Why do they suck

[mortalmadman]

Why do some civs suck everytime. Is there unbalences? If so, who's the best? It seems like iqulis (I wasen't even close to spelling that ) are always good, celtics always suck, spain was good a few times but besides that...

Wanna make a list?

1.Any civ I play
2.All others

 

[Mescalhead]

Do you mean when the A.I. controls them? If so then:

In my games the Celts usually do pretty well.

The Romans always do horribly, as well as the Hittites. I haven't seen many games where the Aztecs, Carthaginians, Mongols, or English do well either.

The one's who always contend well are the Sumerians, Mayans, Indians, Zulu, Chinese, and the Iroquois.

 

[mortalmadman]

Do you mean when the A.I. controls them? If so then:

In my games the Celts usually do pretty well.

The Romans always do horribly, as well as the Hittites. I haven't seen many games where the Aztecs, Carthaginians, Mongols, or English do well either.

The one's who always contend well are the Sumerians, Mayans, Indians, Zulu, Chinese, and the Iroquois.

Celtics do well

Sumerians, My fav. civ to play with. I made the right chose.

Indians, zula, and Iroquois always seem to be superpowers in the end.

 

[bingen]

Depends on the version. Celts are much better in C3C with agricultural instead of militaristic and reduced cost of their UU.

In my experience the AIs civs that do well are those with the better traits(obviously), pre-C3C industrious for example or agricultural. And those with dominant early UUs. Later UUs do not help as much even if they are powerful like the Siphahi or even the Rider.

 

[Crimso]

The most glaring one I can think of now is of course Rome. Anyone with expertise in AI and whatnot care to explain why?

 

[Vegasgustan]

That is interesting, in my Mac Version Rome does well. France is the one who is always last. Always. India rocks too.

 

[morchuflex]

You ***may*** want to mention what game settings you most commonly use!
Militaristic and expansionist civs need vast territories to expand. They suck on archipelago maps. Conversely, play on archipelago maps and you'll see Carthage or Byzantines fare much better...
Celts have the best iron-based UU; if they have iron, they can absorb all their neighbors pretty early and then outweight anyone else. But if they're alone on a small piece of land, or lack iron, they'll fail miserably.
And so on.
So, you see, many civs depend a lot on game settings (and random luck to some extend).

 

[Immortal]

Why do some civs suck everytime. Is there unbalences? If so, who's the best? It seems like iqulis (I wasen't even close to spelling that ) are always good, celtics always suck, spain was good a few times but besides that...

Wanna make a list?

1.Any civ I play
2.All others

Was that esquilax or something?

Iroquois maybe?

ANyway, the ROmans are constantly plagued with Middle-Child syndrome: Utterly failing at everything they do.

Same with the English, and ironically, I have never had a game where the Egyptians have done anything other than wasting space.

 

[charlesolmsted]

Even in my custom maps where I try to stack the odds in favor of certain civs by favorable resource placement the Egyptians and Arabs stink. I set up a scenario where the Persians, Egyptians and Arabs were fighting the Babylonians, Hittites and Sumerians. The Persians, Egyptians and Arabs each started with more cities, more gold and more units, but only the Persians were able to do much damage. The Egyptians always manage to capture 1 or two Hittite cities in the first four rounds, but then basically hibernate for eternity. The Arabs really stink, they have no offensive power for ages. Even if I give the Arabs armies they just sit them in their capital. The Persians, on the other hand, always seem to get a couple of armies and just walk through all opposition.

The Indians always do really well under just about any circumstances and the Byzantines do surprisingly well if there is enough water around. I hate fighting the Byzantine navy early on.

 

[Mescalhead]

You ***may*** want to mention what game settings you most commonly use!
Militaristic and expansionist civs need vast territories to expand. They suck on archipelago maps. Conversely, play on archipelago maps and you'll see Carthage or Byzantines fare much better...
Celts have the best iron-based UU; if they have iron, they can absorb all their neighbors pretty early and then outweight anyone else. But if they're alone on a small piece of land, or lack iron, they'll fail miserably.
And so on.
So, you see, many civs depend a lot on game settings (and random luck to some extend).

I play large Pangaea, and I play with a version I revised myself giving the Romans Militaristic/Industrious instead of Militaristic/Commercial. With the new industrious trait they fare just a little better than they did with the default setting--which is horrible. I play Conquests of course.

 

[Tomoyo]

It also has a lot to do with their build list. Each civ has their own priority. For example, Persia builds a lot of "production" = factories = why they are the industrial age monster!

 

[The Last Conformist]

Before C3C, Industrial AIs tended to do best, probably since the extra worker speed negates their poor worker utilization. In C3C, Industrial was degraded and Agr introduced; I'd say Agr AI's do best now, followed by Ind ones.

The AI does not seem to use Com well, despite it's power in human hands.

For some reason, the Maya suck in my games. No idea why.

 

[tR1cKy]

It's quite odd that Rome suck so horribly. Cheap barracks and harbors, more gold from cities, less corruption, more leaders, an UU that is a swordman in offense and a hoplite in defense... this is a great advantage, it allows you to build invasion forces made only by legionaries. You must not be an expert strategist to figure out that an army of 10 legions is far better than having 5 swords and 5 hoplites, since every one of the 10 legions may act as defender or offender with equal efficiency. Also, even against a "monstre" unit as the immortal you can successfully perform a preemptive attack (their defense is only 2), but against legions this advantage is negated.
Anyway, this exactly what it happens. I perform very well with Rome, i'm winning my first deity game (on vanilla), but when i play with other civs, Rome always fails miserably.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Am I the only one for whom AI Mayans seem to consistently suck? I can't for my life figure out why, since their traits are generally good for AIs, and their UU isn't bad.

 

[budweiser]

In a way, its almost like certain civs are better off in human hands while others are meant to be the competition. Rome and England, Egypt (maybe), and Germany (maybe) were powerhouse civs in history, yet they perform badly when handled by the ai. So why not play them yourself. I love playing as England.

Now for your opponents, pick the ones that the ai plays well and you have a bigger challenge. India, Iroquois, Zulus, Celts were mentioned as good ai teams, so pick them as your opponent. Thats a pretty good starting list if you want to play as Imperial England for example.

 

[IbnSina]

It seems odd that everyone seems to think Rome is so bad in the hands of the AI. I don't have that experience. Indeed, two games ago, I took over my continent and Rome took over hers, and it came down to an apocalyptic battle of titans (Eternal Rome versus Invicible Spain!) for control of the world... My experience with Rome is that they either stink up the joint, or dominate the world. They can't make a merely powerful empire - they want it all, or nothing.

I think success, or lack thereof, may have more to do with the aggressiveness of the civ and start positions. Aggressive civs always get into wars early. In that case, a couple of rolls of the dice can mean that they lose badly and are stunted for life. On the other hand, if they are on our continent, their aggressiveness means they run afoul of the human player, and are made into a rogue state. That's what happened to the Zulus in my last game: they expanded quickly and moved into first place. They then declared war on the second-place civ (mine), playing right into my hands. Fifty turns later, they were gone, without my ever seeing an impi. Thus, I think that civs that are only moderately aggressive and that have good traits (e.g. agricultural or industrious) will do well consistently, while civs that are very aggressive do well if they get lucky with their starts, neighboring civs, and the RNG; and do poorly otherwise.

 

[Babbler]

I am not sure... now that I think about it, Rome is almost always small and undevloped, maybe America as well... both games where I have meet them, the Mongols are in bad shape too... India does not fare well...

 

[dgfred]

Am I the only one for whom AI Mayans seem to consistently suck? I can't for my life figure out why, since their traits are generally good for AIs, and their UU isn't bad.

If you can stop their quick expansion in the early years, they will be stunted
for the game . I've caught them in a corner early in the last few
games vs them , and they were really no factor in the games. They are
very aggressive too and sometimes that hurts them early, especially vs humans.

 

[btaft]

I have seen a variety of success on the AI's part through several different games. The appearance of one civ doing better than another may be tied more to the starting position then necessarily the Civ itself. The starting positions are certainly not all created equal and can have an early impact that is difficult to recover from (I would much rather start along a river amoungst grass lands than on the only spot of green within a large jungle).

 

[citizen001]

Doesn't it depend on which civs they are up against?