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

I ignore the MP gripes at this point... CBP has aimed in its mission statement to create a rewarding single-player experience. There are still active Lekmod and NQmod communities for civ 5 MP.

CPP has maintained an active community for this long by focusing on creating the best SP mod it can; the AI has always been the core of this mod’s ethos.

re: s-tier warmongers, my vote goes to Sweden, France, and Japan as the best civs in human hands.
 
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Is warfare really that good in multiplayer? Players are much better at defending than AI.

I generally dislike going to war with a player in 1v1 until very late, because it ends the game if you win or lose by any real margin.

A bigger 3-5+ player game tho it seems fine.
 
I do find it interesting how everyone has such different lists of civs. You guys are discussing the war civs and what I consider the best war civ isn't even on the list!

Assyria has all of its bonus come on line rather early and they all synergize together. It has a power UU that never obsoletes out. A huge tech bonus early that lets you get military techs quicker and means you don't need to go up the top of the tree early, making the military teches even faster. And then when you do start conquering cities you get a huge science boost. The extra unit EXP also scales through the game meaning you get l4 units later on, starting with +1 range or double attack for bombers is just insane.

Assyria's drawback is that he doesn't have a UU like Songhai or kit like Mongolia that can make war so much easier. It can be harder to wade through units as Assyria in order to start knocking down cities but I do agree that if Assyria gets going he will end up snowballing harder than most warmongers. To me he's higher risk but higher reward. I'd also argue he's more fun to play than the majority of warmongers but from what I understand this list is for strength not fun.

For fun I put Japan and Assyria on a pedestal for warmongers.
 
Assyria's drawback is that he doesn't have a UU like Songhai or kit like Mongolia that can make war so much easier. It can be harder to wade through units as Assyria in order to start knocking down cities but I do agree that if Assyria gets going he will end up snowballing harder than most warmongers. To me he's higher risk but higher reward. I'd also argue he's more fun to play than the majority of warmongers but from what I understand this list is for strength not fun.

For fun I put Japan and Assyria on a pedestal for warmongers.
Agreed. Assyria can knock down cities but the challenge for Assyria is winning the wars to get to the cities.

France is really fun if the city conquering gets going. The production and culture bonus is huge. It's like a golden age without the gold.
 
But to be clear, you think Ethiopia isn't a top tier civ, because you might start next to England?
No, but if I had to decide, Ethiopia or England, I would always pick England, cause their kit is much better and much more flexible than Ethiopias.
Ethiopia really needs to snowball early on, else its kit is definitly underwhelming for the late game, while England can adopt to every situation and its abilities are useful over the whole lenght of the game.
 
I mean getting xbows 10 turns earlier or more makes winning wars a lot easier. Having the tech advantage is like having a UU anyway. Their UU does let you heal effectively in their lands too so it isn't all about hitting cities. You have a bit of extra EXP early game too.
 
Assyria seems to be one of the civs with the strongest difference betwen player-use and AI-use. I have to suspect that their UU is just easier for players to know how to take advantage of.
 
No, but if I had to decide, Ethiopia or England, I would always pick England, cause their kit is much better and much more flexible than Ethiopias.
Ethiopia really needs to snowball early on, else its kit is definitly underwhelming for the late game, while England can adopt to every situation and its abilities are useful over the whole lenght of the game.
I haven't played England since her much deserved nerf. They could both be top tier. Ethiopia isn't bad because England is good. If you think are that similar you are playing one of them wrong.
 
Assyria seems to be one of the civs with the strongest difference betwen player-use and AI-use. I have to suspect that their UU is just easier for players to know how to take advantage of.

Yeah it is powerful but fiddly. Often you use it to scout, move next to the walls, pull it back so it isn't in danger and have it next to your resting units to heal them. With 4 move you can often do quite a few of these in one turn. And the AI certainly isn't going to figure out you can use it to heal your bombers.
 
I haven't played England since her much deserved nerf. They could both be top tier. Ethiopia isn't bad because England is good. If you think are that similar you are playing one of them wrong.

Place initial spy in the first cs you find then move it around along the nearby cs and you get several very early CS allies.
 
deeeefinitely Morocco is overpowered in the newer versions. When Morocco switched from having kasbahs buildable in the tiles immediately surrounding a city to any tile EXCEPT those. every game I've played in both the latest stable and betas that included morocco since then has had them as winner or runner up. Can anyone explain to me why that chmage was made btw?
 
deeeefinitely Morocco is overpowered in the newer versions. When Morocco switched from having kasbahs buildable in the tiles immediately surrounding a city to any tile EXCEPT those. every game I've played in both the latest stable and betas that included morocco since then has had them as winner or runner up. Can anyone explain to me why that chmage was made btw?

It's a bug. Report on Github.
 
That was fixed long ago...
 
AI and Human: Venice is the worst. Once upon a full moon Venice can pull out a decent game in AI hands due to welfare yields.

For the best for human it depends on the kind of game I want play:

Warmonger (King always a win, Emperor 60 % win): Rome, Zulu, Aztec, Sweden, Mongolia, Maya, etc. Really anything with a good early military UU. Game is decided in late Classical on the tactical side: if i'm going to vassalize a neighbour is just a mop up.

Pacifist: (King 40 %, Emperor 20 %). Bonus yields on AIs are really powerful in this kind of game. You start behind, lag behind and every mistake is punished harshly. I pulled a SV with Babylon and some DV with Morocco and Brazil. Progress and Tradition are one difficulty higher for me. From late industrial AIs pile up on human leaving the running dogs win through SV, DV, anything. CV is just too difficult: never got near in my difficulty choice.

AIs consistently in my games do well with Morocco, Songhai, Zulu, China, Rome, Persia, Carthage and some late game bloomers like German and Korea if they survive.
 
Overpowered:
Carthage
Not sure why this civ gets a "free pass" but it's the only civ I will sometimes re-roll due to just steam rolling everyone. This civ has so many things going for them. The biggest is the roadless trade network if you stick to costal cities. (As Carthage you mostly should) The Quinquereme insures that no one else will be making costal cities and is great for forcing heavy tribute. It's bonus to international trade routes though not a big deal on its own, works with the roadless network to help insure you always have a massive gold income. The instant gold on city building though has been reduced to less insane levels just adds more gold to an already gold heavy civ.

Indonesia
Though not overpowered to the degree of Carthage, it's an highly ignored civ. Indonesia has the crazy ability of multiple free unique resources. This means there are no "useless" city locations because you will always have resources to work. You're also guaranteed several monopolies. Their UU the Kriss Swordsman is also crazy good. VP has removed the negative effects, so only the super powerful ones remain. This allows you to attack your neighbors early and make sure they won't be a threat.

Zulu
The recent (and in my opinion, unneeded) changes make the Zulu stupid powerful. They are a total warfare civ, and they do it crazy good. I won't list everything because it's been discussed to death already, but being able to camp out in a defeated but not peaced out civ to farm experience is gamey and overpowered. The Impi are hands down the most powerful unit for their time. They gain the already crazy powers the Zulu have but get a "free" attack on top of it. Their only downside is you gain them somewhat late, though not that late.

Underpowered:
America
This poor forgeten civ.. has nothing really going for it. It's UA, though on paper seems pretty good, in practice quickly becomes "meh". Tile buy out doesn't give that much production compared to tile cost. Considering how tiles just keep costing more as you progress it's really only good to rush an early wonder. After that it becomes a small bonus that you get when you buy out tiles that you would have bought out anyways. Tile buy out also scales horribly with game speed, so on Epic and Marathon your production for gold spent quickly spirals into pointlessness. The +1 sight on combat units is "ok". Their UB is a slightly better version of the original, but because is a NW you can only build one. Tile stealing, again, though on paper seems powerful, in practice I hardly ever use it. They also lack victory focus like other civs do, they are a weak generalist civ. The AI is super horrible playing America and never creeps past a mid power level ranking. Their UU is good, but gained usually too late to make a massive impact.

Austria
I don't play them that often, but when I do I find them underwhelming. When everything happens to line up nice and you don't roll civs that can mess with your city states, they can do well.. but any civ can do well if everything lines up correctly.

Venice
Despite the slow attempt to change Venice from a true one city civ (changes I don't agree with), Venice in the hands of the AI never does well. Humans somewhat better, though the random number gods play a role in this. City state placement and resource placement can make or break Venice.
 
I think Carthage is a very below average civ, at least until progress formally gets its culture buffed.

The AI is super horrible playing America and never creeps past a mid power level ranking. Their UU is good, but gained usually too late to make a massive impact.
The USA was the top AI two games in a row for me this patch.
 
OP:
Zulu
The recent buff was necessary and good, but it went too far. Just adding leaf promotions to the end of buffalo would have been closer to balanced than the current line; the changes to the line itself are far too powerful. In addition, they flatten the civ even more, so it feels like they don't have multiple abilities, they just have 1 big ability spread across multiple components

England
The white tower is busted AF. It's ridiculous this building hasn't been reworked yet. There is no way to bring a building forward 8 tech levels and have it be balanced; it just won't work.

Morocco
I hate to have to put this civ on the list, but it's really Good. Morocco are altogether a 'more complete' package than most civs: They have flexibility, but also enough of a focused edge. It's an A-tier UA and an A-tier UI and a B-tier UU. No huge S-tier standouts, but everything is at least capital "G" Good.
 
I haven't played them in several versions, but Egypt has always felt unbelievably strong as a peacenik civ to me. They're the only civ I've ever won immortal with, and normally I only win like half my emperor games with other civs.

Beeline stonehenge, pick goddess of beauty, build appropriate wonders, get one of the per-spread bonus beliefs (plus whatever*), build hagia Sophia AND borobudur, then spam missionaries and swim in culture and faith for the rest of the game.

It's not a versatile strategy for the first half the game, but you're almost guaranteed to get it all because of their wonder bonus, plus the war chariots, which both help build wonders and offer excellent early game defense.

*For the other beliefs, super strong to go God of war if you want to war or else get a building and the buy-any-GP belief for a standard CV.
 
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