Top and Bottom Tier Civs

[crdvis16]

Posts about China being a tad too strong or not makes me wonder if there is any consensus on which civs are top or bottom tier.

Top tier civs that always seem to do well in my games are:

China
Ethiopia
Russia
Portugal

All 3 of the above tend to be able to jump out to a lead in culture or tech and the ai seems to handle being the front runner well. I hardly if ever see these civs fail.

Bottom tier civs that always seem to do poorly:

Venice

I don't think I've ever seen Venice do anything other than get eaten ASAP.

Everyone else can at least do ok most of the time from what I've seen.

I also tend to see that founding a religion is usually paired with being competitive. In any given game, if a civ fails to found and doesn't then conquer a religion then they are more than likely to end up irrelevant before long. However, this is probably just a case of correlation and not necessarily causation.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

I use Really Advanced Setup Mod to disable Venice.

I would consider Brazil a dangerous foe. They will win Culture victory if left alone. I make it a priority to see their Capital taken some point in the game.

 

[crdvis16]

I use Really Advanced Setup Mod to disable Venice.

I would consider Brazil a dangerous foe. They will win Culture victory if left alone. I make it a priority to see their Capital taken some point in the game.

Agreed- Korea falls into that category as well but for science, and Germany/Austria are similar for diplo. They either get left alone and become powerhouses or someone weakens them militarily and they become somewhat irrelevant. It just seems to depend on if they start near an aggressive warmonger or not.

However, I'm not sure I'd put them in the same category as China, Ethiopia, Russia and Portugal. Those 4 seem to always be relevant in my games- I'm not sure I've ever seen them get eaten early or fail to be contenders going into the late game regardless of who they start next to.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Almost always top, stable:
Songhai
China

Often top, but less stable, running away is not constant:
Ethiopia
Carthage
Celts
Portugal

Does very well, but tends to also be mid of the pack or just a stronger guy (in case of warmongerers here, they can do very badly):
Arabia
Brazil
Russia
Mongolia
Shoshone
Maya
Huns
Babylon

Mid-tier, hard to predict - the rest, except

Often does badly, can be middle of the pack or rarely do well:
Spain
Sweden
Denmark
Rome
Poland

Always sucks:
Venice

Almost never appears in my games: Mr Wishy-Washy Ingot.
The civs are ordered in their tiers, so the higher someone is, the more I notice they do well in my games. Might've forgotten a few civs for a group.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Byzantium can be a monster in human hands, but is hit or miss with the AI. I guess the same can be said for Willy McDutch.

America and the Ottomans are probably middle of the pack, while the Iroquois are usually pretty decent, if not strong.

I've only ever played Egypt a couple times, but a world wonder culture snowball can be a force if paired with a strong religion.

Founding a religion really can be a sign to how the game will evolve and end up. Also, pretty ironic that Rome, arguably the greatest historical civ of all time, is considered mediocre in this game...

 

[Hailstorm21]

I've been thinking about this recently too. I did have a time where i was using random personalities but this incomplete list is without that. I don't think Ive finished games against every civ, but my top 5 would be China, Russia, Ethiopia, Portugal, and sometimes updated Mongols. That group may not be the first to take over another Civ but their science is always crazy(minus Mongolia). The next group would be Shoshone, Songhai, Celts, Babylon, and Carthage.. Some warmongers just make the top science Civs stronger, since they will hinder you from closing the gap.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Here's my list. I know it differs due to our settings but it shares some similarities with other people here. I'll just use a simple tier list to group the civs.

S Tier (Almost always fighting for top spot):

China
Greece
Morocco

A (Generally have great games):

Arabia
Austria
Babylon
Brazil
Egypt
Ethiopia
Germany
India
Iroquois
Korea
Maya
Portugal
Russia
Shoshone

B (More situational but solid candidates):

America
Assyria
Byzantium
Carthage
Celts
Denmark
France
Indonesia
Ottomans
Persia
Polynesia
Rome
Siam
Songhai
Spain
Zulu

C (Need more things going their way):

Aztecs
Huns
Inca
Japan
Mongolia
Netherlands
Poland
Sweden

D (Need the stars to align the entire game):

Venice

 

[crdvis16]

There seems to be some general consensus. I haven't actually played the top few civs much myself- do they also feel strong in human hands? I wonder if they could stand to have modest nerfs.

I'm a believer that Venice could use some love but I think Gazebo has said in the past that Venice is unique enough that balancing him is more effort than its worth or that he doesn't mind Venice being in a weak state.

 

[CrazyG]

There seems to be some general consensus. I haven't actually played the top few civs much myself- do they also feel strong in human hands? I wonder if they could stand to have modest nerfs.

I think playing China or Ethiopia is like playing on a lower difficulty. I don't play China anymore, and I would only use Ethiopia for a special challenge game. Note that China will be even stronger if we change the game to make food more useful.

I find the consistently weak civs on Deity are India and Poland. Zulu does very poorly among warmongers. Venice is Venice.

 

[tu_79]

I think playing China or Ethiopia is like playing on a lower difficulty. I don't play China anymore, and I would only use Ethiopia for a special challenge game. Note that China will be even stronger if we change the game to make food more useful.

I find the consistently weak civs on Deity are India and Poland. Zulu does very poorly among warmongers. Venice is Venice.

One thing that drives China is the queen days triggering with great works. It's already good to have the trigger on new cities. Even if the bonus fades, the early cultural lead snowballs by itself.
She also might get queen days the usual way, just with fewer culture bonuses.

If this nerf ends up being too severe, I'd slightly boost Chinese great engineers, to represent their amazing building capabilities.

 

[chicorbeef]

Ethiopia and Arabia are consistent high performers in my games. France does well in my games but I think it's confirmation bias.

It's hard to make any conclusions for me I usually see a good variety of top civ's. I have had Siam at the top, Greece at the bottom, Morocco/Egypt have done poorly in plenty of my games. I don't have a lot of experience playing against China as I have whooped them early when I found them in the few games I had with China. I think Netherlands does well in my games but it's probably confirmation bias.

 

[CrazyG]

One thing that drives China is the queen days triggering with great works. It's already good to have the trigger on new cities. Even if the bonus fades, the early cultural lead snowballs by itself.
She also might get queen days the usual way, just with fewer culture bonuses.

If this nerf ends up being too severe, I'd slightly boost Chinese great engineers, to represent their amazing building capabilities.

Is her theme supposed to be We Love the Empress Day? It's really overshadowed by how powerful her early culture is. Her WLTED stuff is buggy. You get notifications that it has ended and demands a new luxury while the city still has WLTED, I think it happens if you settle two cities a few turns apart.

You don't need to build a strategy around her WLTED day either. It's a nice little bonus if you do, but she's strong because early culture is strong. I'm not spamming great works for WLTED's bonus growth, I'm doing it for 1 culture in every city.

 

[ryanmusante]

I use Really Advanced Setup Mod to disable Venice.

I would consider Brazil a dangerous foe. They will win Culture victory if left alone. I make it a priority to see their Capital taken some point in the game.

Disable Austria and Venice if so.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/change-vp-options.620079/

<GameData>
    <Civilizations>
        <Update>
            <Where Type='CIVILIZATION_AUSTRIA'/>
            <Set AIPlayable="false"/>
        </Update>
        <Update>
            <Where Type='CIVILIZATION_VENICE'/>
            <Set AIPlayable="false"/>
        </Update>
    </Civilizations>
</GameData>

 

[CppMaster]

So the consensus is that Venice is the weakest civ by far. Do you guys think that it would be OP in human hands if it's buffed?

 

[psparky]

I have also removed Venice from my games. The main reason is not so much that they themselves are weak, but that they leave a large area of land and an extra monopoly for their neighbor. I suppose they are also fairly annoying.

I did look at modding the game to make them an optional extra civ that replaced a city-state, so that in a standard game, if they were chosen, you would end up with 9 civs and 15 CS. They would get the start position of a CS and maybe some extra bonus to compensate. I think it's probably doable, but in the end I wasn't interested enough. After all, they are fairly annoying!

 

[Stalker0]

One thing that drives China is the queen days triggering with great works. It's already good to have the trigger on new cities. Even if the bonus fades, the early cultural lead snowballs by itself.
She also might get queen days the usual way, just with fewer culture bonuses.

If this nerf ends up being too severe, I'd slightly boost Chinese great engineers, to represent their amazing building capabilities.

How about we consider s numbers tweak instead of tossing part of her kit right off the bat.

 

[tu_79]

How about we consider s numbers tweak instead of tossing part of her kit right off the bat.

Do you prefer to reduce WLTQD to 3 turns or something like that? I'd say it's simply easier to let China shine in Ancient, and let her decay in Industrial.

 

[Bhawb]

So the consensus is that Venice is the weakest civ by far. Do you guys think that it would be OP in human hands if it's buffed?

Venice does poorly not because it is directly weak but because the unique mechanics of the civ don't play well with the core systems of Civ 5, and play even worse with VP's more competitive AI.

Essentially, there are two major issues with Venice, both for the player and AI.

1) Venice cannot claim any significant amount of land like another civ would. This means their nearby civs get a huge amount of free extra starting locations that don't cost the normal diplomatic/war tensions, a significantly increased chance for a Natural Wonder, and pretty much a guaranteed 2nd luxury.

2) Venice's abysmal supply leads to it being extremely difficult to properly defend distant puppets, and leads to far worse diplomatic situations. You will constantly be declared war on for being "weak", even though in some Venice games I had a unit on every single tile in my capital and so much gold I could outright buy their entire military's power equivalent. You also can't get Defensive Pacts or other quasi-mercenary/ally situations, despite this being literally how Venice defended itself IRL.

So basically two of the most important aspects of the game, particularly the early game, Venice can't properly interact with. This leads to a player either feeling frustrated because they have to constantly put up with AI expansion and war that they can't stop, or gaming the system with cheesy Authority strats. And if you don't play them but they end up in the game they completely ruin any semblance of balance.

To properly fix Venice to be a "competitive" civ, we need to address these issues. Venice needs some way to properly secure their lands in a way that is roughly equivalent to at least a Tall civ, say 2 extra cities, and better supply more in-line with a Tall civ. Some ideas for that:

1) Give MoVs the ability to add CSs to the game which you automatically control, or in some other way add very limited "puppet settlers"
2) Allow Venice to buy settlers for CSs (before and/or after MoV purchase), so you can allow the CSs to grow a bit before/after puppeting them.
3) Increase supply to be similar to what a Tall empire would normally have, or give Venice supply-free units in some way.

I definitely don't want to see Venice turn into a civ that isn't as unique, it is by far the most unique playstyle in the game. But it does feel frustrating to play as them, since you feel like you have to "game" the system in a way that no other civ has to in order to get around the poor interactions of low supply/expansion with VP AI. And it feels even worse to have Venice in game to just give another civ a free amazing capital and easy 3-4 extra cities and a luxury.

 

[Han_YOLO]

I'm always surprised to not see the Inca at the top of these tier lists. They start the game with a cheap cho-ku-no that has withdraw, get no negative terrain modifier for hill movement, and have an insanely good unique improvement. The slinger and hill/mountain movement quietly make them one of the strongest military civs both offensively and defensively. Incredibly annoying to deal with in the hands of the AI, though agree I rarely see them as a top tier AI civ. Almost unbeatable in the hands of a competent human player, however.

 

[andersw]

I can see diety late game having very different outcomes compared to king/emperor warmonger games.
My games usually end during early industrial.
Indonesia never does well, polynesia also tend to struggle (I've disabled venice).
I find it strange that noone mention spain doing well, they are usually strong in my games.