The French as commercial and industrious is absolutely ridiculous.
If we look at the sweep of French history, the most glorious moments have always been under some sort of despot, e.g. Louis the XIV and Napoleon. These rulers by no means governed over societies that were commercial and industrious, they were militaristic and expansionist. If we look at modern France, they are a far cry from an industrious and commercial nation. At least a quarter (25%) if not more of the population is employed by the government. Hell the workers even have protests to reduce their 37 hour work weeks to 35! I don't know about you, but I don't drive a Renault or Puegeot (sp?). I'm not particularly impressed by French engineering. About the only French things I buy are wine and cheese. Its the Americans who were robbed here. They should have been commercial and industrious. What do you think? Also, I think that the Germans should have had the industrious characteristic. I think Firaxis needed to assign the commercial-industrious combo to some civ and they didn't put any thought into the eventual choice.
As to which civs to play, it depends on your strategy. I'm not a military person in civ and I always play a stategy which focuses on intense science development (i.e. aiming for the Automobile without cheating on emperor in the original civ before AD). My choices will therefore heavily revolve around benefits to science and commerce. Commrcial is more important than scientific to me. Science is derived from commerce, therefore having more commerce will increase science production. As it stands the scientific ability does not actually increase the rate of science production. It only reduces the cost of "science" improvements and grants a free tech for each new age. With this in mind my top three choices are:
1. Greeks
1. English (not a mistake, a tie with Greeks)
3. Babylonians
Greeks are scientific and commercial: no explanation.
English are commercial and expansionist. The ability to explore early cannot be underestimated for the optimal placement of cities and location of opponents. Additionally, the benefit of more positive barbarian huts could prove very useful. Have to wait and see on how beneficial expansionist will prove.
Babylonians are scientific and religious. I'm intrigued by the new culture system developed in civ3. As i'm not a militarist, being able to influence other civs simply by developing poweful cities is very appealing. Given that scientific and religious buildings are key to the accumulation of culture, no other civ seems better poised to take advantage of this new feature.
What are your top 3 choices for civs?
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