Worst Leader?

[dankok8]

I have to say Saladin.

Starting techs are awful - Mysticism + Wheel.
Madrassa is good for cultural wins, but not great otherwise.
Camel Archers are barely better than regular Knights. Being resourceless is an overvalued quality particularly if a unit comes that late; in 95% of games, you can secure Horses and Iron by the time you reach Guilds. On top of that, Guilds is badly positioned on a tech tree and hard to beeline.
Protective is the worst trait in the game most of the time.
Spiritual has been seriously nerfed with free civic changes during GA's and the Cristo Redentor.

 

[Tephros]

I have to say Saladin.

Starting techs are awful - Mysticism + Wheel.
Madrassa is good for cultural wins, but not great otherwise.
Camel Archers are barely better than regular Knights. Being resourceless is an overvalued quality particularly if a unit comes that late; in 95% of games, you can secure Horses and Iron by the time you reach Guilds. On top of that, Guilds is badly positioned on a tech tree and hard to beeline.
Protective is the worst trait in the game most of the time.
Spiritual has been seriously nerfed with free civic changes during GA's and the Cristo Redentor.

Yeah I'm not a big fan of Saladin, but he somehow seems to do well in most games as the AI.

Camel archers are a mediocre UU, not bad, but not great, IMO. Resourceless matters a little more than usual because knights require 2 resources: iron and horses. On some maps, particulary archipelago, I don't have both. What's better is that they have a base withdrawal of 15%. What's good about that is that horse archers are often going to use flanking 2, but then the surviving flankers aren't very good as knights. 45% withdrawal isn't awesome, but is sometimes a better choice than a trebuchet if your enemy has only 1 or 2 strong defenders in a city (and no pikes or elephants in the city). Regular knight has 30% with flanking 2... which is not generally worth it.

It'd be fun if they had some kind of bonus for deserts. Like extra strength or healing.

 

[azzaman333]

While I'm not a fan of The Wheel/Myst as starting techs, they are better than Fishing/The Wheel (except for coastal starts with floodplains to cottage and seafood to fish), which is what Tokugawa has. The option of building Stonehenge from turn 1 makes the lack of worker techs less crippling.

 

[ventrue]

I keep having the hardest time with Lincoln. I even did better with Monty than Lincoln.

I have tried everything with this guy, but I cannot win with him.

 

[noto2]

Gentlemen...you can't just say, gee, what are the worst traits on their own, who has them, and then declare the worst leader. Analyzing traits on their own isn't worth much. Yes...in a game where you had no UU, no UB, and only 1 trait, you could rank the traits, with ones like financial and phillosophical being top tier, and expansive and protective being lower tier, etc. But the game doesn't work like that. The expansive trait, for example, might do little good in the hands of one leader, but be really powerful in the hands of another.
For example, take Washington of America. He's expansive/charismatic. These two traits are whatever they are on their own, but when combined they form an interesting syngergy. Or take Pacal of the Maya. He's expansive...not the best trait in a vacuum...but then look at his UB a building that gives +2 happy. So his +2 health combined with his UB allows him to build much bigger cities...and he's financial, so that means he can have a significantly better commercial output than you even with the same number of cities. Although if you held up philosophical and expansive and compared them in a vacuum, phi would look better, for pacal the expansive trait is actually really strong. Or take Victoria of England. The imperialistic trait is whatever it is on paper, but for her it really shines. Victoria is also financial, so what you can do with her is use the IMP trait to spam as many cities as possible, and then specialise. Turn some into commerce cities and some into hammer cities and then when you war and get those GGs, you settle them in the hammer cities so that she can build lots of highly promoted units, and her commercial cities are very profitable due to the fin trait.
Someone on here said Cathy was weak, with imperialistic and creative. I comletely disagree. Those two traits have a powerful synergy. Cathy can pump out rapid settlers in the early game and build cities all over the place, and then her creative trait pops the borders of said cities. She can easily grab the best land in the beginning and box you in with very few cities. And that also means she can grab metal and make sure you don't.
So think about all the factors and combine them when analyzing. Look at the two leader traits, the UB and the UU and think about how they work with each other. You'd be surprised at some of the things you will notice

 

[Alrin Kharr]

I keep having the hardest time with Lincoln. I even did better with Monty than Lincoln.

I have tried everything with this guy, but I cannot win with him.

Have you ever tried running a Specialist Economy? Lincoln is a monster when it comes to the SE; everything about him has such strong synergy with it. Like the other Americans,h e has Fishing and Agriculture to get his food resources online quickly, Charismatic to increase the size of his early cities and thus run more specialists, and Philosophical for pumping out the great people. Charismatic is also a powerful military trait, and will remain useful over the course of the entire game. With all of this, American's late UU and UB hardly matter, becoming just icing on a delicious cake.

Try playing a game with Lincoln where you run a SE; I think your opinion of him will improve drastically. Personally, he's among my favorites.

 

[Nials]

Going by traits alone, I consider Charlemagne to be the worst leader. Luckily, he has one of the best UB's in the game and the UU is great too, although Engineering is a bit expensive to unlock early.

 

[Mattzc7]

I'd nominate Stalin and Sitting Bull for worst leaders.

Both have horrible synergy trait wise, and both have triats that arn't really that good individually. Stalin has late UB, Sitting bull has the opposite problem (extremely early could be a good thing, but not for me). Both UU's are nothing special in my opinion, no real game-changers. The cossack has been nerfed, the dog fighter (is that even what it's called?) is just too weak.

I'm also basing my opinion off how well the COMPUTER does with them, which is to say not very well at all (eg bringing up the rear almost all the time).

 

[ventrue]

Have you ever tried running a Specialist Economy? Lincoln is a monster when it comes to the SE; everything about him has such strong synergy with it. Like the other Americans,h e has Fishing and Agriculture to get his food resources online quickly, Charismatic to increase the size of his early cities and thus run more specialists, and Philosophical for pumping out the great people. Charismatic is also a powerful military trait, and will remain useful over the course of the entire game. With all of this, American's late UU and UB hardly matter, becoming just icing on a delicious cake.

Try playing a game with Lincoln where you run a SE; I think your opinion of him will improve drastically. Personally, he's among my favorites.

Thanks for the advice. I think with Lincoln, I have to practice Quality and not quantity. Also, I have to a gold city and at least 4-5 good production cities.

My game yesterday on Prince was pretty frustrating. I started out isolated on an icy tundra. I ended up with 3 good cities, 3 mediocre cities on separate islands and 1 crap city on the ice, because it had iron and copper in the bfc.

I was only able to colonize 2 cities that turned into my vassal, Stalin. Amazingly, I somehow managed to end up In the tech lead at only 90% science. Unfortunately, I was having production problems and missed out on the space elevator and the Dutch only had about 10 more turns for a cultural victory. I could have luacnhed my ship, but not before the Dutch would have won a cultural victory.

So, I sent 2 transports with modern armor to raze their city before it went legendary. Unfortunately, as soon as I unloaded my modern armor, they got robotics and magically upgraded everything ino mechs, so I was screwed and shut the game off after 3 hours of hard work. Nukes were banned at the time.

Anyhow, I think I am doing better with Lincoln and hopefully, I get some better land next game. I think I could have won, if I didn't have such a horrible start. I was in 1st place, but I ended up losing to a cultural victory.

 

[nbcman]

The worst leader courtesy of Ruff_Hi and darrelljs: Dan Quayle

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10776

Traits:

Incompetent -1 -1

Addled -50%

 

[Turquoiside]

I'll say what I did on the Phi/Ind thread. Arabia would be the only civilization where Phi/Ind would make it mild.

Camel Archer is just plain awful. I opened my first Arabia game, glad to finally play as Arabia. Is starting techs I actually liked, made my strategy much easier. In fact, his techs are perfect for it and it worked flawlessly. I build Madrassas everywhere and expanded to about 8 cities. THen, Loius invaded with a warrior, on a small one-tile peninsula that forces to go through Arabia. I beef up defenses and his true, though pathetic, invasion force is crushed. Now I'm mad, and use peace to take full vengenace. A decent army predominately made of Camels came to the borders. He declares, I invade ans since Zara stretched hiself to box Loius off, I soon reached Paris after skipping a heavy city. My army, after taking three cties was decimated, so bad that the AP Dow would not convince one of the most easiet to capitulate vassals to do so. Their only modest point, retreat odds, I don;t even remeber seeing at all. Might be bad luck there, but I never tried playing them again and don't intend to.

The Byzantines are really a beefer version of Arabia. Same start techs, both SPiritual except for Imp instead of Pro, same replacement UU, but the Cataphract is actually good. The Hippodrome is also pretty great, at least in relation to the Madrassa.

Bad Knight UU+ Good for me, but not for most start tech+ Bad UB+ plus a terrible trait combo= Arabia
Great Knight UU+ Good for me, but not for most start tech+ Decent UB+ Decent traits equals= Byzantium

Wow, two mentions of the Dan Qualye mod in a day! On this post's original thread and this one.

 

[Alrin Kharr]

Thanks for the advice. I think with Lincoln, I have to practice Quality and not quantity. Also, I have to a gold city and at least 4-5 good production cities.

My game yesterday on Prince was pretty frustrating. I started out isolated on an icy tundra. I ended up with 3 good cities, 3 mediocre cities on separate islands and 1 crap city on the ice, because it had iron and copper in the bfc.

I was only able to colonize 2 cities that turned into my vassal, Stalin. Amazingly, I somehow managed to end up In the tech lead at only 90% science. Unfortunately, I was having production problems and missed out on the space elevator and the Dutch only had about 10 more turns for a cultural victory. I could have luacnhed my ship, but not before the Dutch would have won a cultural victory.

So, I sent 2 transports with modern armor to raze their city before it went legendary. Unfortunately, as soon as I unloaded my modern armor, they got robotics and magically upgraded everything ino mechs, so I was screwed and shut the game off after 3 hours of hard work. Nukes were banned at the time.

Anyhow, I think I am doing better with Lincoln and hopefully, I get some better land next game. I think I could have won, if I didn't have such a horrible start. I was in 1st place, but I ended up losing to a cultural victory.

I suggest you check out An Advanced Guide to the Specialist Economy for Emperor and Above (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/se_emperor.php). It provides a good primer on building and running specialist-based economies; you certainly don't have to be actually playing Emperor yet to get a lot out of it.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Wow, two mentions of the Dan Qualye mod in a day! On this post's original thread and this one.

There's a Dan Quayle mod?!?

I wonder if the leaderhead looks like me? It's what I keep getting called...

 

[Smartbluma]

Gentlemen...you can't just say, gee, what are the worst traits on their own, who has them, and then declare the worst leader. Analyzing traits on their own isn't worth much. Yes...in a game where you had no UU, no UB, and only 1 trait, you could rank the traits, with ones like financial and phillosophical being top tier, and expansive and protective being lower tier, etc. But the game doesn't work like that. The expansive trait, for example, might do little good in the hands of one leader, but be really powerful in the hands of another.
For example, take Washington of America. He's expansive/charismatic. These two traits are whatever they are on their own, but when combined they form an interesting syngergy. Or take Pacal of the Maya. He's expansive...not the best trait in a vacuum...but then look at his UB a building that gives +2 happy. So his +2 health combined with his UB allows him to build much bigger cities...and he's financial, so that means he can have a significantly better commercial output than you even with the same number of cities. Although if you held up philosophical and expansive and compared them in a vacuum, phi would look better, for pacal the expansive trait is actually really strong. Or take Victoria of England. The imperialistic trait is whatever it is on paper, but for her it really shines. Victoria is also financial, so what you can do with her is use the IMP trait to spam as many cities as possible, and then specialise. Turn some into commerce cities and some into hammer cities and then when you war and get those GGs, you settle them in the hammer cities so that she can build lots of highly promoted units, and her commercial cities are very profitable due to the fin trait.
Someone on here said Cathy was weak, with imperialistic and creative. I comletely disagree. Those two traits have a powerful synergy. Cathy can pump out rapid settlers in the early game and build cities all over the place, and then her creative trait pops the borders of said cities. She can easily grab the best land in the beginning and box you in with very few cities. And that also means she can grab metal and make sure you don't.
So think about all the factors and combine them when analyzing. Look at the two leader traits, the UB and the UU and think about how they work with each other. You'd be surprised at some of the things you will notice

This is probably one of the most important posts in this thread.

 

[Antilogic]

The worst leader courtesy of Ruff_Hi and darrelljs: Dan Quayle

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10776

Traits:

Incompetent -1 -1

Addled -50%

You missed the unique bank, that provides less money than a normal bank!

In terms of modded leaders, Dan Quayle takes the cake as the absolute worst. In terms of normal leaders, Tokugawa gets a bad rap due to his bad AI--when I have played Japan, I have managed to expand greatly in the Middle Ages and onward due to the Samurai and the two warmonger traits. Once you get Gunpowder, you get three free promotions on your Muskets! Three!

I don't care for Saladin: Spiritual is a good trait, Protective is okay at best, but the culture bonus of the Madrassa isn't that overwhelming (see: Creative civs), and the unique unit is just lackluster. I suppose being able to run extra priests is helpful if you found a religion early on, but I tend to focus more on worker techs and I conquer the holy cities. I guess Arabia just doesn't fit my playing style. Besides, if I wanted to run early priests with religion, I would play Egypt.

 

[Alrin Kharr]

I guess Arabia just doesn't fit my playing style. Besides, if I wanted to run early priests with religion, I would play Egypt.

Pretty much hits the nail on the head as to why I think Saladin is an overall poor leader in BTS. He's just one of the very few who, in my opinion, has nothing special about him that gives him a reason to exist. I like Protective more than some people, but I'm a firm believer that it's really only useful when it has some kind of strong synergy with a Unique Unit or Unique Building, or even the leader's other trait. The one thing he really has going for him, his UB's ability to run Priests, Egypt does better, with one of the best overall UUs to boot. Their leaders are even both Spiritual, too.

 

[Turquoiside]

I am also one of the few who actually likes Protective. I love Tokugawa, and just last night I found a love for Charlemagne. As i said earlier, Saladin is just too weak compared to other civs made for the same purpose. Byzantium and Egypt both do better in his areas and have other things to help them along. Though I still can't figure out the A.I. makes him work. The A.I. explains to leader is BAD, but some are better than others.....

 

[Phoenician]

I play with a specialist or hybrid economy (Prince)--so leaders who are philosophical imo are the absolute best--the only exception would be Sitting Bull-he is awful--bad starting tech combo-crap UU except vs. barbs-crap UB and philosophical with protective is a bad combo.

Churchill is awful. I play Elizabeth a lot and compared to her- his traits look like crap.
And charismatic with protective just seems like an awful combination. I also think charismatic trait is a little over-rated.

OK, Saladin in Vanilla was so powerful. Philosophical with spiritual was so powerful and the Camel archer had a higher retreat bonus. Someone said it best, that Saladin is like Justinian-lite. Justinian has everything that Saladin lacks-starts with mysticism-spiritual-has an awesome UU knight and good UB-and spiritual+imperialistic is a better combo than spiritual-protective. Saladin went from being one of the absolute best leaders in vanilla to one of the worst in BTS. Saladin was my favorite leader in vanilla.

Imperialistic is a powerful trait if combined with another good trait. Suleiman (Imp+Philosophical) is so powerful, also Spiritual+Imp (Justinian) is pretty good.

Also, all the Asian leaders seem to me to have awful traits. Tokugawa is the only exception I would say because his UU Samurai is absolutely amazing and so are his gunpowder units-he isn't weak-he can really be a mean-war-machine with someone who is good at economy management in which he lacks.

So overall, worst leaders imo is Sitting Bull, Churchill, Saladin, all the Asian civs except Tokugawa, and maybe Joa.

I haven't played as Burger King-Charlie yet, his trait combination look awful but his UU and UB look really amazing--so I will reserve judgement.

Best leaders are: Elizabeth, Willem Van Oranje, Suleiman, Darius, Egypt, and Lincoln and pretty much any leader who is philosophical except Sitting Bull.

 

[champ82]

I'm taking Saladin over Justinian.

Saladin's UU's main advantage is versitility. Doesn't need horses or iron. If I judged them just on their UU though, I would easily still go with Justinian. Those Cataphrats or whatever do kick serious...

I prefer PRO over IMP.

Madrasa is IMO easily better than Hypodrome.

-Hypodrome
+1 happy
+1 happy from horse
+1 happy per 5% culture
NO SLOTS FOR ARTIST (WORSE THAN STOCK BUILDING)

OK...This makes Justinian LESS versitile. If he can't get horse, he's not special at all. Dye is not hard to trade for usually, it's easier than horse that's for sure.

I never use culture slider for happiness.

Compare Hypodrome to
-Odeon - +2happiness, +3 culture that is cheap and does not cancel out the +3 culture from theater. +2 artist slots.
-Mosoleum (whatever India's is called)- +2 base hapiness to a building I want in a lot of cities anyways. Not a great building, but a nice little two birds with one stone building, like the Ottoman's or the Babylonian's.
-Ball Court - + 3 hapiness and cheap. And it's good with Pacal's EXP traight.

If you have an empire with horse and dye (really not that uncommon, BTW) the hypodrome has merely added one happy face and the happiness for culture slider, which I rarely use, and would only use for a culture victory (even then, sparingly.)

But I saved the best part of hypodrome for last...
I...had a game...where I wanted Civ Jewlers...Everyone was Emanciaption...couldn't run caste system...tough ______ for me. So as Justinian, without caste system, the only city you can run artists in is your Globe Theater City...Yea! Better build that ASAP in your GP farm.
I...would have...prefered...a stock theater. Only UB in the game where I wish I had the regular building over the UB.

-Madrassa
Early building. Earlier than Hypodrome.

A building you want in many cities. Compated to theaters, which I only build on border cities, or if I want Globe Theater, or if I want artist slots, or in big potentially unhappy cities.

Added culture bonus (I never got it, in some of my cities it was +8 culture, and in others it was +2)

Allows you to build 4 specialists! If Saladin was still PHI, he might be over-powered. Could you imagine running 4 specialists (if you had enough food) after writing + PHI!?

Nothing to sneeze at. One of the ways to leverage Temple of Artimitus is to get that great priest soon and bulb a religion (or two, or three) and find the shrines (or two or three). Same deal with Madrassa. OR use those great priests to perminently settle in your shrine / wall st. / corp city. Money and production in my financial capital? Yes, please!

If you got Angor Wat(say...by bulbing pacifism from a 4 priest city)...holy guacomole.

Final analysis

Justinian
SPI - good
IMP - my least favorite
UU - top tier
UB - awful

Saladin
SPI - good
PRO - not great. Goes well with his whole versitility thing though, as neither archers nor gunpowder units need resources. Also, since he's SPI, drafting / whipping / vassalage / theocracy options make it stronger.
UU - OK, it's pretty bad. Versitility is huge though, IMO, and it is a reasonably powerful, versitile unit.
UB - second tier. It has to be leveraged right, though.

Just one man's opinion.

 

[champ82]

I'm sure some leverage him well, but for me, on paper, I'm going to have to say Genghis.

IMP / AGG are my least favorite.

UU and UB totally depend on horse - no versitility at all.
UB goes obselete late game.
UB is good for raiding, but with a SOD in foreign land you need something guarding it anyway, negating it's main benefit (speed).
If your oponent has War Elephants UB is pointless.