[GS] Power Ranking the Civs (Gathering Storm)

[Ziad]

Phoenicia: I'm torn about. On the one hand settler spam is incredible good. The harbors are solid and you end up with a pretty big income without trying too hard. On the other hand, they didn't feel particularly unique and their bonuses didn't feel impactful. Having said that, in my one playthrough all these weird parts joined into a well oiled naval empire that was aggressively settling as it conquered and generating massive revenue.

Phoenicia's bonuses are general enough that their immediate strengths aren't entirely evident from their inherent loyalty bonus (that you don't appreciate til you play another civ again) to their colonial benefits.

You felt strong because Phoenicia is strong. That they don't have tile yield porn is to compensate for just how expansionist you can get after one of the fastest early game developments in the game and later can get bonuses through proper colonial exploitation.

Every game is a well oiled naval empire with aggressive settling once your paradigm switches over from the same tired campus turtling other civs need to endure to keep up.

 

[Jarms48]

Is it just me or did England get nerfed? They seem worse than before now. It seems they’ve tried to make them a purely domination civ, especially if you take Victoria.

A quick suggestion would be give IZ a +1 production adjacency bonus when next to an Encampment or Royal Navy Dockyard. That would make their new ability a little bit more useful early on and give synergy with Englands other abilities.

 

[Pietato]

Yeah, England suck even more now. They need a complete rework, not these half-arsed ones which constantly fail.

 

[Legacy of Smiles]

Why don't we make Redcoat replace infantry (we can mod this, right)? Nobody really builds infantry as England and Redcoats are a stronger, cheaper sidegrade to them anyway.

 

[Attakuiu]

I thought Canada before the release was OP. I was completely wrong. They have no bonuses.

 

[Cagarustus]

I'm so irritated at Canada, I'm making another post about it. At first I was intrigued to see how Canada would play out. Now that I've seen how it does, it's just garbage. Pure garbage. It simply cannot do anything better than the other civilizations.

Domination? You might get double extraction from tundra or snow (that is if you start near it; I'm on my 10th restart on my lunch break. No tundra) to help with units if you are extremely lucky. You also get a crappy non-upgraded Calvary unit. Also no surprise wars. So yeah, domination is straight out.
Culture? Ice hockey rinks can get tourism if you can actually build them and the mounties can make parks, but that's nothing compared to what the other civs can do.
Science? Nope.
Religion? If you can possibly start near a tundra, you might be able to snag Dance of the Aurora and end up with a decent religion game but I wouldn't bank on it.
Score? Who plays with score?
Diplomacy? Sweden, America, Hungary, and even Georgia do it better.

Canada is nothing but a joke; a failure at every possible level.

I actually find Canada a relief. It gives me the opportunity to just play the game as I want on deity without having to worry about DOWs (since the AI don’t use Casus Belli).

 

[Disgustipated]

I don't understand why people keep saying Inca's uu is OP and they are a warmonger civ. I beelined machinery and it worked for a little while, although you need ambush promotion to be effective, but I ran into a brick wall with Korea's knights and crossbowman. And she's been smart at not leaving them out in the open. I cannot take a city with a knight in it, it heals too fast and my units get too damaged by crossbowman and knights just one shot them. Ridiculous to call them S tier. I'm struggling, what can I say. I conquered Indonesia, but she was weak.

S tier: no one. They all have weaknesses. Hungary I found myself against 20 of my former units, and often city states are far away. Inca has the problem mentioned above, a very narrow window for their UU. Maori is the strongest, but if you go the wrong direction at the beginning you may struggle.

Way too much hyperbole going on here calling every Civ S tier.

A tier: Maori, Inca, Hungary in that order. Hungary is borderline B tier.

B tier: Mali, Sweden, Ottomans

C tier: Phoenicia

D tier: Canada, Eleanor(both). Again hyperbole by people calling Canada garbage. Just because you don't understand appeal and National parks doesn't make them garbage. Don't put your districts everwhere, clump them up. They can put up 10 national parks easy. Can Teddy do that? The best strategy is not settle in tundra. Tundra is garbage, only do it later for national park cities. As for Eleanor, I had cultural victory almost in hand before she started flipping non city state cities.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Inca seems good, but what do they do if they don't have many mountains?

 

[Cherenkov]

In a sick sort of way, since submerged tiles count as water, you can polderize them. Thus, the dutch have every incentive to tactically flood things for their gain.

Very interesting insight with Netherlands. Next time I play them I will load up on coal factories and pump out massive CO2

 

[DWilson]

Very interesting insight with Netherlands. Next time I play them I will load up on coal factories and pump out massive CO2

And, it's relatively thematic, as polders were a major part of Dutch water reclamation. I mean, flood barriers to prevent flooding too (and they probably should've gotten a minor boost to that as well, even though it would be counterproductive for polders).

 

[Jarms48]

Why don't we make Redcoat replace infantry (we can mod this, right)? Nobody really builds infantry as England and Redcoats are a stronger, cheaper sidegrade to them anyway.

I’d prefer it if they replaced the Musketman. The unit is clearly armed with muskets, it’d also makes more sense historically.

What I’d like to see (I would do the same for Guarde Imperiale):
Simple solution:
- Can upgrade from Musketman. Can upgrade into Rifleman but not made obsolete. Mechanised Infantry (Satellites tech) make them obsolete.

Complicated solution:
- Make them a replacement for Musketman.
- Drop their combat strength to 55.
- Drop their upkeep cost to 4 GPT.
- Drop their production cost to 240.

I would also change the Seadog:
- Remove the ability to capture ships.
- Starts off with 1 Promotion Level when built. That way you can get Boarding immediately.

 

[AsparustheSaiyan]

Inca seems good, but what do they do if they don't have many mountains?

Pray they have some nearby I guess? Thats the best they can do without some sort of mountain start bias if they have one?

 

[AsparustheSaiyan]

Very interesting insight with Netherlands. Next time I play them I will load up on coal factories and pump out massive CO2

The Netherlands... Destroying the planet to make everything look pretty.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Pray they have some nearby I guess? Thats the best they can do without some sort of mountain start bias if they have one?

They probably have a bias but sometimes the starts are still very scarce. I dunno why people say they're OP if they're so dependent on rolling a good start.

 

[Weraptor]

We need a rifleman generic unit and Redcoats replacing it.

 

[Ziad]

I have a feeling people raving about Maori, Inca, and Mali probably rerolled the map 20 times til they got a perfect start.

 

[Sostratus]

I have a feeling people raving about Maori, Inca, and Mali probably rerolled the map 20 times til they got a perfect start.

In 2 maori games, I've found that you can really make most coastal spots that are half decent workable if you expand fast. Just leveraging sea resources early with god of the sea. There's usually plenty of coastal spots with 2-3+ in easy reach.
And when i say workable I mean "get the toa-marae deathball rolling." It's really quite absurd what they can do with either of those individually.

I had one phenom Inca start, and I've had some okay ones. But the thing is, the terrace farm-Aqueduct interaction is so good that all you have to do is find a single decent mountain range to later settle.
I also played an agressive game to see what i could do with their UU because the first time I played I didn't really use it. Against the AI, all you have to do is:
1) slot the +100% xp card
2) find an unwalled city (or rip the wall down on one) and just farm the defenses with a warak. Once you have 2 promos they are quite good; the Warak is coded so attacks take no move, so if you're standing next to a city, once you have guerilla, you can heal at the end of the turn or pillage the tile (like a farm) to heal. Once you get to Ambush it's over. I am fighting a war on emperor and started with 2 level 1 scouts, I ended up with level 5-7 waraks. (enemy was coursers and knights.)
Remember that you can play the inca exactly like any other civ just with the option to teleport through mountains and leverage terrace farms when it suits you. No mountains doesn't really hurt.

The Mali are similar. A lot of people really want to take advantage of their abilities around deserts. However, their real bread and butter is Suguba+Mine gold, which you can do anywhere. Give me a river and some space and I can build a +17 suguba. It doesn't have to be on desert.

But I suspect most are like me and suffer from Polder Syndrome: you play a game as civ X, you see some terrain and think "man that is perfect locations for a polder/Inca/mali game" and then you get upset when you can't replicate it when rolling new starts with those civs.

 

[Disgustipated]

1) slot the +100% xp card
2) find an unwalled city (or rip the wall down on one) and just farm the defenses with a warak. Once you have 2 promos they are quite good; the Warak is coded so attacks take no move, so if you're standing next to a city, once you have guerilla, you can heal at the end of the turn or pillage the tile (like a farm) to heal. Once you get to Ambush it's over. I am fighting a war on emperor and started with 2 level 1 scouts, I ended up with level 5-7 waraks. (enemy was coursers and knights.)
Remember that you can play the inca exactly like any other civ just with the option to teleport through mountains and leverage terrace farms when it suits you. No mountains doesn't really hurt.

I forgot to slot Survey, but that's not supposed to work in combat, correct? As for #2 I just had bad luck with the Warak. Korea was advanced enough to tear me apart with crossbowmen and knights. I could find no solution to best them, they were smart not to leave them out in the open. With only 3 movement I can't get in there attack and retreat out of range, I will be counter attacked. And I just could not stand up to knights at all which would 1 shot anything less than a 3 promotion Warak. Crossbowman tear me up enough to force retreat to heal.

 

[Sostratus]

I forgot to slot Survey, but that's not supposed to work in combat, correct?

I mean, my little dudes were getting 6-7xp per combat, twice a turn. For slinging rocks at cities. The Incan youth gangs are a terror on the neighborhood, and the world.
I originally though the same way you experienced; what you seem to have to do is clear out an AI army/lure away with some regular troops (swords or horses or something) then get to work. It's tricky until you get guerrilla at level 2. But, one nice thing is that Warak's higher ranged str means that they take less damage from cities. You cannot feasibly go pure warak in the same way pure xbow wouldn't fare too well vs knights.

 

[Ondolindë]

I have a feeling people raving about Maori, Inca, and Mali probably rerolled the map 20 times til they got a perfect start.

My experience has been that I haven't had to restart a game to find that perfect start except once with Mali. I have been impressed with the map generation, but I know that has not been everyone's experience.

So the Inca for me are the best right now and I haven't found that it was dependent on starting near mountains because that has been the case all along. It seems to me that it is a given so to speak now. Hopefully that will remain to be true.