#1 Person
The Cow
I recall that somewhere I heard there are small differences between civs. In all of my many years of playing civ 2 I always seem to do a little better scientifically as the greeks or romans. How much of an advantege do they get?
What are the advanteges of each civ?
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The Person
Deity +2
There are no civ-specific advantages or disadvantages in Civ2. It's all your imagination. The only difference between the civs is how the AI plays them.
Ace
Emperor
There is a slight advantage of starting position for the white civ. The computer places the civs one at a time according to the order of play, ie. white first and purple last. The first civ placed gets the best starting location, according to the computer's calculations. The last gets the best location still available. This determines the "extra" starting techs you sometimes get. The computer is compensating you for a "not so good" starting position.
As far as the current knowledge of civ2 indicates, The Person is right. If we ever see the source code, things could be different.
Having said that, there are two points to be mindful of:
1. As already mentioned, the AI plays these differently and that will have an impact on your game. For example, if you get a mixture of militaristic and civilized rivals you will have more techs to choose from when it comes to diplomatic trading.
2. Your key civ affects your research cost greatly. If you tend to build a large empire and spend most of the game being Supreme then you definitely will do best as the purple civ. If you play OCC a lot you will be better off as white (in a 7 civ game).
Having said that, there are two points to be mindful of:
1. As already mentioned, the AI plays these differently and that will have an impact on your game. For example, if you get a mixture of militaristic and civilized rivals you will have more techs to choose from when it comes to diplomatic trading.
2. Your key civ affects your research cost greatly. If you tend to build a large empire and spend most of the game being Supreme then you definitely will do best as the purple civ. If you play OCC a lot you will be better off as white (in a 7 civ game).
Perfection
The Great Head.
How does this work?Ali Ardavan said:
Gelion
Retired Captain
What does that mean?Perfection said:
Perfection
The Great Head.
I'm getting why white is better than purple or purple better than white depending on play style
Gelion
Retired Captain
Yeah, me too. What I cannot understand is this:Perfection said:
"Your key civ affects your research cost greatly. If you tend to build a large empire and spend most of the game being Supreme then you definitely will do best as the purple civ. If you play OCC a lot you will be better off as white (in a 7 civ game)"
OK, you need to understand the KeyCiv idea to get what Ali was saying.
In order to try to balance the tech research cost increments, the CivII designers implemented an algorithm that indexes your research costs against the number of techs another civ has. That civ is your KeyCiv, and the way you find out who it is is by comparing your Power Rating (Pathetic-Supreme) to the colors of the other civs: Pathetic is White, Weak is Green, etc on up to Supreme being Purple. Then the game compares the number of techs you have discovered (starting techs don't count) to the number of techs your KeyCiv has and calculates an "offset". If you have 3 or more greater than your KeyCiv your basic research cost will be increased; if you have 3 or more less your research will be decreased. There are several threads over on Apolyton.net where players investigated the phenomena, and I think it was Samson who first realized the KeyCiv link.
The benefit Ali is referring to is that you will be your own KeyCiv if you are the matching color for your Power Rating, so if you are going to build a big civ being Purple will make you your own KeyCiv. Same for White and OCC. But if you are really trying to research fast and you start the game with several free techs, you can tech-gift a different KeyCiv while avoiding useless techs to get a decreased research cost. This is one of the tricks the Early Landing players use to research faster, and one of the reasons Marco Polo is a great Wonder to build as early as possible.
All that aside, there are some small differences to a couple of civs that apply to the human player as well. The French player will tend to have more commodity supply of Wine, and the Chinese player will tend to have more commodity supply of Silk. If you play on the Earth map a lot you will also find that certain locations will favor commodities that tended to come from those areas. There is a long thread on Commodity Supply and Demand that gives formulas for each (check the Link Index that is Topped in General), and if you read them carefully and look at equator vs poles and continent numbers you will see how this works. But those are not very large differences; what Ace and Ali mentioned are the major factors.
The story is quite different for the way the computer plays it's own civs. Mongols will always be bloodthirsty and reckless; Babylonians will always build few cities with lots of improvements and put more effort into research. There is a table in RULES.TXT that specifies the way that the computer will play each of the civs.
In order to try to balance the tech research cost increments, the CivII designers implemented an algorithm that indexes your research costs against the number of techs another civ has. That civ is your KeyCiv, and the way you find out who it is is by comparing your Power Rating (Pathetic-Supreme) to the colors of the other civs: Pathetic is White, Weak is Green, etc on up to Supreme being Purple. Then the game compares the number of techs you have discovered (starting techs don't count) to the number of techs your KeyCiv has and calculates an "offset". If you have 3 or more greater than your KeyCiv your basic research cost will be increased; if you have 3 or more less your research will be decreased. There are several threads over on Apolyton.net where players investigated the phenomena, and I think it was Samson who first realized the KeyCiv link.
The benefit Ali is referring to is that you will be your own KeyCiv if you are the matching color for your Power Rating, so if you are going to build a big civ being Purple will make you your own KeyCiv. Same for White and OCC. But if you are really trying to research fast and you start the game with several free techs, you can tech-gift a different KeyCiv while avoiding useless techs to get a decreased research cost. This is one of the tricks the Early Landing players use to research faster, and one of the reasons Marco Polo is a great Wonder to build as early as possible.
All that aside, there are some small differences to a couple of civs that apply to the human player as well. The French player will tend to have more commodity supply of Wine, and the Chinese player will tend to have more commodity supply of Silk. If you play on the Earth map a lot you will also find that certain locations will favor commodities that tended to come from those areas. There is a long thread on Commodity Supply and Demand that gives formulas for each (check the Link Index that is Topped in General), and if you read them carefully and look at equator vs poles and continent numbers you will see how this works. But those are not very large differences; what Ace and Ali mentioned are the major factors.
The story is quite different for the way the computer plays it's own civs. Mongols will always be bloodthirsty and reckless; Babylonians will always build few cities with lots of improvements and put more effort into research. There is a table in RULES.TXT that specifies the way that the computer will play each of the civs.
Weird_bug
Warlord
Er... What? They tried to balance the what?
Um... Very advanced stuff for the serious player? It's kinda hard to under stand.
Um... Very advanced stuff for the serious player? It's kinda hard to under stand.
Basically, when you're a big civilization, far ahead of the competition in research and researching faster, the game would become dull. Similarly when you're a tiny civilization and you're running behind.
The designers of Civ2 developed a way to counterbalance this by making research go slower when you're ahead and research go faster when you're behind.
But, they do this by comparing you to only one of the other civilizations, based on the power rating. For example, if your rating is supreme, the civilization they compare you to is the purple civ. When you happen to be the purple civ yourself, Civ2 compares you to yourself, so the comparison will find that you are not in fact ahead of yourself (surprise!
) and not penalise your research.
When you are supreme but aren't the purple civ, the best way to avoid the research penalty is to gift the purple civ technologies.
The designers of Civ2 developed a way to counterbalance this by making research go slower when you're ahead and research go faster when you're behind.
But, they do this by comparing you to only one of the other civilizations, based on the power rating. For example, if your rating is supreme, the civilization they compare you to is the purple civ. When you happen to be the purple civ yourself, Civ2 compares you to yourself, so the comparison will find that you are not in fact ahead of yourself (surprise!
) and not penalise your research.When you are supreme but aren't the purple civ, the best way to avoid the research penalty is to gift the purple civ technologies.
ElephantU said:
The French are extremely cowardly. Once they killed all my units, yet failed to capture my city. I sent two horseman (one from a hut) to Paris (their only city) and they gave me all my gold. Then I captured Paris (8, lots of improvements
) which had one phalanx in it. But I notice differences in how civs play...Either because of the affect of key civs or specific differences in game rules. I do think certain civs have advantages. I like trade orientated games with greeks, early conquest with romans, carthaginians or mongols, late conquest/landing games with Americans or Russians. It's probably all in my head though, lol.
It's not in your head, there are three "characteristics" that each AI is assigned in RULES.TXT. They can be Aggressive or Rational, Perfectionist or Expansionist, and Militaristic or Civilized. These characteristics are used in city expansion, improvements built, tech selection, and diplomacy, and we suspect they influence combat decisions as well.
No, I mean when I play them. Like, I feel like I do better at EC with Romans Carthags Mongols, better at LC/EL games with Americans Russians French, better at heavy trade games with Greeks etc..
Some of it is obviously the key civ effect, causing mongols/carthaganians to do better at ICS/EC, but for some reason I do much better on slow democractic games when I'm the Americans, and heavy early trade games with the Greeks, etc...Maybe because of the "Rubber Band" effect of the key civ and Americans/Russians low ranking on it, it makes sense that they are good "Comeback" civs for (a begginer like me) EL and LC games.
Ace
Emperor
AFAIK, only two factors effect the civ you play. First, the computer places civs in their starting locations by color, according to the turn sequence...white first and purple last. The white civ gets the best starting position, according to the computer, and purple gets what is left. This is not very important because the compter bases its choices on food, so its best choice might not be a human player's best choice. Second, If you play as purple, you are your own key civ once you reach supreme. That means you do not have to worry about gifting your "key" civ to avoid any penalties for being ahead in the tech race.
These are the only two known factors that effect the playablity of a civ for the human player that is confirmed. There maybe others that have not be proven, yet. On the other hand, many players feel that they do better as one civ than as others, or do worse as a particular civ, but there is no concrete proof to support this. (yet...)
These are the only two known factors that effect the playablity of a civ for the human player that is confirmed. There maybe others that have not be proven, yet. On the other hand, many players feel that they do better as one civ than as others, or do worse as a particular civ, but there is no concrete proof to support this. (yet...)
I disagree; it could be detrimental. One of the few games I ever lost agianst the AI started with my 2 settlers on the North pole with no land in sight. I eventually found a small 8-tile mostly-forest island off the pole but it took me many turns.
There is a third: the kind of techs you get at the start depends on the characteristics of your civ. If you play a civilized civ you are more likely to get Alphabet or ceremonial burial, if you play a militaristic civ you are more likely to get horsebackriding or warrior code. There is a detailed research article on this somewhere over at Apolyton.
Given that all good players agree your first goal ought to be changing your government (to monarchy or republic) regardless of your strategy you are better off playing as a civilized civ which is more likely to give you prereqs of monarchy and republic as starting techs.
Ace
Emperor
One: I agree, with the reservation that if you play enough games, the law of averages says you will get an absolutely rotten starting position, no matter what civ you play.
Two: Ahh, I forgot about the starting techs. Your right, a civilized civ is better, as long as its purple. Being your own key civ is more important than getting one or two good starting techs in the long run. And the odds favor getting more starting techs if the computer thinks you have a bad starting position. In fact, I have had several games over the years where I started out with 7 techs besides the usual 3. Needless to say, I did not finish most of them. A couple of times, I even had monarchy as a starting tech!
Two: Ahh, I forgot about the starting techs. Your right, a civilized civ is better, as long as its purple. Being your own key civ is more important than getting one or two good starting techs in the long run. And the odds favor getting more starting techs if the computer thinks you have a bad starting position. In fact, I have had several games over the years where I started out with 7 techs besides the usual 3. Needless to say, I did not finish most of them. A couple of times, I even had monarchy as a starting tech!
Ace
Emperor
I know. But I still want purple because of the key civ thingy. The odds of getting CB and/or Alphabet are not good enough (or valuable enough) to forgo the key civ advantage, especially in the mid and late game phases when the human player is way ahead of the AIs in the tech race.
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