the best civs and why

[RealHuhn]

Any warmongering civ is quite good. I still think China is a top tier civ. Once you can take chu-ko-nus and a GG you've got the game in hand. The paper maker is still an excellent building too and it helps when you have lots of puppets.

About this population thing. It's about context and knowing how to win quickly. It becomes clearer why high population cities simply pale in comparison to size 7 or 8 cities once you do.

You see most people think that a game lasts almost the full 550 turns. In reality once you know what you are doing you can end a game usually between 200 - 250 turns. The latest patch slowed this down a little so those numbers may be a touch low. The first 100 or so turns are spent pre-renaissance. The last 100 - 150 are spent afterwards, obviously. Most of the buildings and wonders in the renaissance and afterwards are not necessary to win and will not pay for themselves before the game is over. There are a few exceptions (like the Factory, Solar Plant, or Nuclear Plant).

How do you achieve this? For all but 1 victory condition, the answer is GSes and RAs. To get GSes you need universities, which incidently is one of the most expensive buildings you actually need to build. To get RAs you need gold. Anything that does not produce gold or help generate another GS is useless to you. So temples, windmills, banks, stock exchanges, watermills, colloseums, theatres, museums, etc are all useless to you because they will either cost you gold or will not produce enough gold by the end of the game to sign an additional round of RAs. You also don't need specialists except for scientists so getting a big city to run them is not needed (unless you are aiming for cultural victory).

So you don't want to grow many of your cities any bigger than about size 7 or 8 because after that you need happy buildings which cost gold upkeep.

So basically you start. Expand to 4 cities or so. Build universities. Fill them with scientists. Get the PT and open rationalism. Sign RAs and generate GSes as quickly as you can. RA and bulb your way through Renaissance, Industrial, to Modern. Get the tech(s) you need for your win condition. Win. Babylon and France are probably the best for this kind of play. Siam or Polynesia are good for culture. Domination is anyone with a good early or gunpowder to rifling UU.

Of course you don't have to play this way and I suspect 90% of people do not but I don't like it... it's why I argued against RAs before this patch came out as they are very, very easy to abuse. Even GSes are too easy to abuse.

You're right about the faster games and the consequences on strategy. It supports Martins point.
However, you won't win any game with 4 cities @ size 7-8. Either build more cities, grow or conquer.

More population = more hammers/science/gold. That's a fact.

Saying that happiness and culture buildings are useless because they cost hammers and maintanance is flawed logic, too. They INCREASE gold output because your cities can work more tiles.

 

[Truthy]

I like Arabia, France, and Greece.

 

[Martin Alvito]

You're right about the faster games and the consequences on strategy. It supports Martins point.
However, you won't win any game with 4 cities @ size 7-8. Either build more cities, grow or conquer.

On Deity you pretty much have to grow vertically unless you commit to fire and blood from turn 1. Settling additional cities ceases to be an option rapidly. Taking cities can be done, but requires substantial investment.

More population = more hammers/science/gold. That's a fact.

At an opportunity cost - , which must be dealt with through investing and/or . If you don't get a return on the investment before the end of the game, you shouldn't build the building, and you shouldn't grow. If there is another building that will give you a better return on investment, you should build it instead and forego growth.

This is why cities have optimal sizes. Generally speaking, the optimal size is a lot larger than 7 or 8. It's also usually less than the size that results from uncontrolled growth.

Saying that happiness and culture buildings are useless because they cost hammers and maintanance is flawed logic, too. They INCREASE gold output because your cities can work more tiles.

See the previous point.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Size 7 or 8 cities are relative, yes. As I said MOST of your cities need not grow larger than 7 - 8. What I should have said I suppose is grow your cities to their natural happiness limits and rarely if ever produce any happy buildings. Policies, luxuries, and an occasional wonder (Notre Dame) is typically enough to do the rest.

They only are really there to generate the next GS and make you some gold. You'll need a few larger ones to build you the bigger items (space ship parts, utopia, etc). I choose size 7 or 8 for your 'additional' cities as it typically is the size I found I could run 2 scientists, have semi decent production, and make a profit gold wise, without needing to build any happy buildings.

Honestly? I wish I was wrong. I wish this kind of strategy would've been completely eliminated. It existed before the patch and is just as bad if not worse now. Before the patch you had to tech block to achieve it. This median RA nonsense eliminated a lot of the MM around it. It was easy to predict the patch wouldn't help. It was easy to fix. Many of us proposed solutions that couldn't be manipulated but we were just called chicken littles and sent on our merry way . Sorry... don't mean to sound bitter... it just annoys me that an otherwise excellent game continues to be marred by a few obviously overpowered and stupid concepts.

 

[spfun]

Yes this patch has made Tall to weak to bother with, Tradition is also pretty weak compared to liberty which is king, RA spam remains negating the high science cost of late game techs. Bulbing is still OP & now you can get 2 GEs through free paths quite early. While in the same patch they nerf pretty much every building for Tall empires... Happiness isn't a problem in any game as long as you keep your population in check. I really don't like this patch to much, i like a few big core cities and a bunch of puppets, but now its just city spam & conquer keep em small fill as much terrain as possible with cities.

 

[Antarion]

I think you don't fully understand how quickly a domination victory can be won with Germany and RBarbs.

raging barbs dont improve camp spawn rate just the spawn rate of barbarians itself.

and finally i laugh about the playing on deity if u called it strategy. its more how to exploit an AI, the real challenge is playing MP and there are no top civs. only some civs are more suited for certain settings (waste of 2 abilities if u pick england on a non water map for example, or playing without barbs with germany and so on)

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Iroquois on multiplayer.

All you have to do is research straight to Iron Working, and spam the hell out of people with your mohawk warriors till you eventually can upgrade them to longswordman.

 

[TW_Honorius]

china with upgraded Chu-Ko-Nu into riflemen.

 

[Babri]

Usually when talking about any form of strategy many of us we'll be using deity not prince. Just FYI. Happiness is not a problem on any difficulty BUT deity.

I was not talking about any strategy. What I was saying that if you play well (even on diety), you are not going to get trouble with happiness. Things are going to get tougher but a for a skilled player, he is going to handle it. Also I think u need to take a look at Tradition & Freedom Tree. FYI extra food is always helpful. If you don't know how to use it, then better move 1-2 levels down.

 

[snarzberry]

I'd argue that China and Greece have been nerfed to second tier status.
Babylon and France are the best peaceful civs right now; Aztec and Mongolia are the best warmongers' civs. ...and Siam is still the civ to play if you're aiming for a Cultural win.

I would agree. I'd also say that Greece hasn't been a top tier civ for a long time now, since the horseman nerf actually.

The UU's are awkward as they arrive so early, do not provide legacy bonuses, frequently run up against counter-units and are not well suited to attack and take cities except for those very weak cities in the early game. The CC excels in the open field skirmishes, which is where the AI is dreadful, it's advantage relative to other civs is attenuated as the same, or a very similar, effect can be achieved with inferior units.

I think the two best civs for standard settings and high difficulties are Babylon and Mongolia.

 

[Becomedeath]

I play with random leaders. But if Mongolia comes up, I know I'm gonna have a good game. I think that's more personal preference than anything else, but you can win with anyone so I don't beleive there's a "best".

 

[starrywisdom]

raging barbs dont improve camp spawn rate just the spawn rate of barbarians itself.

and finally i laugh about the playing on deity if u called it strategy. its more how to exploit an AI, the real challenge is playing MP and there are no top civs. only some civs are more suited for certain settings (waste of 2 abilities if u pick england on a non water map for example, or playing without barbs with germany and so on)

Who said anything about Rbarbs increasing spawn rate? Rbarbs helps on dom victories because they AI can't expand very fast, which means less cities to take till you win. Very basic strategy

Deity is the 'common ground' when talking strategy. Multiplayer is not necessarily always challenging. Thus, when talking strategy in a strategy forum you want the ability to dictate the variables, and in this case attempting to talk strategy needs to be done against the AI. In fact, I get more challenge from a huge map against the AI then I do playing MP - as it seems most people playing MP are ignorant to basic game concepts.

 

[Jim Bro]

Siam is the best. i love maritimes and cultural cs.

 

[Antarion]

Who said anything about Rbarbs increasing spawn rate? Rbarbs helps on dom victories because they AI can't expand very fast, which means less cities to take till you win. Very basic strategy

Deity is the 'common ground' when talking strategy. Multiplayer is not necessarily always challenging. Thus, when talking strategy in a strategy forum you want the ability to dictate the variables, and in this case attempting to talk strategy needs to be done against the AI. In fact, I get more challenge from a huge map against the AI then I do playing MP - as it seems most people playing MP are ignorant to basic game concepts.

u talked about germany n raging barbs, so i guess your talking about clearing encampments. no single word about slower expansions

what do u call basic concepts and with whom do u play? in MP atleast all have the same variables while playing vs AI even on deity is kinda assymmetrical and boring where is exploiting an AI challenging if u always know what your enemy does

 

[stardusty]

what do u call basic concepts and with whom do u play? in MP atleast all have the same variables while playing vs AI even on deity is kinda assymmetrical and boring where is exploiting an AI challenging if u always know what your enemy does

I suspect this is the fundamental flaw in Civ 5, where multiplayer and singleplayer work on entirely different rulesets. But then again, All the previous Civs suffered from this issue as well.

Having gone up from prince to emperor lately, largely thanks to Martin and MadDjinn's threads on strategy, its becoming increasingly obvious to me on how the bonuses the AI gets encourages lazy play and gold abuse which you could never do in MP. It neither has to care for production, gold nor happiness. They farm virtually all their land, chop all the forests and send all their troops on kamikaze wars. Played a game recently where I was Haiwatha next to another Haiwatha, who was happily chopping all his forests, farming the land and building roads. I quickly killed him off for desecrating my forests.

 

[Antarion]

just one comment: did u ever saw what an AI does with hiawatha (or pacchacuti or kamehema)? they never use their tile improvements right, thx to the great AI. i rarely find human players who do the same stupid thing (ofc not all play at the same skill level)

 

[Tabarnak]

I like Darius in a multiplayer game. They have everything needed. Good support UU in the beginning, large golden ages(even more with Chichen) and happiness banks later. Other civs with decent ancient UUs and/or buildings helping the game are welcome, like Greece, Aztecs and Iroquois. I found Germany very nice when you can get civil service early.

For singleplayer, the civ itself is less important. The goal is to exploit the AI at best(like Antarion said). Dodge early costly wars, make gold from trades/open borders and you are up for a good game.

On some maps they are civs better than others too.