Fundamental Decision

[KenderBane]

To state the obvious, the most fundamental decision in Civ is to decide which tribe to play. (Assuming you are playing with Civ traits, UUs, and varied aggression levels; if not, then they are all basically the same).

Given a random world, which tribe would you play ?

Random world means, random size, age, humidity, Pangea-Cont-Archipelago status, Percent land, barbarian level. Even number of other civs (anywhere from 1 to 30 Computer AIs.

I.E. EVERY aspect of the world is selected randomly except for difficulty which I will set at Regent.

Why would you choose them ?

[Arnelos]

Carthage.

Industrious rocks. Numidian Mercenaries rock. Seafaring will let you explore more freely early in the game and use the significant advantage an early curragh will give you over your opponents.

Best of all, starting as Carthage with their Numidian Mercenary UU will give you a hedge against a no-iron, no-horse starting location. Even without either horses or iron, you can build a pretty good early stack of doom of numidian mercenaries and catapults fully capable of taking down an iron-armed or horse-armed opponent.

The industrious trait is also absolutely wonderful in the early game to get you off the ground and for both early game efficiency and mid game production boosts (those extra shields may not seem like much, but they can come in handy). Even with C3C's less effective industrious workers, that boost to productivity compared to non-industrious civs is still very very powerful.

The ONLY minus to Carthage is the lack of the overpowered Agricultural trait. The problem is that, excepting the overpowered Mayans, you won't find such a good combination of great traits and a good UU hedging your bets against a resource-poor start among the Agr civs. Sure, if you play the Iroquois or the Celts and get lucky to have iron or horses, you're in a pretty sweet position. The problem is that, especially with C3C resource distribution, your chances of easily obtaining these is far from certain.

In the end, the only safer bet than Carthage in the early game are the Mayans, who are unquestionably the most powerful civ in the game - period. The problem with the Mayans is that between their UU and their traits, they're just incredibly overpowered. I just don't enjoy playing them all that much.

[Chilean Presidentâ„¢]

Arabia (hmm.. Germany could also be my choice.. but no, I keep Arabia).

Why? well they are religious and expansionist so I have two good things, short anarchy time and a scout at the begining of the game to start looking for some other civs and goodie hutts. That's very important at the begining cause I'll be able to reach the top of the science race if I do good tech-deals with the other civs.

I'm a builder so I'll wait until I have my UU (I forgot the name, but it's a cavalry unit) that it's very fast and allows me to do some blitzkrieg (sp?) wars against my neightbors to iniciate my warmongering expansion

But that's just me



Edit: a lot of typos

[Solomwi]

Ansar Warrior, and I do believe it's a knight unit.

[Chilean Presidentâ„¢]

Yes, you're totally right my bad. anyway, it's in fact a wonderful unit.

[bongo]

BAH! Random!!

If you got random everything else, why not tribe as well?

In PTW, Carthage was THE tribe I haven't played enough c3c games to have an opinion yet...



Oh, remember that in any game you gotta play the traits. No point being militaristic if you're peaceful, or seafaring if you don't build boats(the list goes on..)

[xiaodave]

When I play Civ, I set the map size, set the computer opponents to the max for the map Im playing and set everything else including my own tribe to random.

Random tribes just adds to the fun of a random game.

[Vince278]

Usually go Persian. Love those Scientific/Industrious traits.

[gunkulator]

Celts are a favorite of mine. Religious and Agricultural with the best ancient era UU. If you can generate a two food surplus - easy with agr - you can pop rush a temple within 10 turns of founding a city.

Their only drawback is you must find iron. However, unlike most other resources, you can beeline to Iron Working and often still find unclaimed iron somewhere on the map.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Vince278
Usually go Persian. Love those Scientific/Industrious traits.

Yub yub.

[Arnelos]

I've always hated the stupid Persians for the same reason I now hate the Mayans for this game... in stock Civ3, the Persians were just incredibly overpowered.

[bigchief]

For me, it depends on which version I am playing. If I am playing Vanilla Civ, I like China. If it's PTW, I like the Ottomans, and if its C3C, I like Sumeria. I choose mainly because of the traits, but take the UU heavily into consideration. Industrious, Scientific, Militaristic, and now Agricultural fit my style of play. It was always Industrious and something else until the trait was somewhat nerfed in C3C. I know most people like the Myans better in C3C, but I think Agricultural and Scientific is pretty hard to beat.

[Arrian]

I'd probably try and pick traits whose value isn't heavily dependent on the map (overall) and the local geography.

Commercial is one.
Religious is another.

That yields India. Solid civ, solid UU (that bonus HP is very nice).

Seafaring is good/great on anything that isn't a pangea (and even then it's not a total waste). That yields Spain (Rel/Sea) and England (Com/Sea).

Or you could gamble and go with Agricultural, which can be extremely powerful, or downright so-so, depending on how many cities you can get in on fresh water sources. There are several powerful Agricultural civs: Iroquois, Dutch, Sumeria, Celts.

-Arrian

[Last Conformist]

I play the almighty Random civ.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Arrian
Or you could gamble and go with Agricultural, which can be extremely powerful, or downright so-so, depending on how many cities you can get in on fresh water sources.

ALL agricultural cities benefit from the +1 food bonus once you switch out of Despotism. Granted, that means having no fresh water cities in the early game means the trait will be largely useless during that period, but once you switch into Republic, Monarchy, or Feudalism, you'll be in excellent shape... +1 food in every single city and half price aqueducts to boot.

Frankly, agricultural is incredibly overpowered.