Unique Ability Elimination Thread

[Snoopaloop]

Skibbi: You won't help your enemies unless you have a DoF with them.

I consider every AI civ my enemy. Even if I have a declaration of friendship with them currently. Maybe that 10% they're getting for me is helping them generate generals while at war with someone else.

...just playing devil's advocate.

As for my vote, I have no clue which of these to vote out yet, as I imagined these (with Ingenuity) being the final ones.

 

[Petiscator]

Well, if they are generating GG they are at war with someone else and probably will use the GG against them. 10% is minor, too, so it won't "help" that much. Once they are at war with you, the bonus vanishes

 

[El Caballerion]

Sacrificial Captives: 18 (+1)
Great Andean Road: 15
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 16 (-3)
Achaemenid Legacy: 21


So, my vote for today is based solely on play style. When I start a game of CIV, I begrudgingly dislike the notion of being a warmonger. As a matter of fact, I'd much rather be tucked away on an island, getting more and more powerful so I can kick ass around the Renaissance/Industrial age. However, I find time and time again that my most fun games happen when I warmonger right away. I love it when each turn is full of possibilities and find that the game is frankly boring when you're at peace forever and ever.

I feel that with Korea's UA, you're doing just that... turtling away. With the Aztecs, the game becomes fun from turn one, because you're forced to fight to get the most out of your UA. Korea's UA is very powerful, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing too fun about me being FAR more scientifically superior than my opponents and crushing them easily. With the Aztecs, it's all about constant fighting and constant unhappiness problems, which actually causes you to work harder, making the game more fun, and in the end, doesn't the FUN FACTOR of a UA outweigh the most POWERFUL?

 

[Petiscator]

Sacrificial Captives: 18
Great Andean Road: 15
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 16
Achaemenid Legacy: 21
Nobel Prize: 1

Nobel Prize isn't dead yet

 

[sukritact]

Sacrificial Captives: 15
Great Andean Road: 15
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 16
Achaemenid Legacy: 21
Nobel Prize: 2

I vote in the name of flexibility! Sacrificial Captives is rather unsuited for peaceful games!

 

[iggymnrr]

Sacrificial Captives: 15
Great Andean Road: 15
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 16
Achaemenid Legacy: 22 (+1)
Nobel Prize: 0 (-3)

It's RAs that teach the player the value of friends. Nothing demonstrates the uselessness of NP like using Atilla for cultural, diplomatic and scientific wins.

 

[woodshadows]

It's RAs that teach the player the value of friends. Nothing demonstrates the uselessness of NP like using Atilla for cultural, diplomatic and scientific wins.

huh?
..

also. if you want your plus vote for archamaenid to count you need to provide a reason for voting it.. just apply the same nonsense approach you used on your downvote and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out something to type

 

[Wabango]

Sacrificial Captives: 15
Great Andean Road: 16
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 13
Achaemenid Legacy: 22

The static boost for building a wonder/building cannot hold a candle to Achaemenid Legacy/Andean Road at difficulty levels of Emperor or above. In my opinion at least, this should not be in the top 3

 

[woodshadows]

Sacrificial Captives: 15
Great Andean Road: 16
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 13
Achaemenid Legacy: 21

iggy didnt provide a reason for his upvote.

 

[iggymnrr]

also. if you want your plus vote for archamaenid to count you need to provide a reason for voting it.. just apply the same nonsense approach you used on your downvote and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out something to type

What nonsense? A person can full well befriend everyone with Atilla or ally all CSes. What is nonsense is people acting like Gustavus controls the market on friends. No! RAs require DoFs and every civ is capable of doing that. The lessons of friendship are already learned. The extra 10% for Gustavus is meaningless for diplo when everyone can ally all CSes. The UA is more suitable for making enemies not friends so that excess admirals/GGs can be donated.

 

[woodshadows]

What nonsense? A person can full well befriend everyone with Atilla or ally all CSes. What is nonsense is people acting like Gustavus controls the market on friends. No! RAs require DoFs and every civ is capable of doing that. The lessons of friendship are already learned. The extra 10% for Gustavus is meaningless for diplo when everyone can ally all CSes. The UA is more suitable for making enemies not friends so that excess admirals/GGs can be donated.

gustavus gains a huge bonus when it comes to citystates, which gives him an edge over most of the other civs in obtaining and maintaining relationships with citystates. yes if you are playing attila you can invest thousands of gold towards city states and also gain a monopoly.. but the swedish player will be able to instead gift some great admirals or great prophets and save thousands of gold which can be used to gain an advantage over the attila player. "The extra 10% for Gustavus is meaningless for diplo when everyone can ally all CSes" I don't even know what to make of this statement, I don't want to attempt to infer a meaning out of that ambiguous statement which you may not have intended, it might help to elaborate a bit when making points, for the sake of clarity. "The UA is more suitable for making enemies not friends so that excess admirals/GGs can be donated" .. heh.. ok.

 

[Gucumatz]

First you have to earn the great person. And once again - most of the time great people can have better benefits for your empire than donating it to a city state. Its good to have an extra great admirals for faster conquest with healing to maintain momentum

Same with Great Generals and citadels and the momentum they provide. Particularly on multiplayer where an opponent won't waste units wastefully unless it provides a tactical advantage.

With an atilla you gain advantages elsewhere that could more than make up for the potential for 90 "free" influence quicker than Sweden can, more efficiently, and provide more early momentum with less risk

 

[woodshadows]

First you have to earn the great person. And once again - most of the time great people can have better benefits for your empire than donating it to a city state. Its good to have an extra great admirals for faster conquest with healing to maintain momentum

Same with Great Generals and citadels and the momentum they provide. Particularly on multiplayer where an opponent won't waste units wastefully unless it provides a tactical advantage.

With an atilla you gain advantages elsewhere that could more than make up for the potential for 90 "free" influence quicker than Sweden can, more efficiently, and provide more early momentum with less risk

sure, the same argument can be made about anything, it's like saying attila is better at science than babylon because they 'get advantages in other areas which can translate to a better science game than babylon', but if you try to use that logic then there's nothing you can't defend or argue in favour of. all things being equal the swedish player can generally gain more city state influence than most other civs, does it come at a cost? yes, definitely, they might lose that great scientist and fall behind in science, lose that great general and miss out on a nifty citadel, lose a great engineer and miss out on a wonder, but all things being equal they will have more raw capacity to generate citystate influence than most other civs. whether sacrificing great people for citystate influence is a good thing or not is another argument entirely, but trying to argue that attila is better at gaining city state influence than sweden is pretty farfetched even for you.

 

[Gucumatz]

Even for me? I am not arguing that Atilla is better at city state influence.

I am arguing which is better at momentum. Its what I have always looked at which is key in my opinion for strengths/weaknesses of UAs. Sweden's UA is falvorful - and yes you could sacrifice being competitive for extra city state influence. Does that mean it gives you a larger advantage in the grand scheme of things than other UAs?

Absolutely not. There are plenty of decent UAs - NP is one of them - but its nothing to write home about.

That opportunity cost coupled with the other aspects of realities IN GAME put it at a situation where it often times doesn't make sense to say Nobel Prize honestly outweighs so and so UA in my opinion

 

[Rooftrellen]

What nonsense? A person can full well befriend everyone with Atilla or ally all CSes. What is nonsense is people acting like Gustavus controls the market on friends. No! RAs require DoFs and every civ is capable of doing that. The lessons of friendship are already learned. The extra 10% for Gustavus is meaningless for diplo when everyone can ally all CSes. The UA is more suitable for making enemies not friends so that excess admirals/GGs can be donated.

Without mods, only one person can ally a CS, not everyone.

In that way, Sweden has a better chance at being able to be that one ally.

I can understand that if you play with a mod where everyone can ally all CS's, his UA might look worse, but as you say, friends are important, and no one else gets the boost Nobel Prize gives.

Seems a bit strange to me to say friendship is important and then downvote the UA that helps when you make good friends, but we all have our different ideas of how to vote.

We're almost done here, and there are a lot of surprises (to me) for only having 4 left.

 

[iggymnrr]

Nobody is arguing Atilla is better. But a diplo win is easier the fewer CSes there are. It's great for Sweden if Austria is in the marrying mood or CSes are getting gobbled up by other AIs. Extra GGs/admirals can be gifted at the end to wrap up a diplo victory.

 

[Gucumatz]

To be honest I kind of saw this final 5.

Not my personal opinion of whats best - but what I expected:

1. Ingenuity
2. Great Andean Road
3. Scholars of the Jade Hall
4. Archaemenid Legacy
5. Phoenician Heritage
(I had Sacrificial Captives at 6)

 

[Seabastian Civ]

Sacrificial Captives: 15
Great Andean Road: 13 (-3) I'd rather have a Persian golden age.
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 13
Achaemenid Legacy: 22 (+1) Persian golden ages are great.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Sacrificial Captives: 12
Great Andean Road: 13
Scholars of the Jade Hall: 13
Achaemenid Legacy: 23

Pains me cos I love SC, but it's not nearly the strongest left, mostly cos cultural is still the slowest vc. I think all the other 3 are stronger, and both GAR and AL are also more intresting, as all SC gives is a cultural game with war. It's not like war is missing from all other games independant of vc. A really interesting UA like Nobel Prize alters how much you care about diplomacy, war, religion and friendship dramatically, wheras this is a normal culture game with more units and more civs likely to DoW you.

AL: Too strong. It's usual cited weakness is a dependance on getting CI, Taj and Louvre, but with the GA bonuses you can usually take CI when you miss it, and Taj/Louvre aren't that hard to get, or the end of the world if you miss them.

 

[Petiscator]

Just giving my two cents on the Nobel Prize - which I upvoted for a long time - discussion:

Using Atilla to take over cities takes so that you need lesser votes? Well, if you are playing Atilla, you might take CSs/Civs early in the game and end up with some cities and some major unhappiness. Also, if you pretend to go on a Diplo win as Atilla, you will have a tough time gaining alliances against a Swedish player. Nobel Prize is much better at gaining alliances, and you don't have to sacrifice your scientists or engineers if you don't want, as you don't have to marry every CS as Austria nor you have to warry during golden ages as Persia. The good part is the versatility it provides: having a tough war? Then save this GG and try gifting the next one. You can always look for peace if you want to end the war and gain a CS instead of keeping warring.

Sweden against a marry-like Austria? First, some things: Austria doesn't have a bonus that grants them free-CS-alliances, for it to work they have to be allied. It will be harder for Austria to ally a CS that is allied with Sweden because they can instantly gain 90 influence! You can always take over Austria as well, with help of their near CSs. Nobel Prize is, for me, a top UA, and it is really good for what it aims for: hold that CSs so that Austria can't eat it. One more thing: if there is a bunch of guys like Atilla or Maria Theresa taking over/marrying the CSs, good for you! They will still need as many votes as you, and with Nobel Prize, you basically grant them. The less CSs needed to ally (if you aim a Diplo) the better, so you can use the GPs you don't need aswell.

(BTW, not in the subject, I started a new game as Persia and wow. Seriously, wow. My money is on them - now that NP is eliminated)