it on standard settings.

Yes. I know you can't balance for everything. But if it scales this extreme on marathon I figure it will be quite bad on standard speed to if you just apply yourself. I leave that up to someone that likes to play standard speed games. Rage barb helps to, but isn't it fairly common to run with it? But even if you don't run it then there is always just normal wars or city-state war to feed and fuel your ever expanding shadow army. It is different, but then so are a lot of other things such as the cost of things. So while it breaks with the scaling, it's not like you have a standard economy on marathon speed. You pay marathon costs for all buildings and research to. But in the hands of the player the longer playtimes help for sure. But I don't think it can be utterly dismissed just cause it's marathon speed.

I would say you only need to build one unit extra from the start, or have some lucky terrain where you manage to corner someone. Then you can start. Once you have managed to capture a few units it should just take off like a rocket. You have blobs off units just spreading across the map. Every turn you see a barb camp spawn you start moving towards it. With every camp you should grow with at least one unit, possibly two -- or more if some hapless AI is there to and easy pickings.

// edit // I did notice a "fun" thing, units I gift to city-states carry the "Par le Sang Verse" buff. So city-states can capture units for themselves to.
// edit2 // perhaps that is the "solution" to the issue, if there is one. Only give that buff/promotion to units that you actually build or buy. Not once that you capture. You could still do what I did but it would be a lot more finicky and you can't zombie-horde it to easily.

 

[redrum68]

Yes. I know you can't balance for everything. But if it scales this extreme on marathon I figure it will be quite bad on standard speed to if you just apply yourself. I leave that up to someone that likes to play standard speed games. Rage barb helps to, but isn't it fairly common to run with it? But even if you don't run it then there is always just normal wars or city-state war to feed and fuel your ever expanding shadow army. It is different, but then so are a lot of other things such as the cost of things. So while it breaks with the scaling, it's not like you have a standard economy on marathon speed. You pay marathon costs for all buildings and research to. But in the hands of the player the longer playtimes help for sure. But I don't think it can be utterly dismissed just cause it's marathon speed.

I would say you only need to build one unit extra from the start, or have some lucky terrain where you manage to corner someone. Then you can start. Once you have managed to capture a few units it should just take off like a rocket. You have blobs off units just spreading across the map. Every turn you see a barb camp spawn you start moving towards it. With every camp you should grow with at least one unit, possibly two -- or more if some hapless AI is there to and easy pickings.

I think France is generally fine on standard speed and settings. Marathon just has so many more turns that it allows you to hunt barbs for a ridiculous amount of time to get free units.