Bismarck vs. Frederick- Who Best Commands the German Reich?

[monkspider]

The Germans are a somewhat underrated civ, compared to say, the civ in my last poll, China. They are typically maligned for their late UU. And fairly so perhaps, but if you are in a tough game that goes down to the wire that late, the panzers can give you a decisive edge. Surely most players know how to deal with Praetorians or Immortals by now, or at least be famillar with them enough to give them a good fight, but almost anyone will be caught off guard by an industrial age panzer rush.

Also the Germans start off with some pretty good starting techs: hunting and mining. Hunting gives you the ever useful scout to pop a few techs with hopefully, and mining of course leads you directly to the bronze-working, the most strategically key tech of antiquity. These techs can give you the ability really turbo-charge your early game.

That said, I think Bismarck and Frederick are pretty even in terms of popularity. Maybe Frederick gets a slight edge because of his great ability at achieving the cultural win, but not by much.

While both are good leaders, I myself slightly prefer Bismarck even though I'm not a fan of industrious. I find expansive and it's cheap granaries to work well with the jump start your early techs gives you, usually enough of a boost to claim one of the early wonders with ease, perhaps giving you enough of an advantage to hold out long enough till those dreaded panzers arrive on the scene.

[conmcb25]

Banana for teh win!

I personally like Fred better but that is just me.

[OssomTossom]

Maybe I'm not qualified, since I've never played Bismarck. But out of all the leades I have played as (German and non-German), Frederick is my favorite.

[Addled Platypus]

Adolph and the third split !!

[axisworks]

Frederick is my preferred favorite. Bismarck has his place, but most games I've played with him I've ended up getting behind on points and cultural influence.

[JackRudd]

Bismarck. +2 Health in every city is especially nice when one of your cheap improvements is the Forge.

[Qwertqwert]

I've never played eigher, but whenever I play against them, Bismark is a harder opponent.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Frederick all the way. Philo dominates industrious, and creative is about equal with expansive. Bismarck is a bottom tier leader IMO. Probably only Napolean is worse. It is very difficult to win with Bismarck on higher levels.

Frederick is the culture king and stands a good chance on almost any map.

[Martinus]

Frederick, all the way. He is actually one of my favourite leaders to play, together with Lis and Washington.

[couerdelion]

Still working my way through one half of the China comparison where Freddy has not been talking to me ever since I captured Berlin. I’ve rarely played either so haven’t give much thought into how they’d play. Well there’s no time like the present….

Starting techs: Mining is good because you’re on the way to bronze working, bit hunting is a pretty poor starting tech although the starting scout is a compensating factor. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have deer, your big problem is going to be food. With animals around your fast route to writing via animal wifery should be considered.

You have the only unique unit that both sounds like and is pants!!

So to the traits: Phi + Cre or Ind + Exp.

For me Philosophic beats Industrious in almost all circumstances, which is just my way of saying I can’t think of a situation where Industrious would ever be more useful than those great thinkers. I shall be proving the point to myself when I start on Qin because Mao has successfully built a huge number of Wonders in the Pre-Industrial age (Oracle, Pyramids, Great Library, Colossus, Angkor Wat, Notre Dame, Taj Mahal). Alexander beat me to Parthenon by a few turns which I think he might have rushed with a GE. Once you start building wonders with Phi, you’ll get plenty of GP to get even more – a most virtuous circle.

As for Creative versus Expansive, I might also go as far to say that the former is probably almost as useful as the latter in combating early health caps. I would accept that it will not help you as much if you want to settle in the middle of the jungle or have a city surrounded by flood plains but it makes up for this with the initial city boundary expansion which will enable you to quickly grab resources. And here is where Creative then starts to pull ahead of Expansive in my book because it also helps you with the happiness caps which are far more critical than health.

So with Phi better than Ind and Cre better than Exp, it looks like my vote goes convincing to Freddy.

I can also see that Cre and Phi can play off each other quite well. The cultural boost to early cities will enable you to select more optimal city sites to acquire a good combination of resources. One of these should be a specialist city GP farm – complementing the GPs you get from the cities where your wonders are built.

It all sounds so easy

[MikeH]

I normally play with random leaders and either of the Germans are good ones to get. The scout and mining to start with are great boons.

I really like both combinations of traits, I don't mind either!

[dsteve3]

My name is Ternesyav, and I'm a Fredera-holic

....


I'm having a hard time playing other than Frederick. The Phi/Cre combo means lots of real estate and a constant cultural pressure on my neighbors. If it comes to war, I always have a big buffer between my cities and bad guys.

I disable space victory half the time, otherwise it would be the same thing over and over.


But,...

As with every other Civ game, I can't get past Noble. I just never developed the patience to micro-manage. I need a tutorial in how to use workers effectively. I always leave them on auto

[Blaupanzer]

Frederick if I'm playing him. Bismarck is the tougher AI.

[Arrian]

I like Bizzy.

-Arrian

[fani]

Frederick if i have to play the germans...