Worst 5 leaders and why
- Thread starter futurehermit
- Start date
Worst:
Louis - has the two traits that are most depreciated in the late game, so he isn't even any good at cultural victories. Uninspiring UU. Plus looking at his face makes you want to punch it in.
Genghis - Expansive really doesn't go with aggressive and an early UU, as you tend to grab a lot of health resources anyway. UU also requires research of a tech that's an early game dead end (Horseback riding.)
Victoria - cause it's annoying not to have drawn Elizabeth instead
Roosevelt - same as above, but with Washington
Monte - dishonourable mention here just because the jaguar is so bad
Louis - has the two traits that are most depreciated in the late game, so he isn't even any good at cultural victories. Uninspiring UU. Plus looking at his face makes you want to punch it in.
Genghis - Expansive really doesn't go with aggressive and an early UU, as you tend to grab a lot of health resources anyway. UU also requires research of a tech that's an early game dead end (Horseback riding.)
Victoria - cause it's annoying not to have drawn Elizabeth instead
Roosevelt - same as above, but with Washington
Monte - dishonourable mention here just because the jaguar is so bad
yea but that UU can still pack a punch, in a game I did last night on settler, tiny, great plains with Mansa Musa and the Mongolians (I think it was Kublai Khan though, not Genghis) and a little later in the game I went to war with the mongolians and at first I really struggled, but as I built more advanced units soon, I began to gain the upper hand, and with his Keshik UU, he kept getting one city, Heliopolis and that poor city was captured like 3 or 4 times, but I always took the city back within a turn or two, with me finally keeping the place. even though the war was hard on my citizens, I managed to keep the pressure on them. Even though Mansa Musa did go to war when I asked to, but he kept doing a peace agreement after like 10-20 turns even though they didn't like the Mongolians that much and I had to get them to declare war again. I probably could have done it without his help anyway because since I had put two spies (yes I did it with the worldbuilder, but I couldn't do anything with them) and saw that he had maybe only sent one or two units to attack one city. my point bieng is that he really gave me a hard time with the UU. that and the fact that his capitol city was on a hill and really difficult to capture...
Zhahz
PC Gamer
1. Mao
2. Peter
3. Asoka
4. Genghis
5. Monte
2. Peter
3. Asoka
4. Genghis
5. Monte
Pantastic
King
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- Mar 15, 2006
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- 922
Why is the jaguar bad? Most games I don't bother with many swordsmen, if I have bronze then I'll have mostly axes and add a few swords when I get around to it, so giving them up is no big deal. In one of the games I played with the Aztecs, I had no starting bronze or iron and I took most of 2 civs using jaguars.
I think part of why some people rank certain leaders and units so poorly is that they have one pattern and don't deviate from it a bit. Plus resource restarts, the jaguar is never going to be appealing if you make sure that you always have bronze or iron.
I think part of why some people rank certain leaders and units so poorly is that they have one pattern and don't deviate from it a bit. Plus resource restarts, the jaguar is never going to be appealing if you make sure that you always have bronze or iron.
Smokey McDope
Warlord
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- 134
I'm going with, in no particular order:
Hatshepsut - Though war chariots are handy, the creative/spiritual thing just doesn't suit me (IMO these two traits are the worst) once their window is closed.
Gandhi - Great if you want to build lots of wonders and terrain improvements, but the guy with more units captures said wonders and pillages towns.
Catherine - Too dependant on mature towns and a late game explosion of rush buy cossacks, weak early game which is very important.
Louis - Industrious can be handy, but this combo is crap. Also, musketeers without the free combat 1 are meh.
Isabella - You can do really well with the conquistadores, and expansive isn't too bad, but I really hate the spiritual trait and the pink color.
Off topic, Peter, Napoleon, Alex, and Mao are amongst my favorite leaders.
Hatshepsut - Though war chariots are handy, the creative/spiritual thing just doesn't suit me (IMO these two traits are the worst) once their window is closed.
Gandhi - Great if you want to build lots of wonders and terrain improvements, but the guy with more units captures said wonders and pillages towns.
Catherine - Too dependant on mature towns and a late game explosion of rush buy cossacks, weak early game which is very important.
Louis - Industrious can be handy, but this combo is crap. Also, musketeers without the free combat 1 are meh.
Isabella - You can do really well with the conquistadores, and expansive isn't too bad, but I really hate the spiritual trait and the pink color.
Off topic, Peter, Napoleon, Alex, and Mao are amongst my favorite leaders.
godotnut
Inverted Unicycle
I don't think you can answer this question without specifying what difficulty level you're playing on. For example, the industrial trait can be quite useful on lower levels, but it's pretty useless at the top two levels, because you have almost no chance to build any wonders after the ancient age (without an engineer anyway).
plus the Jaguar is suppoused to work best in Jungle, but jungle is normally chopped, so... go figure.
I also found Huyana Capac annoying/stubborn, especially when trying to convert his cities.
Ghandi fell pretty easily to my culture though and by the time I had him down to one arctic city which wasn't going to convert anyway because it was across a few ocean squares from my culture borders(he only had a few cities because I had colonized my half of the continent and Hatsheput colonized most of the other half) I whacked the last city with marines and he was defending with.... longbowmen lol. I was playing Catherine in that game.
and I also hated that pink culture zone color for Isabella
I also found Huyana Capac annoying/stubborn, especially when trying to convert his cities.
Ghandi fell pretty easily to my culture though and by the time I had him down to one arctic city which wasn't going to convert anyway because it was across a few ocean squares from my culture borders(he only had a few cities because I had colonized my half of the continent and Hatsheput colonized most of the other half) I whacked the last city with marines and he was defending with.... longbowmen lol. I was playing Catherine in that game.
and I also hated that pink culture zone color for Isabella
greatkingbeef
Chieftain
My favorite leader is definetly Washington because its so easy to run a huge empire and still have a large science budget. He also starts off with 2 good techs in Fishing and Agriculture.
As for my least favorite leaders it would have to be anyone with the Spiritual trait. I just don't think it makes enough of a difference to measure up to the other traits.
I don't think Frederick is as bad as everyone seems to think he is though. I haven't played as him yet but he looks good for a cultural victory with the extra culture and increased flow of great artists.
I also like Tokugawa for Conquest or Domination games because its easy to run a large army full of rock hard Samurai.
As for my least favorite leaders it would have to be anyone with the Spiritual trait. I just don't think it makes enough of a difference to measure up to the other traits.
I don't think Frederick is as bad as everyone seems to think he is though. I haven't played as him yet but he looks good for a cultural victory with the extra culture and increased flow of great artists.
I also like Tokugawa for Conquest or Domination games because its easy to run a large army full of rock hard Samurai.
Smokey McDope
Warlord
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Ah, the difficulty ranges from noob to pro. My list was based on multiplayer, sorry.
Cheap question I think.
How can you answer that unless you play only one way.
It fully depends on level difficulty and type of win you are going for.
I mean if im going cultural victory then im going to hate all kinds of civs that I would not if im going for domination victory.
I have not had much luck with Tokugawa.
I think industrious is pretty worthless but then again my some of my highest scoring games are with Gandhi but thats because of fast worker.
I dislike Cyrus simply because Persian was my fav civ in past Civ2 and Civ3, I feel the same about the Japanise.
I guess Louis is pretty lame for anytype of win. Thou I have had game where he was far ahead of other civs.
Alexander because if im going to play domination victory I'd rather go roman or anynumber of other civs first.
Ive always disliked the american civs because America seems to young to me to be a starting Civ. I mean come on might aswell have Australia as a starting civ, Or how about Israel.
Well as much as I dislike the question I still felt compelled to reply.
How can you answer that unless you play only one way.
It fully depends on level difficulty and type of win you are going for.
I mean if im going cultural victory then im going to hate all kinds of civs that I would not if im going for domination victory.
I have not had much luck with Tokugawa.
I think industrious is pretty worthless but then again my some of my highest scoring games are with Gandhi but thats because of fast worker.
I dislike Cyrus simply because Persian was my fav civ in past Civ2 and Civ3, I feel the same about the Japanise.
I guess Louis is pretty lame for anytype of win. Thou I have had game where he was far ahead of other civs.
Alexander because if im going to play domination victory I'd rather go roman or anynumber of other civs first.
Ive always disliked the american civs because America seems to young to me to be a starting Civ. I mean come on might aswell have Australia as a starting civ, Or how about Israel.
Well as much as I dislike the question I still felt compelled to reply.
it depends on what map you play on and what size..but any leader with 100% growth isnt bad..that was my fave to begin with..as for finanial being bad..financial causes trade and trade gives you faster science development..without trade you have no endgame. organized and financial are kind of the same thing in that they reduce costs and thus increase income(trade) but i think in a longer game with 5 cities or more financial pays off better. another thing about fredrick is hes got hunting to start and that means he starts with scouts which means you can clean off the tribal villages...maybe get a few good techs..and make sure your opponent doesnt get em.
For my style of play in the upper difficulty levels, I value Financial and Organized (and Aggressive to a lesser extent) the most. Industrious, Creative, and expansive I value the least. Spirtual and philosphical are in the middle; useful, but it can depend on the style of game I want to play.
Given this value system for traits, in a vaccuum (without starting techs and UUs) my least favorite leaders are (in ascending order of quality):
Cyrus
Bismarck
Isabella
Louis
Peter
Cyrus is up at the top because of the mid-late game impotence of cre/exp. He could be powerful in the beginning when you factor in his UU, but I'm generally very underwhelmed.
Bismarck, I must say, I've never played. If you factored in UU's he'd probably actually be worse than Cyrus in my opinion (the number of games I've taken to tank warfare is very low). His trait combination is a bit better, but industrious is generally not overly useful on the upper difficulties unless paired with aggressive for the cheap forges (I like napoleon).
Isabella has the moderately useful spiritual trait so she can't be all bad. Plus, the conquistador can have uses. She seperates herself from the bottom two a bit because of those two reasons. Still not a leader I'd choose, given the choice, but I have won a game or two with her.
Louis really doesn't have much going for him. His trait combination is very difficult to make effective use of. Actually, though, one of my first emperor level wins was with him. Though, I later found napoleon to be superior in most every way, the cheap forges leading straight into a fairly versatile UU was something I appreciated. Again, though, playing as Louis makes the game a bit more difficult than it otherwise would be in most cases.
Peter is another leader I can only talk about on paper. I may have played as him on noble when I was first learning, but the random number generator hasn't drawn his number in some time for me. Philosophical is a genuinely useful trait and actually has some synergry with expansive (the only trait that really goes well with expansive). Your GP farms are that much easier to create. I also considered Hatshepsut for this spot, but decided my opinion of her is currently tainted by a recent losing effort on an island start (something she's not terribly adept at handling).
And, I know you didn't ask for it, but my top 5 are probably: George, Huayna, Elizabeth, Toku, and Mao.
Given this value system for traits, in a vaccuum (without starting techs and UUs) my least favorite leaders are (in ascending order of quality):
Cyrus
Bismarck
Isabella
Louis
Peter
Cyrus is up at the top because of the mid-late game impotence of cre/exp. He could be powerful in the beginning when you factor in his UU, but I'm generally very underwhelmed.
Bismarck, I must say, I've never played. If you factored in UU's he'd probably actually be worse than Cyrus in my opinion (the number of games I've taken to tank warfare is very low). His trait combination is a bit better, but industrious is generally not overly useful on the upper difficulties unless paired with aggressive for the cheap forges (I like napoleon).
Isabella has the moderately useful spiritual trait so she can't be all bad. Plus, the conquistador can have uses. She seperates herself from the bottom two a bit because of those two reasons. Still not a leader I'd choose, given the choice, but I have won a game or two with her.
Louis really doesn't have much going for him. His trait combination is very difficult to make effective use of. Actually, though, one of my first emperor level wins was with him. Though, I later found napoleon to be superior in most every way, the cheap forges leading straight into a fairly versatile UU was something I appreciated. Again, though, playing as Louis makes the game a bit more difficult than it otherwise would be in most cases.
Peter is another leader I can only talk about on paper. I may have played as him on noble when I was first learning, but the random number generator hasn't drawn his number in some time for me. Philosophical is a genuinely useful trait and actually has some synergry with expansive (the only trait that really goes well with expansive). Your GP farms are that much easier to create. I also considered Hatshepsut for this spot, but decided my opinion of her is currently tainted by a recent losing effort on an island start (something she's not terribly adept at handling).
And, I know you didn't ask for it, but my top 5 are probably: George, Huayna, Elizabeth, Toku, and Mao.
Least fav is the Persians purely because they always end up on a map full of jungle every game grrrr. Although the immortal is a cheap unit to play around with.
Fav would have to be English, Roman. Chinese, Japs, Not tried the Americans but look fun, Germans too cause of traits. (no particular order) I normally look at traits and UU to decide what might be fun or different to play. Although im trying to play each civ once at mo.
Fav would have to be English, Roman. Chinese, Japs, Not tried the Americans but look fun, Germans too cause of traits. (no particular order) I normally look at traits and UU to decide what might be fun or different to play. Although im trying to play each civ once at mo.
I haven´t play with so many civs...but I guess it´s possible to win with all of them...I like financial and spiritual the best...So mansa or elizabeth or quin shui are my favourites...For cultural Gandhi is great...
For modern era archipelago game america is the best...specially washington...
France is not so good, nor atztec...Althought I have never played with them...If i´m right France UU is anyway quite good cause it moves 2 squares...not bad at all for certain kind of war...no need for cavarly?
About Jaguars I can´t say much more than they have never been too good against my swordsmens...
And about Saladin I must say that I have played my best games with him!
Spiritual is great as well as philosophical...With him I have played two games without having any war and gained diplomatic victory
(in monarch level)
I don´t want to say 5 worst leader cause I think it depends on how you play...
For modern era archipelago game america is the best...specially washington...
France is not so good, nor atztec...Althought I have never played with them...If i´m right France UU is anyway quite good cause it moves 2 squares...not bad at all for certain kind of war...no need for cavarly?
About Jaguars I can´t say much more than they have never been too good against my swordsmens...
And about Saladin I must say that I have played my best games with him!
Spiritual is great as well as philosophical...With him I have played two games without having any war and gained diplomatic victory
(in monarch level)I don´t want to say 5 worst leader cause I think it depends on how you play...
well the Romans won't be on my worst list anytime soon, in a game last night one of my opponents was nearby from the start and I took them out (they were the English) since that lone warrior was away and the Incas were the only one, so, I managed to get a huge technological advantage as well as a military one as I churned out alot of Praetorians with a few other units thrown in and meanwhile built up military presence on the border and gullible Huyana gave me his world map and other stuff when I requested it and never took notice of my buildup, and then I attacked when the time was right. he fell easily despite putting up some resistance with his Quechas against my Praetorians as I had numbers on my side.
uncarved block
Prince
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2006
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- 351
I'll have to second Quan Yu and say it all depends on the map-- which makes just about every leader good at sometimes. Isabella is great for a religious strategy . . which can get you wiped out if the map is small enough for your neighbors to build Axemen while you're catching up on the military side. Thanks to the new patch, I was finally able to play Large maps, and unless you really work at it, any civ with an ancient era UU is giving away that advantage (except for Mansa, whose UU is great against Barbarians.)
Now, this is all on Noble; I can see how Industrious gets weaker as you approach Diety-- but again, thats' all about the choices you make before you hit the launch button. The only leader I've only gotten to work once is Tokugawa, because his UU just doesn't jibe with my warring style. Given how popular he is with some Fanatics, I can only conclude that this is a personal deficiency, an inability to best use what I've been handed.
If forced to pick, then, I'd have to say Tokugawa, then the two Mongol leaders (Horses are a dicey proposition, and unlike BW, there's no second chance), and then nobody. A worst three list, then with the big caveats mentioned earlier.
Now, this is all on Noble; I can see how Industrious gets weaker as you approach Diety-- but again, thats' all about the choices you make before you hit the launch button. The only leader I've only gotten to work once is Tokugawa, because his UU just doesn't jibe with my warring style. Given how popular he is with some Fanatics, I can only conclude that this is a personal deficiency, an inability to best use what I've been handed.
If forced to pick, then, I'd have to say Tokugawa, then the two Mongol leaders (Horses are a dicey proposition, and unlike BW, there's no second chance), and then nobody. A worst three list, then with the big caveats mentioned earlier.
BW? you mean Black&White?
and Montezuma isn't a big favorite as an AI as he tends to get REALLY pissed like in a game where I was playing the Greeks and he was annoyed/cautious at me for most of the game, mainly because I was trying to fight him culturally. He declared war when my borders expanded after I won the game anyhow.
and I kind of like the Chinese actually, I've played the Quan Yu guy for china a few times, they tend to have a boost as far as growth.
Huyana is not too bad as an AI, athough he was VERY gullible in one game as the romans... and I crushed him like a bug.
and Montezuma isn't a big favorite as an AI as he tends to get REALLY pissed like in a game where I was playing the Greeks and he was annoyed/cautious at me for most of the game, mainly because I was trying to fight him culturally. He declared war when my borders expanded after I won the game anyhow.
and I kind of like the Chinese actually, I've played the Quan Yu guy for china a few times, they tend to have a boost as far as growth.
Huyana is not too bad as an AI, athough he was VERY gullible in one game as the romans... and I crushed him like a bug.
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