Share your thoughts on each Civ Unique strengths

[Martin Alvito]

Its a promotion and a half. Not that much.

Doesn't depend on terrain, though. You extol the virtues of China's +20% GG bonus, but ignore the power of Russia's universal +30% because tactics are required to get maximum mileage out of it.

Also keep in mind that if you hit a unit with two Cossacks to kill it, the first one is hardly going to be touched. This cuts down on healing. Blitz is also an option. The second hit hurts.

And crossbows are a waste of a unit by the time you get to military science. I'd rather have 2 rifles than a crossbow and a cossack.

I suspect we build units differently and make war differently with Russia. Horsemen are very easy to promote even when they aren't CC. You just strike and run. So the way I make war with Russia is build Horsemen right up to the cap, then go around picking off exposed units on flanks. Meanwhile, the AI builds up an army and throws it at me. I lure that army into a trap between our positions and waste it. Rivers are great for this. Position two tiles away, wait for them to cross, pound them, then run. Rinse and repeat. Then I go pound cities with the remaining healthy Horsemen.

This yields a LOT of highly promoted Horsemen early on. I then push Military Science using saved GS's for the expensive stuff, and go dominate. It takes longer than beelining Riflemen, but you just mow units down with Blitz Cossacks. If I hit the cap, I make Crossbowmen. Melee can't play hit and run, and siege requires setup, which fails when you're running a mobility game.

 

[Ahriman]

You extol the virtues of China's +20% GG bonus

Which applies to all units, all game, as long as you have a GG nearby.

but ignore the power of Russia's universal +30%

Its not a universal +30%. It applies only to a single, unupgradable unit, and only when the target is already damaged. At which point, as others have noted, a highly promoted cavalry unit is likely to do almost as well (if the unit is on open terrain), and if you're attacking units on rough terrain, then you won't be able to escape away afterwards and risk dying on the counterattack.

because tactics are required to get maximum mileage out of it.

Thats kindof insulting, don't you think? Its not about whether tactics are required, its about how big the boost of this UU is over its core counterpart, relative to the boost provided by other UUs.

I then push Military Science using saved GS's for the expensive stuff, and go dominate. It takes longer than beelining Riflemen, but you just mow units down with Blitz Cossacks

Though I love mounted units in earlier eras, I find that building a big cav army is just frustrating because of its inability to upgrade beyond this era. Once the enemy has infantry and artillery, my cavalry start looking pretty sad. If you can win at this point, then fine, but if there is still another powerful AI player that you haven't beaten, you're in trouble, because building another infantry army takes a long time.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Which applies to all units, all game, as long as you have a GG nearby.

And costs you your unique ability. Don't get me wrong, China is very, very good. The ability is strong, the UB is strong, and the UU isn't bad.

Its not a universal +30%. It applies only to a single, unupgradable unit, and only when the target is already damaged. At which point, as others have noted, a highly promoted cavalry unit is likely to do almost as well (if the unit is on open terrain), and if you're attacking units on rough terrain, then you won't be able to escape away afterwards and risk dying on the counterattack.

Yes, but you're missing the point, which is that you can buzzsaw through entire formations and leave nothing behind that can counterattack except the cities. You have to know the terrain and plan carefully, but you can support a unit that can only retreat one space if you can hammer the opposing formation hard enough and use the terrain. Decline invitations to attack a unit on the only hill for miles around.

Thats kindof insulting, don't you think? Its not about whether tactics are required, its about how big the boost of this UU is over its core counterpart, relative to the boost provided by other UUs.

The intent was not to insult. As I understand the logic of your argument, Cossacks are bad because the condition is hard to hit. But this simply isn't true. You just need a lot of Cossacks or some fire support. Arrows are a non-obvious solution, but they work surprisingly well.

If you can win at this point, then fine, but if there is still another powerful AI player that you haven't beaten, you're in trouble, because building another infantry army takes a long time.

I absolutely agree that it's achieve a winning position or go home during this time period. Cathy isn't a great way to go on a huge Continents map unless/until they let Cavalry become Armor. But on smaller maps she does just fine.

Cathy's all about speed. Fast Hammers -> faster start -> earlier Horses -> longer Horse window -> bigger Civ -> more beakers, etc. You have to be very precise in how you play her. She's clearly second tier behind the obvious juggernauts (Greece, China, Babylon), and some civs I haven't played around with yet may also be stronger. But Cathy is better than a lot of civs, and better than most seem to give her credit for because you have to structure your game around her strengths.

 

[Lyoncet]

Not terribly on-topic, but I do agree that Cavalry/Cossacks would benefit greatly from getting an extra move point (or even two). By that point historically, we had enormous, strong, fast horses that had been bred to carry men in full plate armor that suddenly were carrying a guy with a big stick and a few extra rounds. That made cavalry/dragoons/whathaveyou very mobile – much more so than really any previous mounted unit.

Plus, I think they need a balance tweak in general. Your strength-12 horsemen can stand up passably if used well against their 7-strength counters, and are stronger and faster than their other resource-requiring unit (swords). Same goes for 18-strength knights against 10-strength Pikemen and equal-strength longswordsmen. But then you get Cavalry, which have no strength advantage over riflemen, who incidentally slaughter them due to their being a cavalry counter, and outnumber them due to not requiring a resource, and receive defense bonuses, while having a measly one movement point and move-after-attack as their only advantage. One movement can be good (very good, in fact), and being able to move after attacking is very useful, but 1) that's insultingly little when compared to the vast disadvantages they have compared to riflemen and 2) in order to make use of that move point and move-after-attack, they have to be good. Which they're not.

Anyways, point being if Cavalry got some sort of boost, I can see Cossacks being pretty decent. As it is, they're just one more big pile of "meh" in a civ that already has plenty of it.

 

[Zenstrive]

Arab makes a decent expansionist when combined with commerce and liberty. Additional gold = rush buy = continent dominating even when AIs have bigger number of cities. Puppet and built roads to your captured cities for more gold and more units. Bazaar means double resources = more gold when selling/additional happiness from trading resources. Purchase settlers to make city filling the area between your cities and the puppet cities to reduce road distance and additional gold

More gold also = more bribe money for maritime and military CS. More expansion and more army!

Camel Archer is one heck of a useful unit. Combine with longswordman or even swordman for steamrolling. Keep some horsemen around for one-two driveby hits from range and melee.

 

[King Jason]

My top picks, in no real particular order:

Greece - nuff said (and I agree, it's about time.) In fact they're so good that... I always used to play them out of loyalty and love of the culture... but now I find myself not playing them because they're so goddamned powerful.

France - The culture boost is a huge, huge boon for the early game. The main thing that makes me cringe when building that new city is the culture cost going up. But with France you don't feel the affect by about the 4th city. You figure, you're bringing in 3 CPT ~ building a city increases policy costs by 33%, but brings your culture output to 5... an increase of 66%. If you actually look at the U.I. ~ I've seen my turn counter until the next policy go down when building that second city as France. The next one is an increase of 40%, so it's still better, then 28% for the 4th city, about the same, and 22% for the fifth city. Construct the stonehenge or some monuments and it's as if your costs aren't moving at all for the initial purchases. You gain your first set of policies with 4-5 cities at the exact same rate as someone else sticking to 1 city.

Siam ~ city-state bonus. Awesome.

Babylon ~ Scientists, and Bowmen are fantastic.

Persia ~ Golden ages are godly, and I can get 50 turn GA's without being Persia. I'd enjoy this ability even if it didn't come tacked on with the bonus to troop movement and strength.

Iroquois ~ Start bias almost always plants you with plenty of forest around and the gem of their UA is that it establishes trade routes between your cities, saving you a solid amount of GPT. Not to mention your worker is essentially a fast worker on any forest tiles. I never chop down forest anyway because there's no reason to. I either trade post them or lumber mill them unless it's a hill because Maritime city-states make up the food loss easily. So that considered ~ longhouses rule.

 

[delra]

Greece - Easy early conquest with Companions, then rely on throwing money at city states for culture and food for the rest of the game.
Babylon - Slingshot masters with crowds of scientists they can generate, always one tech and one wonder ahead of everyone else if you play it right.
Gandhi - Great for isolationist archipelago games where you have handful of cities but prefer them to be huge. Culture win guy.
Japan - Medieval monsters with Honor tree, Bushido, great general and Samurai nothing can hold against those guys. A civ not to be ****** with.
China - Chu-ko-nu is plain awesome attack or defence, great generals are born more often and give a bigger bonus, Paper Maker is a library earning you cash rather than costing it. Strong and modern, very powerful overall and I think best of all civs out there.
Arabia - True peddlers of this game able to sell tons and tons of stuff. Great for a diplomatic game. Start by Oil and Uranium.
Egypt - A combination of a good land-grab early on and wonder w horing makes them exceptionally competitive.
Persia - ever had a 60 turns long golden age? I have. ;-)
Siam - Food and culture city state hoarders. Hard to go wrong with them.
Rome - Accomplished early conqueror hitting late game mediocrity.
England - They'd be great but AI sucks at ships so their bonus isn't really useful once the map is discovered.

 

[Syiss_]

Siam - amazing UA that complements the already very powerful city state alliances. UU is great as well. If you get it early enough it actually has a pretty big window of usefulness (though the 2 movement does suck).

Persia - oh man those golden ages rock. Grab Chichen Itza (pretty sure this is the +50% golden age length) and it stacks additively with your UA (as in all GA's are double their original length). This gives you a 50 turn GA when you grab the Taj Mahal, 30 turns of GA from your first two great people you burn on them (if you can't manage to get a few artists or generals to burn on these, thats your own fault). 20 turn golden ages any time you fill up the happiness meter (granted I rarely make it past the first two times, even with the ability that makes it 25% easier, and the first one is likely to come long before you build chichen itza). The UU is surprisingly useful (at least up to Emperor), when backed by some archer support (rush a horseman or two if you start running into lots of swordsmen) you can easily take cities with it (again, up to emperor difficulty).

Arabia - horrible. UA is possibly one of the worst in the game. UU is mediocre and replaces the most powerful medieval unit. UB is the only saving grace, but its only useful if you get stuck without a lot of resources and need to make a lot of trades.

Hiawatha - mediocre all around. He's not quite bottom tier, but none of his uniques are particularly powerful.

Suleiman - I won't comment on his UU's because his UA is so completely terribad that I can't bring myself to play him. Completely useless outside an archipelago map, and even then I can't see it being that amazing. Certainly doesn't stand up to Germany's ability.

Askia - this guy is a war MACHINE. Start early and just don't stop. You get so much gold from barbs and ransacking cities its incredibly easy to just keep buying units to support your march to domination.

 

[Vordeo]

I disagree. By keeping your city count small and eliminating all your closest AI rivals (Puppet just the caps) you can keep open vast stretches of land that will spawn barbs all the way through the game. Its there if you want it.

That sounds like a very fun way to play Germany, actually. Play continents, rush and kill everyone else, than start barb farming. Wouldn't be partularly practical, but still awesome.

China UB is too strong, a Library with +4 gold is insane. The gold from that feeding a strong UU army and a crazy UA (GG gives +45% instead of +25% strength and more of them) makes them unstoppable if played decently. Even AI often dominates with them, more than with most other civs from the games I've played.

Yeah, Paper Maker is the best UB in the game. And it's not just +4 gold, it's also maintenance free so it really gives you 5 gold per turn.

That enables you to tech to their UU very quickly while maintaining a gold surplus, and assuming you've gotten a GG somewhere along the way (and you probably have), it's game over.

China's crazy strong, and IMO is the best civ in the game.

Ramesses (Egypt) - Burial Tombs are the strongest selling point. The Wonder bonus isn't bad, but you're not going to build a lot of Wonders. War Chariots aren't very good. Burial Tombs are strong, enabling you to expand further before you switch over to abusing Happiness.

Main problem with War Chariots atm is that Spearmen get the mounted bonus against their bombard attacks, which makes no sense and essentially makes Chariot Archers in general really crap.

IF they change that, massed War Chariots should be decent.

I haven't fiddled with other leaders enough to give a comprehensive verdict. China obviously is in the top tier (above Cathy); all of those bonuses are solid. Ditto France. Not yet sure how Japan fits into things; I think a serious adjustment in play is indicated there. The Songhai and Siam both have potential, but Alex seems to outperform both. This may be because he's just plain better, but it also may just be that I'm optimizing for Alex and not leveraging their bonuses properly.

Top tier IMO is China and Greece. Haven't played Japan, granted, but the two previous are just deadly.

 

[Eejit]

Yeah, Paper Maker is the best UB in the game. And it's not just +4 gold, it's also maintenance free so it really gives you 5 gold per turn.

Incorrect. It still has 1 maintenance.
Still, it's 5 gold by the time you get a market in the city too, increasing again with bank etc.
I actually think it needs to be toned down a bit, somewhat unbalanced coupled with their already very powerful UA and UU - they have the best complete 'set' of uniques in the game imo.

 

[troytheface]

i played babylon exclusively for like 8 million years and games

now america because babylon is not there and instead we have like Siam?

the strengths are having cities that you know and can say stuff like "i will build a market in Boston" and feel somehow pleased that you built a #%%%&&* market in $^&*^%& Boston

and Scouts can see for like 50 thousand miles and minutemen are like scouts with guns

 

[R3dKnight]

The way I see War Chariot is that it doesn't need horse resources, so you can easily combine horsemen army with chariots with minimal horse resource tiles.

Archers can't keep up in long distance treks, so War Chariot is a little bit better. Not by much.

 

[Agent Cooper]

From the civ's I've played so far:

China rocks - great UU and UB.

Englands longbow rocks as well but that's about it.

Egypt's UU is mediocre at best, their UB is solid though.

Next I will try Siam and Persia based on what you guys are writing

 

[swordspider]

If you want WAR, and want to dominate during that WAR then China and Germany are the way to go.

CHINA- The bonuses from the generals are sick and what you lose in production you make up in golden ages by sapping generals. Granted, the Chinese don't peak until about mid-way through the tech tree, but when they do you can just go and conquer.

GERMANY- The early game barb capturing insanity can get unfathomable depending on your luck with the 50% takeover. If you get 5 or 6 out of 7, then heal and move to attack, you're likely to take out at least 1 civ before the others can even respond.

 

[budweiser]

GERMANY- The early game barb capturing insanity can get unfathomable depending on your luck with the 50% takeover. If you get 5 or 6 out of 7, then heal and move to attack, you're likely to take out at least 1 civ before the others can even respond.

CORRECTION, you are likely to take out everyone before anyone can respond.

 

[Conspirator]

I've been playing as the Arabians. They are definitely a very powerful economic civilization. I'd say they have the best UB and possibly UA in the game.

Their unique ability gives the player double resource of oil as well as 50% more gold from trade routes. I haven't got as far in my game to be able to take advantage of the double oil yet but I can imagine that this would be a very powerful benefit, allowing you either to sell the excess oil or to build a lot more oil dependant units.

The Bazar gives double happiness resources in the city that built it. This is crazily powerful because it gives a huge bonus from very early on till the end of the game. You can make a huge amount of gold by selling off these excess happiness resources, as well as obviously trading them for happiness you might be lacking. This has the added benefit of giving you a huge amount of extra gold which can be used to buy the favouritism of city states, giving you access to even more resources and benefits!

As for their unique unit I haven't actually made us of it. I just expanded with Longswordsmen, Catapults and Horsemen and then beelinded to Riflemen with a Great Scientist and beelining down the SP that gives 2 free techs, so not sure on their strengths or weaknesses.

 

[aimlessgun]

I've been playing as the Arabians. They are definitely a very powerful economic civilization. I'd say they have the best UB and possibly UA in the game.

Their unique ability gives the player double resource of oil as well as 50% more gold from trade routes. I haven't got as far in my game to be able to take advantage of the double oil yet but I can imagine that this would be a very powerful benefit, allowing you either to sell the excess oil or to build a lot more oil dependant units.

The Bazar gives double happiness resources in the city that built it. This is crazily powerful because it gives a huge bonus from very early on till the end of the game. You can make a huge amount of gold by selling off these excess happiness resources, as well as obviously trading them for happiness you might be lacking. This has the added benefit of giving you a huge amount of extra gold which can be used to buy the favouritism of city states, giving you access to even more resources and benefits!

As for their unique unit I haven't actually made us of it. I just expanded with Longswordsmen, Catapults and Horsemen and then beelinded to Riflemen with a Great Scientist and beelining down the SP that gives 2 free techs, so not sure on their strengths or weaknesses.

50% on trade routes? The tooltip just says +1 gold. 50% would be a lot better if that's what it actually does...

After playing as Arabia have to agree that their UB is one of the best. Tons more money than those paper mills! Also, it allowed me to get every...single...luxury. That means 100% uptime on we love the king day.

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, but you're missing the point, which is that you can buzzsaw through entire formations and leave nothing behind that can counterattack except the cities.

You can do this with cannon and cavalry too.

The intent was not to insult. As I understand the logic of your argument, Cossacks are bad because the condition is hard to hit. But this simply isn't true. You just need a lot of Cossacks or some fire support. Arrows are a non-obvious solution, but they work surprisingly well.

No. My argument is that cossacks are not much superior to the core unit they replace.
Tactics that work well with cossacks (bombard their units on open ground, attack with cossack, withdraw) also work well with ordinary cavalry, and investments in cossacks rapidly becomes obsolete.

But on smaller maps she does just fine.

A civ that is only powerful on a few map types is not a very powerful civ, overall.

as 50% more gold from trade routes

?!? Are you sure? That would be big.
Whereas +1 gold is pathetic. size 8 city yields 10 gold, increasing to 11 doesn't help much.

 

[rexco]

In terms of city state civs:
Siam>Greece.
I would much rather get extra culture and food than have a slower decay. Not comparable IMO.

Also, we can all agree that Suleiman is the worst.

 

[Ahriman]

Also, we can all agree that Suleiman is the worst.

Only if you ignore his fantastic UUs.
I think Suleiman is superior to Washington in terms of civ power.