Worst Leader

[Blaupanzer]

I call major thread hijack here! How does any of LzPrst's input contribute to the question, "Who is the worst leader?" While play style does matter, the worst seem to be the ones that don't fit your own play style. I never run slavery, so Monty and the Aztecs (a good rock group name, no) are one of the worst for me. The Incas and Mali have a hard time if everyone gets real feisty in Medieval era. And the non-communicating Toku always falls behind in techs. So there.

[Fleme]

Shh, LzPrst's AR's/AAR's are far more interesting than regular discussions

Ps. Charlemagne sucks, no matter how you look at it!

PPS. You should've settled SW of where Aachen is now.

[LzPrst]

Urgh. Those barbs just keep coming. And they're lucky sods too. Lost my Woodsman II warrior against an archer attack. 12.6% chance, and I lost. Then later I lost against a Warrior standing on my Stone when I had a 96.6% chance of winning. Losing 2 out of 5 units like that is just annoying. So I decide to cheat a bit. That's the great thing about protective, unless you're extremely unlucky, which I occasionally am, but not that unlucky, you can use 2-3 archers to fend off your enemies indefinitively. I hole up in Aachen and finish the Great Wall. Hah! Take that barbs!!!



Now I can rex without worrying about those damned barbs!

[Yosho]

The worker bonus is significant in the early game, but the real key to expansionist is the +2 health. It wasn't such a big deal in vanillia civ, but the health bonus is just huge now througout the entire game; even in the modern era, expansionist gives you a economic bonus. It's a nice trait that just generally tends to make your cities a little bigger throughout the entire game. The fact that it gives production bonuses to some key buildings is nice as well.

a lot of you people seem to underestimate Protective. dont. it is arguably the better of the two direct combat traits. for not only does it give your archer (and later gunpowder) units 2 free upgrades (a third with barracks, fourth with vass or theo) = Drill 3. in addition you get cheap walls, can be nice if your neighbour is aggressive. and castles, which then make sense building for the combined economy+culture+defence bonus. do you have any idea how long it takes 2 catapults to hammer down a castle's defence bonus? and here's another little bit of news, those cheap drill promotions not only give you first strikes, they also give you less collateral damage taken. let the enemy break themselves against your impenetrable city walls. you're practically invincible! collateral damage doesnt hurt you, all your archers have city def 1 or more, your cities stay yours. period.

Protective is not nearly as good as agressive. Boosting archers are nice, but for the entire ancient and midieval period from axemen all the way through to knights, archers are not very important units at all; meele and cavelry are far more useful for both offense and defense. Ancient warfare is all about axes and swords, with an occasioanl horse archer thrown in for good measure; archers, even experenced onces, are pretty much just there for your swordsmen to kill. In the medieval, longbow is a decent unit, but real combat in that period is much more about macemen, sometimes elephents, and then eventually knights and pikemen; longbows aren't bad for defense, and crossbows can be a half-decent counter to macemen, but in general you won't use all that many of either of them, and the longbows you are using to hold cities shouldn't see much actual combat unless something goes badly wrong.

Drill isn't that great a promotion either; even on an archer, I'd usually rather have combat 1 then drill 1.

And while there are ocasionally uses for walls, I build walls and especally castles less then any other buildings in the game I can think of, in pretty much any situation; if I've built 2 walls in a game, it's unusual, and I almost never build castles. Wheras agg gives you cheaper barracks, a bulding you want need in most of your cities quite early, a much better bonus. Also, agg really helps your production of millitary units all game long; even if you're a bulder, agg means you get a lot more bang from your buck for the hammers you do put into your millitary units; it's great if you end up doing a rush, and if not it just makes barbarian fighting easier, and whatever wars you get into go better and come to a better conclusion. Protective dosn't really do much of anything; there are situations where it might be useful, but most of the time, unless you're doing an archer rush, agg would be more useful.

[LzPrst]

I'm not saying you should rely 100% on archers. you have to balance your strategy, what I'm saying is that a lot of times, especially against the AI on higher levels, protective is quite useful. a few well upgraded longbowmen can hold out in a walled city for a long time. 4 is enough to kill off a vastly bigger army, even with siege weapons. 2 with city def and 2 with first strike focused promotions. the city def guys will take the siege assaults and the drill archers will suffer less collateral damage and then be able to take on those macemen and elephants. the weak spot is against knights that ignore first strikes , but they come fairly late, I had gunpowder in my last game before Justinian could field his Cataphracts. and while he was obviously spending a most of his energy fielding armies that committed suicide against my walls, I coulld rest up easy, build some reinforcements, some improvements, some wonders and an army to counterattack with.

and as you say, walls and castles are low priority builds. until you realize how much effort is needed to bring them down. castles also give culture, an extra trade route and the spy bonus is nice as well. not to mention that the city is practically untouchable by siege weapons until Cannons show up. a good city near a hostile enemy should certainly have one. it can often mean the difference between having the time needed to reinforce a city and not if an enemy attacks.

I never used to build walls or castles, didn't see the point. then I started fighting a lot, those castles are so "#¤#'ing annoying. Remember that not only do they give a bonus on the defence bonus that needs to be bombarded down, they also reduce the % bombarded. resulting in a castle requiring 3-6 turns minimum of enemy bombarding, as opposed to 1 or 2 without.

I know you can't rely on archers alone. Horse archers are a serious threat to even longbowmen and crossbowmen out in the open. Drill only is also not exceedingly effective. it is the flexibility it allows. your archers and longbowmen and crossbowmen with drill go WITH an attacking force. their drill protects the whole stack from collateral damage. Drill 1 is useless. Drill 2 is nice. Drill 3 is good and having Drill 4 is kickass. A protective civ has Drill 3 on a new unit built in a city with a barracks and a great general (or with theo/vass) a bit more xp and he's drill4.

aggressive gives nothing to cavalry, unless you count the barracks bonus, but every civ builds barracks in its military production cities anyway. against units with immunity to first strikes you need a counter, usually pikemen, but when the industrial era hits, and your drill 3/4 riflemen meet the enemies cavalry, there is NO contest. I did a game as ethiopia yesterday, churned out some 20 Oromo's, gave 2 more drill upgrades and stacked them up. then I got rifling and upgraded the entire stack. along with a few cavalry and cannon, I conquered 2 civs at my tech level (small map) and was only halted cause my 3rd enemy had gotten machine guns in his cities, and I even managed to burn his capital before the remnants of my army was taken out. that's Drill for you.


I guess it's a matter of philosophy. aggressive is clearly better for offensive wars where you are the stronger. but in my experience, that is not always the case. protective is very good for defence and practical in offense. Drill I also gives access to a lot of the same promotions as Combat I, so it is practical in that manner as well.

[LzPrst]

As for my game of Holy Roman Empire, it's progressing nicely. The unholy Romans are to my south somewhere, rogue fishing boat lets me know. I settle without worry of barbarian incursion thanks to my great wall. Get the settler there and I'm good. I feel a bit dirty, but I had to take advantage of the Stone anyway, might go for Pyramids later as well. I put down 2 cities. One is an obvious candidate for Moai Statues, and the other is just gorgeous. But I'm gonna need Iron Working to get rid of all that jungle...



It shocked me to see that I'm 3rd in power in the world. Total. My army consists of 5 archers.... those raging slavering hordes of barbs are really keeping the AI down...

[joncnunn]

EXP/CHA is so powerful a combo an earlier UU or UB would make it too powerful a civ.

Originally posted by Krill
Yeah, EXP/CHA is a *****in' combination. If they had a good UU. I wish they had a decent UU and UB though.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Modo44

So why not share your knowledge? I'm sure "most people" would like to know how you do that. I know I would - I tried some games with fewer AI civs lately, and my REX always stalls because of this problem. Maybe not at 4 cities, but still.

2 reasons; th first one important to me, he second to everyone else. Alot of what I learnt is down to my clan, and I don't want other clans to have that knowledge (due t competition etc. The second is that if I let everyone know how to do it, then CIV will stop being a game to be played, and become a puzzle to be solved. I doubt I managed to get the true feelings across there, but oh well.

[Krill]

Originally posted by joncnunn
EXP/CHA is so powerful a combo an earlier UU or UB would make it too powerful a civ.

The combo is indeed powerful; it was more powerful and still balanced when EXP gave+50% to worker builds. EXP/CHA with e medi/ren UU and UB could be fairly balanced depending on the effects each unit gets.

[Velociryx]

I always play with random leaders, and I find myself cringing any time I have to play Monty or Isabella.

Can't stand either of them, and for different reasons.

Everybody else is cool tho, in my book.

(Tokugawa used to be in that group, but I came to gain an appreciation for the fact that every ancient era unit I built got a little something extra, which was fun, so he got taken off the list).

I always feel a little let down when I draw a civ that starts with Fishing. I HATE civs that start with fishing, cos more often than not, I'm not coastal.

I've said it more than once...Fishing is a fine tech, no doubt about it...I just don't like to START with the tech, cos it's too intimately tied to the land lotto.

Ag? No sweat. Rivers, freshwater lakes, or an oaisis, and I can farm something.

Mining? Again, no sweat...just give me any ol' hill out there.

But fishing? First you have to BE coastal, then, to get any early game play out of it, you've gotta have a seafood special, and of course, in about 70% of my games when I DO start with the tech, those conditions aren't met, which means I'm saddled with a tech that gives me no immediate benefit.

So I cringe.

Give me something I can use NOW, when it will resonate the loudest.

If I have to wait, its impact is blunted. Perhaps not much, but blunted nonetheless.

'least that's my half pence.

-=Vel=-

[Seedle]

Originally posted by LzPrst
Drill 1 is useless. Drill 2 is nice. Drill 3 is good and having Drill 4 is kickass.

QFT

[=DrJambo=]

Is it a bit skewed playing with raging barbs and beelining the GW (with stone in the BFC)?

[LzPrst]

Well, its... I... i'm ashamed I didn't mean to, it was just... so easy, and obvious. and it really benefitted me greatly. and I didn't beeline it. I decided on it when I lost 2 battles where I had a 90% chance of winning. after that it was easy going. btw, do people want further updates or should I cease threadjacking?

as for crappy leaders, my point has kinda vanished. my point was that cheap settlers and strong archers = great staying power. my little GW stunt kinda took the thrust out of my little experiment...

[couerdelion]

For me Tokugawa is difficult but at least there is something you can do with him if you get resources.

Him and Monty are pretty useless for me. And the two Chinese leaders. They seriously had it in for the Chinese with the expansions

[Indalecio]

Originally posted by LzPrst
Well, its... I... i'm ashamed I didn't mean to, it was just... so easy, and obvious. and it really benefitted me greatly. and I didn't beeline it. I decided on it when I lost 2 battles where I had a 90% chance of winning. after that it was easy going. btw, do people want further updates or should I cease threadjacking?

I don't know about anyone else, but I liked reading them. Putting it on a separate thread for those not interested might be better, though.