Ultimate Civ

[DarkSchneider]

I was thinking about using an editor and creating the ultimate Civ using the best aspects of all of the current civilizations. Here are the traits I think the best civilization would have:

Leader Traits: Philosophical/Creative (Frederick)
Starting Techs: Mysticism/Hunting (Aztec)
Uber Unit: Praetorian (Rome)

Philosophical and Creative are the only traits that I can see as being useful in all situations. In general, you don't change Civics often enough to have Spiritual be worthwhile. Expansive isn't wonderful because happiness is usualy a factor long before health is. Organized is next to useless because the best Civics have low-no upkeep anyway. Industrious doesn't necessarily help as much as it could, considering that only a few wonders are really benefical, and can be built with great ppl anyway. The free promotions with aggresive only apply to Melee and Gunpowder units. Financial is good, but to really have it be effective, you have to build cottages instead of farms.

Creative makes the early game so much easier, and provides cheap theatres later on. Philosophical will roughly double your great person output, which can be killer later on in the game.

Hunting is necessary as a starting tech because you will want to produce scouts without researching the technology first. Mysticism is necessary because you will want to be able to found one of the original religions.

The Praetorian is hands down the best UU. Its 8 strength makes it useful even into the early gunpowder age, are cheap to build, and can be turned into city sacking machines

So what do you think, what would your Ultimate Civiliation be?

 

[APushkin]

I wouldn't say that Spiritual is totally useless. I play Arabs right now and find it useful switching between religions to please the particular leader I'm trying to deal with. It can also be handy to fast switch to nationhood or slavery to rally defenders against a surprise attack.

But ultimately I agree - creative and philosophical rock.
Mysticism is a must.
As for hunting I might replace it with fishing as per this thread. It is indeed very common to start on a shore so it is very handy. Sea resources can also be taken advantage of without roads (The Wheel, which is important) Scouts are nice but even with warrior you can explore faster then you expand (especially on epic) and goody huts aren't that good. If you give warrior Woodsman II promo he becomes quite fast too. Not to mention that on the higher difficulties scout doesn't stand a good chance against barbs.

As for the unit I haven't made up my mind yet. I guess this depends on how early do you want to start the war. Almost every UU rules the battelfield in it's time.

 

[Legal_My_Deagle]

If you are looking for Civ traits that are useful the whole game, why not go with Fast Worker as your UU to fit that theme? You use workers the whole game, and when are they NOT useful?

 

[DarkSchneider]

Ok, the Fast Worker would probably be a close second, but still, choosing between them is like choosing between military dominance through the early - middle game (Praetorian) and a moderate infastructure benefit the entire game (Fast Worker).

And remeber, you have to make it through the early - middle game to get to the late game

 

[Zhahz]

Fast workers didn't impress me that much. I always reach several points where my workers have nothing to do even with 1 worker per city or less (usually far less once I start conquering). Reaching that state faster isn't gonna help much. I also tend to build lots of roads so extra worker movement has less impact.

The best UU I've tried so far has been Russia's cossacks. I haven't been impressed by anything else BUT playing on continent maps has generally involved far less war so it's hard to judge. I'm playing Russians with a pangea map and there's been WAY more aggression, so my cossacks have seen tons of action.

I haven't tried The Praetorian yet but I'm rarely ready for major fighting that early. I'll have to try em on a blood crazed pangea map.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I disagree about the traits..at least partly.

Philosophical does not give you twice as much Great persons! It doubes the points you get, but since the costs for later GPs escalate more and more, you will get less and less for the points.

Nonetheless I would agree about it as killer trait....but only if combined with industrial.Industrial gives you cheap wonders, which get their GPP doubled then ---> many GPs.

 

[Pinstar]

I disagree about the traits..at least partly.

Philosophical does not give you twice as much Great persons! It doubes the points you get, but since the costs for later GPs escalate more and more, you will get less and less for the points.

Nonetheless I would agree about it as killer trait....but only if combined with industrial.Industrial gives you cheap wonders, which get their GPP doubled then ---> many GPs.

Do the GP costs ramp up as you produce more and more GP, or as you go through the ages?

 

[mdm]

I think the best traits are Expansive and Financial, and I think the best starting techs are fishing (work boats don't consume food! Can be a "miss" though if there are literally 0 tiles that can be worked) and mysticism:

Victoria (traits)
Isabella (techs)
Julius Caesar (Praetorian)

 

[WoundedKnight]

Sorry but creative is one of the worst traits IMO and has value only early on, and is easily duplicated by a single wonder like Stonehenge.

Philosophical is nice, but I like industrious more as it's hard to get GP points without having wonders, and the philosophical leader is likely to lose the wonder race (great engineers are also very rare and so rushing wonders will hardly ever occur, and only very late in the game). The philosophical wonder can be duplicated with a religious civic (pacifism) and a national epic. These are additive, not multiplicative, so an industrious civ with a national epic in the capital and pacifism will generate great people at 300%, and the benefit of adding philosophical on top of this is only marginal.

Industrious/Financial is my dream combo. The wonders you can build with industrious can duplicate almost all other civ traits, and the cash you get from financial can put you way ahead in the research game by allowing you to devote your city and slider resources to tech instead of money. In my last game i had 100%tech almost all game and was way ahead in the tech race, even with a large empire, expensive civics, and significant military drawing support.

 

[elderotter]

I like Mansa Musa - spiritual/Financial - the spiritual is more useful than you think - esp if wars are sporadic in the game you play, the ability to slip in and out of police state works welll in that situation. Also the ability to slip in and out of free religion for diplomatic purposes is also useful. And Financial well money does make the world go round.

 

[Rosscifer]

Creative is 100% useless on island maps which I like, except for the cheap theaters that don't compare to the benfits from other traits. Philosophical Industrious would clearly be the best, which is why it doesn't exist.

 

[CitizenCain]

If you're looking for the "ultimate" civ setup, consider this. There are only TWO trait combinations not included in the leaders for Civ IV. One of them is Phi/Ind, and it's not hard to see why. +100% GPPs, + -50% wonder cost (all wonders give GPPs) + cheap forges will lead to all manner of crazy, unbalancing madness. It's way overpowered.

Off the top of my head, imagine this: blitz to ironworking and orcale, build (at 50% discount with Ind, maybe you have marble too to hack the time in half again), take metalcasting as free tech (for your forges), and in no time, you'll have +25% production, -50% wonder build time and +100% GPPs, on top of all the GPPs you get from pumping out those wonders. Unending stream of great people. I bet if you played it right you could get maybe 25-30 in a game with this trait combo. <drool>

So I think the ultimate civ would have this trait combo, even though I personally love Ind/Fin now.

 

[Dog of Justice]

Realistically, Philosophical is worth about ~35-50% more Great People depending on the stage of the game. In the theoretical limit, the advantage is sqrt(2) (i.e. +~41.4%) over no other GPP bonuses. For practical calculations this should be modified upward in the early game since the advantage is front-loaded, and modified downward later since the National Epic decreases the theoretical advantage to sqrt(1.5) (i.e. +~22.5%) in your best city.

Some of the documentation is misleading about Industrious. I initially thought it was a no-brainer, but it didn't take me a long time to stop choosing it. First of all, an awful lot of the wonders are mediocre for their cost (which is, I think, a good thing), and may be more useful for their GPP and culture than their "big effect". But perhaps more importantly, the size of the production bonus is a lot smaller than most of its advocates seem to think it is. It is +50%, additive rather than multiplicative with other bonuses. That means, if you have a Forge, Organized Religion, and the special resource the wonder requires, your special bonus is only worth 3.00/2.50=+20%, or looking at the reciprocal, production time is decreased by only ~16.7% rather than halved. The Forge production bonus of Industrious may be more valuable to your civilization.

Both of these bonuses are fairly small in magnitude, small enough that arguments for most if not all of the other traits can be made over them.

That said, Phi/Ind is uniquely good at generating early game GP, so I can see why it was excluded from the game.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Do the GP costs ramp up as you produce more and more GP, or as you go through the ages?

They ramp up with the amount of GP born in your empire and they do it in a geomtric way...means while the increase is 100 per leader for the first ten or so, the increase is 200 for the next 10 and so on.

 

[xenikos]

Expansive isn't wonderful because happiness is usualy a factor long before health is.

Yay for Boston! But I think that this line of reasoning is flawed....sure happiness can be a bigger factor early on often (depends on resources), but not having to worry about health nearly as much means that you have the time to turn your attention to happiness...to not have to build an aqueduct, or the Hanging Gardens...means you have the freedom to grow in all sorts of other ways.

Organized is next to useless because the best Civics have low-no upkeep anyway.

Sadly enough, this reasoning is not flawed A so obviously unbalanced leader trait is unfortunate....but maybe they pumped up the UUs for Organized civs a tad to make up for it? I haven't looked at that much. I think that adding one hammer per city to Organized would make it a lot more valuable.

 

[Gufnork]

A thing to consider is that getting many great leaders increase the odds of you getting more wonders (free techs, more production from super specialist, engineers hurrying them, etc.). And more wonders means more GPP.

I'd personally choose Financial/Agressive though. Love financial and I've started to war a lot more after modding the game to a slower pace.

Mysticism/Mining for starting techs, letting me get Bronze Working fast and still snag a religion.

The UU is still to be decided.

 

[Dairuka]

Mysticism is good if you're trying for the early 3 religions - Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism.

However - After playing Bismark as well as Qin Shi Huang for the past 3 games for Multiplayered. I found that nobody ever beats me to Code of Laws, Theology, Philosophy and Divine Right.

Why? Because while you guys are racing each other for Monotheism. I'm safely securing a technology and production lead by grabbing Writing, and Metal Casting for Libraries and Forges.