What do you think are over/underpowered civs in VP?

[Stalker0]

Ultimately this is another thread where I think we need to swallow some pride and recognize that all of our reports are pretty anecdotal. Its very easy for a player to see Civ X struggle 3 games in a row and come to the conclusion that Civ X is bad. We humans have strong confirmation biases that we are often not even aware of.

I think most of the civilization balance questions should be left to AI simulations at this point. If G does 1000 runs and sees certain civs commonly rising to the top or bottom, than I think we can start talking imbalance (and funny enough even 1000 runs is really only starting to draw conclusions considering the sheer number of variables in a game like civ, realistically you would need 10,000 or more runs to really speak with scientific accuracy).

Now...what I think the player base can do a job good with is, as determine if any Civs are UP/OP in human hands. To that, I think Songhai is a good candidate for review because players can abuse the heck out of his special promotions. I still think china is extremely powerful with human optimization but I may be in the minority on that one.

 

[Cokolwiek]

I don't remember the exact number of techs they had at this point, but when I had checked some turns ago Ethiopia had 20 while Babylon had 10.

It has to do with the timing of the bonuses. Don't worry, he probably just used his free scientist to build academy, his legions of quick scientists are yet to come. And in 150 or 200 turns with all academies through both their flat science and bulb bonuses he has a potential to come back and overshadow others. Faster great people generation becomes significantly stronger every era, it is weak at the begging.

Unlike in vanilla Civ 5, Indonesia in VP doesn't have a start bias!

Is the Wiki updated? Every time I see/play them, they are coastal. I don't reference vanilla, I haven't played in some years.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Ultimately this is another thread where I think we need to swallow some pride and recognize that all of our reports are pretty anecdotal. Its very easy for a player to see Civ X struggle 3 games in a row and come to the conclusion that Civ X is bad. We humans have strong confirmation biases that we are often not even aware of.

I very much agree.

Now...what I think the player base can do a job good with is, as determine if any Civs are UP/OP in human hands.

In my experience a lot of civs have features which can be used to gain a big advantage over the AI in human hands. I guess to a degree we do need to account for large success vs. consistent success, or highly specialised civs vs. strong generalists. I can say that the civs I have a lot of experience with (Shoshone, Byzantium, Iroquois) feel like they are in a good place. For everything else I honestly don't have a large enough sample in recent games to say.

 

[pineappledan]

Purely anecdotally:

• I have seen AI celts do well one time in a game, and they are usually bottom 4 the rest of the time
• I consistently see the AI Huns vault ahead, only to stagnate completely and squander a lead in Renaissance. My pet theory is that they tend to sink their economy with unit and building maintenance, and the pinch in Industrial freezes them completely.
• I see AI Aztec found only about 1/2 the time, often losing to civ’s with no overt religious bonuses like America or Huns, or to modest bonuses like the Mongols.
• The single most dramatic runaway I have ever seen was an Iroquois, who wiped out or vassalized 3 players on their continent by early Industrial.
  
• Shaka is pretty consistently a joke. I have never actually seen him successfully conquer a neighbouring civ. Sometimes he can remain middle of the pack, a credit to his AI flavours that weigh infrastructure more than some other heavy warmongers perhaps, but his bonuses are too modest to be a serious threat to any civ with a home field advantage and tactical parity.
• On at least 4 different games, I have had Russia wiped off the map before I even met them (I play continents). If she is on my continent, she loses but survives. If she starts on the other continent, she is food for someone like Rome or Mongols

my own opinion is that the civs most notably needing to be looked at right now are celts and Spain.

also, I enjoy how 4UC affecting balance became a major talking point here. If you have specific comments for how that mod affects balance, you should share them in the 4UC thread.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Shaka is pretty consistently a joke. I have never actually seen him successfully conquer a neighbouring civ. Sometimes he can remain middle of the pack, a credit to his AI flavours that weigh infrastructure more than some other heavy warmongers perhaps, but his bonuses are too modest to be a serious threat to any civ with a home field advantage and tactical parity.

I would be very intersted to hear from someone who plays the Zulus. So far I've yet to hear anyone talk them up. They do poorly in my games as well.

On at least 4 different games, I have had Russia wiped off the map before I even met them (I play continents). If she is on my continent, she loses but survives. If she starts on the other continent, she is food for someone like Rome or Mongols

Really? Wow! I have to guess we play very different settings.

 

[Stalker0]

Really? Wow! I have to guess we play very different settings.

OR! This is a really great example of the variance I am talking about. One man sees Russia looking like garbage, the other sees them doing well. Neither of wrong, its just the way the variables happen to work out over the course of 10 or so games.

hehe and speaking of random things....hot damn go Venice! I normally see Venice near the bottom but here they are getting it done.

 

[salty mud]

OR! This is a really great example of the variance I am talking about. One man sees Russia looking like garbage, the other sees them doing well. Neither of wrong, its just the way the variables happen to work out over the course of 10 or so games.

hehe and speaking of random things....hot damn go Venice! I normally see Venice near the bottom but here they are getting it done.

Venice were a constant thorn in my side during my last game. They were constantly buying up city states useful to me. Some even got liberated but they managed to get them back. They finished the game with about 7 cities, which for a tall civ isn't bad!

 

[Jednooki_John]

Spain and Siam ALWAYS seem to snowball out of control in any game setup.

 

[Rick Drayson]

Immortal level Mplayer games

-Early game civs have the edge. This is because on the likes of pangea games are usually decided by medieval age. Celts (most powerful early game military civ) , Soshone , russia, siam, indonesia . Because also, civs that give happiness boosts are really helpful for players at immortal.

of course your starting location has a huge impact which can make any civ seem powerful (also why the soshone is so good. You get huge amounts of tiles that can shave off dozens of turns or hundreds of gold before you border expand to good tiles)

 

[JamesNinelives]

OR! This is a really great example of the variance I am talking about. One man sees Russia looking like garbage, the other sees them doing well. Neither of wrong, its just the way the variables happen to work out over the course of 10 or so games.

hehe and speaking of random things....hot damn go Venice! I normally see Venice near the bottom but here they are getting it done.

As if to prove your point, I just played a game where The Aztecs were leading the world and The Songhai captured Germany's capital. They may have had a little help but they went from one of the bottom civs to one of the top civs, and an owner of religion.

That said, in the same game Siam was in close second place... they're a real menace!

 

[eysteinn]

Ive seen Inca and Maya consistently lead the pack in pangea 22 civ 41 CS games. 3rd place is usually Austria or Indonesia but not always. I've noticed that most cives dont go beyond 4 cities so those with special terrain bonuses always vault ahead.

 

[a3kov]

Maya needs a nerf. One of my last abandoned immortal games they obviously had a good start - only 1 warmonger neighbor (America) who couldn't attack them properly. Which resulted in Mayans having 20-30% more policies AND techs than the rest of the world. I was still researching late classical techs when they entered the renaissance. Funny enough 3 players denounced America and nobody realized the runaway. They were on the other side of the world (pangea), isolated from me.
On these forums people tend to say that this huge lead in culture and tech at the same time means the player have already won. So Maya can be handed the victory by the map generator.

Another notorious civ - Arabia. Their UA is so broken its not even funny when AI has a good start with it on immortal. In one of my games I was still in classical and runaway Arabia built 3 medieval WW in 1 turn. Isolated start with desert, rivers, and 1 warmonger neighbor separated by mountains with narrow bottlenecks.

 

[Zanteogo]

Carthage and Indonesia are the two most powerful Civs. Almost to the point I re-roll to a different civ when I get them randomly.

 

[perfidiousONE982]

Because the correct destiny of Austria is the Anschluss.

In my recent games also Sweden, France and Assyria tend to be the sore losers. As many of you pointed out, the AI is very weak at managing militaristic civs.

Spain in the hands of a militaristic player with a well-rounded religion and a decent starting position...was only ever annoyed by the means of the World Congress sanctioning and decolonizing me but they couldn't still win because the AI can't compete with a steam roll.

Carthage and China were strong enough together to have a shot at opposing me. But sometimes AI tends to just kill themselves if cornered. America declared on me for expansion and also I was a warmonger, but I was too strong for them and rolled them. Same with India who attacked me and I wiped them out in their petty war of reconquest.

It was Chieftain, I am working my way up the levels. But a lot of a civilization's success is where they are. Inca are always a strong power or a middling power because of their starting bias. India due to being unable to spread their own religion is very weak as an example of countering that.

Arabia can get Petra if makes a move for it. Carthage being married to the sea makes it quite strong since it can get good yields.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

After playing against them again currently, I have to submit Polynesia as a strong "Jack-of-all-trades" candidate that seems to always do well. Also, as many have already mentioned, Siam is usually at or near the top of my leaderboard while involved.

 

[Cokolwiek]

It was Chieftain, I am working my way up the levels.

C'mon. Spare yourself time wasted on trying new levels or another assured conquest and start a new game on emperor. You will learn much quicker and this is the difficulty around the VP is balanced (according to the legend at least). If you already know many of the games mechanism and synergies there's no point in trying anything else. If you'll find it too tough, just go down to king, which is middle-level casual difficulty.

 

[CrazyG]

My ranking of a few civs (not all 43 included). This is for settings of deity, continents, standard size and speed, ancient ruins and vassalage disabled

Spoiler Top Choices :

Babylon:
The best defensive civ in my opinion, because he has the muscle to actually win the game against snowballing AI. Gold is really plentiful this patch with CS tribute and AI trade deals and Babylon makes the best use of it. I find religion very achievable as Babylon, the faster investment on shrines is a big deal.

Ethiopia:
Amazing early game with a guaranteed religion. Free techs are valuable to any strategy. My favorite is using your pantheon free tech to get military theory and pump out early horsemen as authority. What makes him truly great is his strong late game, those free techs are a huge deal for securing wonders or rushing with landships.

Polynesia:
Moai are very strong and available early. A strong start for early culture with lots of late game power too. Obviously weaker on pangea type maps though.

Siam:
Stupid OP in AI hands. As a human he is probably the best civ to try and snowball as tradition with. Play him before faith CS get nerfed.

Spoiler Civs I'd put in the bottom half :

Indonesia:
the UU isn't great and the UB is nothing special. You aren't strong enough to win by pure economy but you aren't very good at war either. Not much to help religion. I don't see the AI doing well either.

Inca:
I guess Pachacuti is OP with enough mountains, but you usually don't see that many.
Slingers aren't very good.
Terrace farms aren't very good.
Really the only thing he is good at is war. The hill movement bonus is absolutely amazing, but I think other warmongers are still better while also being more flexible.

 

[DeAnno]

Inca:
I guess Pachacuti is OP with enough mountains, but you usually don't see that many.
Slingers aren't very good.
Terrace farms aren't very good.
Really the only thing he is good at is war. The hill movement bonus is absolutely amazing, but I think other warmongers are still better while also being more flexible.

The main issue is Slingers used to be amazing and were the core of Inca's consistency. When they lost Logistics and became a mostly normal UU, suddenly Inca's identity was reduced to their Mountain gimmick. Logistics on archers was broken and deserved to be cut, but at the same time Inca also deserved compensation for what happened and they never got any. For this reason I think they're more deserving of a buff than a lot of other civs.

Spitball idea: +1 Gold to Terrace Farms. Gives them more early oomph and a bit of a GA identity, they need an economic focus that isn't just pure gimmicks. Plays into the stories of amassed Inca gold.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Maya needs a nerf. One of my last abandoned immortal games they obviously had a good start - only 1 warmonger neighbor (America) who couldn't attack them properly. Which resulted in Mayans having 20-30% more policies AND techs than the rest of the world. I was still researching late classical techs when they entered the renaissance. Funny enough 3 players denounced America and nobody realized the runaway. They were on the other side of the world (pangea), isolated from me.
On these forums people tend to say that this huge lead in culture and tech at the same time means the player have already won. So Maya can be handed the victory by the map generator.

Another notorious civ - Arabia. Their UA is so broken its not even funny when AI has a good start with it on immortal. In one of my games I was still in classical and runaway Arabia built 3 medieval WW in 1 turn. Isolated start with desert, rivers, and 1 warmonger neighbor separated by mountains with narrow bottlenecks.

I agree with the Maya, but not with Arabia. Arabia has pretty much one play that it's strongest with. The Maya can do well tall but also benefit from wide because of their exceptional UI.

C'mon. Spare yourself time wasted on trying new levels or another assured conquest and start a new game on emperor. You will learn much quicker and this is the difficulty around the VP is balanced (according to the legend at least). If you already know many of the games mechanism and synergies there's no point in trying anything else. If you'll find it too tough, just go down to king, which is middle-level casual difficulty.

People have different goals while playing though. I've always disliked people pushing others to do things the same way they do. From my perspective, jumping straight to Emperor seems very counter-intuitive. Why not just do things one step at a time? That way you can tell the difference between things that are genuinely more diffucult over multiple games and things that are just bad luck.

It also works much better for people with low self-efficacy like me. Sometimes you need to build up your confidence doing things you are familiar with before you try things that are very challenging. Otherwise you may end up getting depressed by failing over and over again, and find it difficult to play at all (because you think you're not good enough). That doesn't make my way of doing things objectively the right one of course! Simply that there are multiple valid approaches .

 

[azum4roll]

I think the Inca's high religious spread flavour (they spread quite aggressively in my games) might've hurt the AI a bit, since they don't get any faith bonus to be competitive at that. There also needs to be adjacency bonus on Terrace Farms, with or without interacting with normal farms.