Weak UAs

[MynameisOda]

England, without a doubt, has the weakest UA. I've never played a single game where having +2 ship movement was anything to care about. I almost always fill out the commerce tree and the bonus to ships in that is good enough. The extra spy they added for G&K is the only thing useful about this UA, and that's not really that great.

Not sure why they have left England to rot at the bottom for so long, surely there was something else other than ships that aided the English in creating their Empire.

It really depends on the map. England was one of my favorite civilizations to play even before the extra spy because it is very easy to dominate the seas. The +2 movement really adds up in the long run. You are the usually the first to circumnavigate, exploration is faster, and it leaves you in a more defensible position than other civs that build up their navies. Being able to outrun other ships at low health, or race your ships back home faster if war is declared are both fantastic assets. Coupled with the Longbowman, England is great. The only problem is if you are on Pangea, England becomes almost worthless (entirely so without longbowman or the extra spy).

 

[Bad Wolf]

I'd have to say as it stands now Sweden is the obvious black sheep. There are much easier ways to gain influence with city states than to gift them the most valuable units in the game (you probably get more influence from a gold gift using the gold from a great merchant journey). This aspect of the UA is essentially useless except for very specific, late-game diplo strategies. The other aspect of it, the GP generation, sounds good on paper, but the fact that it's dependent on the caprice of the AI is not encouraging.

All in all I can't believe they included such a massively powerful UA (Austria's) and such a useless one (Sweden's) in the same expansion. The game balance issues are rather obvious.

 

[GenjiKhan]

All in all I can't believe they included such a massively powerful UA (Austria's) and such a useless one (Sweden's) in the same expansion. The game balance issues are rather obvious.

Sweden's UA is only useless if you are trying domination victory or trying to puppet some cities or if you are trying to avoid DOF at all cost .

 

[wbg]

I think it's important to note that a Civ is comprised of its UA's IN ADDITION to it's UA's and UB's. Some of the Civs with poor abilities have strong UU's and UB's to compensate. Arabia is the first to come to mind.

Not every UA therefore needs to be balanced, since it is only one corner of a civ's power.

 

[Polycrates]

My next game is going to be Sweden and I can see it as potentially very powerful. It seems with the new city-state system that yes, it's quite easy to get influence with city-states, but that getting a LOT of influence with a given city-state can be tricky. You otherwise have to rely on huge gold gifts or luck with being given good quests.
You can also better choose which CSs to target based on what's more useful for your strategy. More influence with fewer CSs also gives you less overall influence decay for the benefits (and less diplo problems), and it seems to me like if you have really high influence with a given CS the AI will tend to back off and go fight over an easier target.
And it's not like you have to give them ALL your great people - maybe just the less useful ones (surplus generals, admirals, prophets, merchants, etc).

I'm also interested by the possibility of going Honour first for the GG and allying a religious CS early for a fast religion that focuses on CS friendship/spread and maximum faith generation for great people (may or may not be worthwhile).

The only UA I really don't like is Spain's. You can see what they were trying to do, but it doesn't come off and ends up not actually fitting them thematically anyway, and mostly being chance whether the game is a slog or a walkover.

 

[Bad Wolf]

There's no question that 90 influence with a city state is nice, if it were free I would definitely not pass it up. However, how often is 90 influence with a city state more valuable than a free tech, or a huge injection of cash, or a free wonder? There are situations where it may be, but I just can't imagine parting with a great person, they're just way too valuable. You can buy city-state influence with gold (which by the end-game you should have in abundance), but you can't buy great people.



re: Spain's yeah, I don't really like how it's basically a crap-shoot. On some maps it's massively OP (when Spain starts next to GBR for example), on others its usefulness is extremely limited (when Spain starts nowhere near any decent wonders).

 

[Gucumatz]

Egypt and France are in no need of upgrades - that much is for sure.

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Germany on the other hand I would argue to upgrade the UA a little (Small chance of converting pre industrial units perhaps)

And for Alexander maybe not the UA - but the UUs. Polynesia also needs a boost/incentive for settling far/remote outposts.

 

[Gliese 581]

As long as you don't turn off preferential starts there's a greater than avg chance that Spain will have a natural wonder or two close by, I tested starting a number of games as Spain and played up until the point where I found a wonder or concluded none where reasonably close (and def not undiscovered by AI). It seems to me it's definitely more likely that you will find a natural wonder than not. I think this makes Spain a powerful civilization overall.
I do think that it really sucks when you don't find a natural wonder though and that it can frequently be way too OP when you do find one.

I had one game where I found a natural wonder at turn 0 (with my warrior's first move). He then proceeded to pop a shrine at turn 2 that gave me an additional pop in the capital allowing me to buy a settler. I settled the wonder (which also had great tiles around it) at turn 6 with this settler. This at immortal no less.

An extreme scenario to be sure but I feel like Spain could do with some balancing to avoid extremely OP scenarios like this and to avoid extremely disappointing - for the player - starts where your UA does nothing.
I play civ exclusively in single player mode but I would be very upset if in a multiplayer game my opponent pulled something like this. Luck is an exciting element that should be involved in some way in a game but this is off the charts and then some in ridiculous power granted by the RNG.

 

[Sam Kwon]

what's so special about egypt and marble?

 

[iconocast]

marble gives ua bonus to wonder production, plus egypts ua bonus, add in the bonus form tradition. makes them pretty dam good at building wonders

Imho, the french UA is very powerful. With the early SP's you have enough advantage until their UA becomes obsolete.

the fact it makes ur boardeders very large easly is kind of the main interesting part of it imo

 

[GlobularFoody]

It really depends on the map. England was one of my favorite civilizations to play even before the extra spy because it is very easy to dominate the seas. The +2 movement really adds up in the long run. You are the usually the first to circumnavigate, exploration is faster, and it leaves you in a more defensible position than other civs that build up their navies. Being able to outrun other ships at low health, or race your ships back home faster if war is declared are both fantastic assets. Coupled with the Longbowman, England is great. The only problem is if you are on Pangea, England becomes almost worthless (entirely so without longbowman or the extra spy).

The main problem I see with England's UA is that ships already have a good deal of movement points. If you want more you can build the GL and do the commerce tree. I would rather have ANY other Civ's UA than England's.

 

[Gliese 581]

marble gives ua bonus to wonder production, plus egypts ua bonus, add in the bonus form tradition. makes them pretty dam good at building wonders






the fact it makes ur boardeders very large easly is kind of the main interesting part of it imo

You can add +15% from pantheon belief as well. 20+15+15+15 should add up to +65% wonder building of ancient and classical wonders (I assume it's additive). That's 112 hammers needed for a 185 hammers wonder.

 

[wobuffet]

You can buy city-state influence with gold (which by the end-game you should have in abundance), but you can't buy great people.

Sure, you can... with faith. Great Generals and Admirals can be pretty cheap – or at least they are in my game.

I can see saving up tons of Faith, spamming out Great People just before crossing into the Atomic or Information Eras, then shipping them off to all City-States for a diplomatic victory.

 

[RealHuhn]

There's no question that 90 influence with a city state is nice, if it were free I would definitely not pass it up. However, how often is 90 influence with a city state more valuable than a free tech, or a huge injection of cash, or a free wonder? There are situations where it may be, but I just can't imagine parting with a great person, they're just way too valuable. You can buy city-state influence with gold (which by the end-game you should have in abundance), but you can't buy great people.

People highly underestimate the power of Sweden's UA.

Most people's argument:
They don't want to gift a scientist and lose the ability to build an academy or get about 3/4 of a new tech, but:
1) Scholasticism: "All City-States which are Allies provide a Science bonus equal to 25% of what they produce for themselves."
=> Every ally is worth 8-15 beakers per turn which is as good as an academy in most cases.
=> You also get the bonuses from the city state, for example food or happiness helps you grow much faster which results (again) in more beakers, same with culture (for example faster rationalism, more happiness)
2) You can actively choose which city state you want to get and that's usually impossible in G&K (dependant on quests).

So yeah, considering all the pros and cons, I'd say that gifting a scientist is slightly better than keeping it.

But with all other great people, it's an absolute nobrainer(except for GE's and first prophets). Every GP is worth an academy plus the other bonuses.

And on top of that:
1) Probably get +20% GP spawn rate on a standart map
2) Two amazing UU's. Help your friends in a war, get a few great generals, gift them to city states => profit.
3) Buy great people with faith and gift them.

You will be allied with all city states on the map in no time. Sweden is an extremely powerful and flexible civ.
Oh, and artist specialist slots are the earliest ones you can get. Even two with cathedrals. Use them

 

[Poomermon]

I have not played Sweden yet but another way to abuse their UA is to have a great prophet spread religion 3 times and then gift it to a city state.

 

[RealHuhn]

I have not played Sweden yet but another way to abuse their UA is to have a great prophet spread religion 3 times and then gift it to a city state.

Yeah, that works. You can also capture enemy prophets and gift them.

 

[Thry]

Given a good starting location, Boudicca gets a very good start for founding the first religion, which is a huge benefit in some circumstances. I'm not saying that it is powerful, just that it isn't completely useless.

For me the most useless UA might be the Dutch one. I never have enough happiness to even imagine selling the last pieces of my luxuries even if half of the happiness would remain. Another good candidates are America (I buy 0-3 tiles per game), Ethiopia (I'm usually the biggest civ), Germany (In 3/4 of my games I disable barbarians) and Spain (for some reason my games have very little amounts of natural wonders in them). My favourite UA award would go to Japan or to Austria.

It is completely useless. It's actually more useless than the Dutch UA.

I still cannot get over firaxis' total lack of any sort of intelligence whatsoever. Any rational person would have seen this coming and fixed it.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Thry: I fail to see how a 95-99% guarantee of getting the best Pantheon for your Civ demonstrates 'Firaxis' total lack of any sort of intelligence whatsoever.' The Celts are a perfectly acceptable Civ.

As to Sweden, my concern is not with the Gifting, but with the DoF bonus. It really should be a 9% reduction in cost for GP, because I don't know about anyone else, but in my games I'm buying all of my GP with Faith, and I get _maybe_ 3 before I can start doing that. This would also allow it to apply to GProphets, GGs, and GAds.

 

[iggymnrr]

Kinda weird no one has mentioned Sweden. I don't own G&K, but from reading it, they're UA sounds completely worthless. Why would you trade away a Great Person for a bit of influence? Honestly, their only redeeming feature is their unique units which are pretty good.

Offhand, can GPs be bullied from CSs? Can a person as Sweden donate a GP to a city state for 90 influence and then bully it out of the GP for a loss of 15 influence? Rinse and repeat?

 

[Peacemongerer]

No. You can only seem to bully away workers.