Which Civilisations do you dislike playing against (or have them disabled)?

[Seyren]

I wonder if other players are similar to me in the Civs I usually disable in my games using Advanced Setup.

I don't think these Civs are boring to play, just that they kind of take away the fun in some important parts of the game.

Polynesia: Their ability to traverse Ocean tiles at the get go is probably one of the most uninteresting and annoying mechanic in the game. Let me explain. By the time you get to Pioneers and Ocean Embarkation, one of the great fun moments in Civilisation is exploring uncharted waters and staking out potential places to settle. There's a sense of competition and wonder, and Polynesia robs you (and all Civs) of that. And the Polynesia AI has the same land grab fixation that leads them to settle every inch of land even if resources are not present.

England: A spy from the start means you risk losing most of your treasury until you get to Renaissance and finally are assigned your own spies. But your spies will start low in rank so you will still have to suffer having your treasury emptied and tech stolen all day. Thing is, England punishes you for taking the tech lead and keeping a healthy treasury for emergencies from the very start.

Venice & Austria: The former isn't played well by the AI at all. The latter is more of a personal thing to me. I find her annoying and pretentious in how she floats around in her overblown white dress gown.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Venice, England, Zulus... and ye, i'm starting to hate Polynesia

 

[Voremonger]

I dislike Austria, at least if I don't start next to them.
If I start next to them I try to invade them ASAP for the easy territory gains and because they might try to steal a diplomatic win later on.

 

[Viralvoid]

Venice is my favorite neighbor, since they were unable to found cities, my space for expansion is doubled. Additionally, I can steal the monopoly resource on his supposed to be lands.

I really hate Spain missionary spam against me, and even though she didn't managed to found a religion, spreading on her realm is hard.

Morocco can pillage trade routes, USA tile thief, Mountain ranges is not a defensive location against Inca, Shoshone extra land grab, Carthage's UU can massacre my triremes and her city spam without gold problem.. and other warmongers

 

[Jednooki_John]

Korea. If you are not close enough to squash them early, they always end up 20 techs ahead and even if you want to stop them anyhow, by then you are sending your caravels against their ironclads. You might as well quit already if they are ingame and are discovered later than in reinessance.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Korea. If you are not close enough to squash them early, they always end up 20 techs ahead and even if you want to stop them anyhow, by then you are sending your caravels against their ironclads. You might as well quit already if they are ingame and are discovered later than in reinessance.

That's not the first time I see this claim. However, I've never had a (recent) game where Korea is actually doing well. Shoshones are usually well better at tech runaway than Korea in my games.

 

[randomnub]

I never disable anything, and regret it every time.

Ethiopia: strong early religious spreading (I am lucky if I can establish my own religion) and usually a diplomatic leader webbing the entire continent/pangea into rock solid alliances. By the time I catch up with his early (free) tech lead I have to go fight thru a wall of defensive pacts and mehal sefari. Or, be his best friend for an incredibly boring game.

England: the saving grace of being her neighbour is that I get to try stuff like Authority Arabia and spearmen rushes. She's asking for it.

Venice: if there're no other close opponents I usually restart the game here, it's really too easy to play next to him (I think a fix for Venice AI was coming soon?).

 

[Jednooki_John]

And Russia of course, their special ability always makes them miles ahead technologically very quickly.

 

[Asterix Rage]

America buying my own tiles
England because the prehistoric spy

Now, playing the ones you hate can give you clues on how to defeat them.

 

[chicorbeef]

How does Polynesia rob you from exploring the world if you're not playing them?

Edit: Never mind, I see the point he's making.

 

[FoxOfWar]

I don't disable anything, though there is a handful that make me groan.

Brazil, especially if they're not next door - they will just escape and half the time threaten culture victory before I can do much about it. Maybe less so with this new beta, at least.
England... well, we all know why. That early spy is infuriating.
Austria, Mongolia and Venice: "So much for that Statecraft plan."

As I've played more, I've started to be more okay with early warmonger neighbours - at least with them you know what's going to happen, and can usually prepare early enough, even if it tends to throw any plans of going peaceful Progress out of the window unless you also have an early UU to compensate.

 

[Rafs]

While I don't disable anything,the worst civilizations to play against for me are:
-England: Just terrible, being near her means you'll probably have to suffer through her spying bs unless you take her out, and if you do you'll probably have lost a fair amount of time. Just painful. Also will worsen your relationship with neighbors when she forces you to take her on.
-Mongolia (but only if he's too far): Will go on a conquering spree, and won't stop bullying CS. Any cs that gets taken over is almost impossible to keep liberated in the long run.
-America: Tile theft. If you are his neighbor there can be no peace that's for sure...
-Ethiopia: All around a very strong contender (to me the strongest AI), will advanced techs very fast and will be extremely annoying about his missionary spam on neighbors. Doesn't help that as a player I really don't want to manage buying 1-2 missionaires a turn to convert cities constantly because that's what ethiopia seems to do. Also doesn't help the AI doesn't keep inquisitors in their cities to keep their main religions, so ethiopia is free to spam their religion on civs that haven't founded.
-Shoshone: Very strong early game and the tile grabbing can make them terrible neighbors, not only because they take extra tiles but also limit passage/settling possibilities. They also tend to go for horsemans fast because of their UI. On the flip side, they keep weak defenses (at least in my games), so even with their 15% bonus it seems doable to take their cities because their military is rather low on numbers.

Special mention to venice, because he's just annoying, for the wrong reasons. Can never win anything, will probably be forced to acept that his neighbors can take over his monopolies, and will steal your cs embassies or alliances. Anyone that starts near him already has a good start.

 

[Asterix Rage]

What ever the civs we like or we hate, the worst idea is to disable some of them. The mix between the warmongers (Zulu, ...) the religions (India, ...) The eccentrics (Venise, ...) The thieves (America, ...), the spies and the navigators make the story of each game very unique. New challenge every time, new threats, and very often surprising outcomes. VP is not only a wargame, It's about politics, business, ressources, ...
Diversity and chaotic blend is why Civ is great for decades.

 

[Jarula]

I hate the fact cities are rarely placed where they are in real life on ynaemp.

But aside from that Maya are the worst to play against.

So beyond annoying first civ to reach renaissance is in the Americas.

Actually a cool idea would be a mod mod for ynaemp every civ in Europe dropping minimum city distance to 2 for the continent or a modified civ 4 traits for all European civs a buff like free social policy per era or bonus culture.

 

[Randomsheep]

So we have :

Polynesia, England, Venice, Austria, Zulu, Spain, Morocco, USA, Shoshone, Inca, Carthage, Korea, Ethiopia, Russia, Brazil, Mongolia, India and Maya.

Who is not on the list?

France, Portugal, Poland, Arabia, Assyria, Aztec, Babylonia, Celts, China, Denmark, Holland, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Hun, Indonesia, Iroquois, Japan, Ottoman, Persia, Roman, Siam and Sweden.

 

[Masqurin]

Not suprising that half the disliked Civilizations are the ones with there special ability only really counterable by going to war while overwise influence affecting the players safe space.

 

[Workerspam]

I disable Venice every game; if he ever becomes consistently effective in the AI's hands I may allow him back.

Otherwise the neighbors I hate to see are:

England: I used to disable her too.
Polynesia: I hate that I have no way to effectively block them from settling near me
Mongolia: Early war, gobbling up the CSs I want to ally, and I ALWAYS forget their ranged horseman ignore ZOC until I lose a unit I thought was safe

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I dislike Venice, mostly because they often play poorly and create a hole on the map, giving other nations plenty of space to settle, making it a bit unbalanced, whoever start near them.
Also England. Pretty annoying. Atleast it feels like they are sending their spy always to me, even if I am at the bottom of the technological development.
And India.... its so annoying to start near them, making any effort to create own religion and spread it.

 

[Seyren]

What ever the civs we like or we hate, the worst idea is to disable some of them. The mix between the warmongers (Zulu, ...) the religions (India, ...) The eccentrics (Venise, ...) The thieves (America, ...), the spies and the navigators make the story of each game very unique. New challenge every time, new threats, and very often surprising outcomes. VP is not only a wargame, It's about politics, business, ressources, ...
Diversity and chaotic blend is why Civ is great for decades.

It's a good point, one I keenly felt when I first started with VP.

You might consider each and every Civ as a melting pot of diversity, requiring different strategies to play as or against but I would argue some Civs make the game unfun.

If you take Polynesia as an example, why should a single Civ have the ability to rob every other Civ of the fun of exploration when the Renaissance Era arrives? Part of what makes Civ 5 is staking out uncharted territories in the mid-game and competing to settle in the best isolated corners of the world. Usually in long games, Polynesia would have settled in almost every remote corner of the world by the time the Renaissance comes along. Is their unique ability truly unique? Yes. Is it fun to play against Polynesia? Nope cause they take away what I consider an important part of Civilization games.

Then there's Venice, which the AI is completely incompetent with. I don't see how their presence adds to the game except giving unintended land and and resource advantage to whatever Civ was lucky enough to start near them.

England is probably the one that's debatable. You do have a solution of going to war with her but I much rather that spy mechanics are changed to not almost empty your treasury if you don't have countermeasures in place. The AI is smart enough to plant spies in non-capital cities without your agents, and without a constabulary, a large percentage of the treasury is repeatedly emptied.

 

[andersw]

I found this mod recently after asking here and yes:
England, because of too early wrecking spies have to go.
Venice because either he gives me too much land or he gives an AI too much land.

I've also enabled civ 4 starting fat cross vision, annoyed me a lot since I began playing civ5 that I can't see my initial fat cross, ie increased vision to 3 I think it is.

Other than that, surrounded by warmongers can be rough but doable on my difficulty settings and while rough they are predictable.
Now if I were to go tradition with peaceful culture or science victory I probably need to lower my difficulty setting atleast one step.