Most annoying civs to play against...

[Kuciwalker]

Wow... bumped after almost six months. That's impressive.

[Mizaq]

lol, if it had anything to do with my feelings outside of the game, I would have been a smart ass and put "Freedom" as the descriptor for France. The fact is, I'm just tired of getting backstabbed by her.

Oh and about the bump, I saw the thread in another thread that linked a bunch of threads, and I replied to the thread thus bumping it to the top of other, less stale threads.

[Master Zen]

Funny, France and India are the two civs with the lowest aggression level in the game. You must be very unlucky

[cumi]

Persians

Oh, the persians. I hate them. I have no, but really no good experiece with that blood-thirsty civ. Whenever they are in my game, I know, I will have to fight those immortals. And there is no chance to prevent this....

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Arrian
It's the Germans and English for me.

The Zulu are somewhat annoying as well, but because I'm often in their cultural grouping (Babylonians), they're not all that hard to keep happy ....
-Arrian

Bismo for constant aggression, and Liz and Cathy as equal backstabbers. I've only just got PTW, but the new lot all seem equally annoying so far.

I've been away from 'poly too long, Arrian. Last time I read your posts you were Japanese experimenting with Chinese - and addicted to Militaristic. What happened?

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Master Zen
And now, the BEST civ to play against is France. They have always been faithfull allies and never backstabbed me. Anyone who has edited them out must probably hate them for RL issues, not Civ issues.

Funny. In my (not as extensive) experience France is always unpredictable. It is one of the few nations that will attack me while still being "polite". Especially if I make the mistake of over expanding near it with insufficient units in the border cities. On the other hand, there are games when France will be my strongest ally.

Persia, while guaranteed to make demands and attack in the early game if I don't cave in, is at least predictable. If I see them, or the Arabs as another example, on my borders, I know that I'm not going to have a peaceful game and have to gear towards building strong units and taking them out.

[MotownDennis]

The thing I hate about the Persians is that they seem to hold a grudge forever. Once you piss them off, they stay pissed. We can be at war for 50 turns, I can conquer or raze 90% of their cities, and still they refuse to sign a treaty.

In my experience, they are the most stubborn civ in the game.

[TheArsenal]

Yep. Persia's a great Civ to play, frustrating to play against. And in PtW the Mongols are the same. Another Civ that you can war against forever but doesn't seem to quite understand when its been whipped.

[Ubergeek]

I'm glad to see that others have problems with those thrice-accursed Persians. I hate those guys! I almost always wind up next to them because of the civs I prefer to play (Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome) and in all the games I've played, there has only been one game where they DIDN'T do a sneak attack for no reason whatsoever when they were Polite (in that game they were my game-long allies against the oddly aggressive Iroquois). It's gotten so that I know that the Persians will send wave after wave of Immortals to harass me, and later will sneak attack me with either cavalry or knights, depending on how long I allow them to live. And once they attack, they stay Furious at me for the rest of the game no matter what I do to try to improve their disposition. I guess the old saying is true: "It is natural to hate those whom we have wronged."

The only civ that even comes close to being as aggravating as Persia is Japan. They always get to Annoyed within five turns of meeting me, even if I trade with them at terms favorable to them and/or give them techs outright without them asking, and they can be counted upon to Ally with any of my enemies and remain At War with me long after the original belligerent has made peace with me. Jerks.

In my games the Zulus always wind up so far behind the tech curve by the Middle Ages that, as long as you can weather the early-game storm by them, they become a non-factor. It's just embarrassing watching them splatter their Impis against my Infantry defending size 15 cities!

I was surprised to read of everyone having problems with the Americans, though. I changed them to Industrious and Commercial way back when, and I haven't had any problems with them since. They seem inclined to be a big, placid blue whale of an empire that gets dismembered by the early Industrial Age by more aggressive neighbors.

On the other hand, I enjoy winding up next to Carthage and France because they seem much more interested in getting along that going to war (although I always seem to have to attack Carthage for some reason or another, but at even so they have never declared War on me).

India is another good neighbor, except for one memorable game where we both had huge empires by the Middle Ages, and they declared War against me for no reason. I had a city on a chokepoint on a hill with walls, barracks and eight pikemen, and over the course of the next forty or so turns they lost over 120 War Elephants trying to take that city. They lost so many I thought the city should have gotten an Ivory resource to represent the tusks that would be scavenged from the battle site for the next thousand years.

[Arrian]

Any of the civs has the potential to be a royal pain, but in my experience, I have had more trouble with the Greeks than any other. They are really tough to kill in the ancient age (and to an extent in the medieval, unless you can just roll right over them before their GA production boost can hurt you) and they know it.

The Americans are ornery. They are industrious, which is a strong trait that requires little to no skill to use (hence, the AI benifits), and they might just grab an early settler from a hut. I remember, back when I was more of a peaceful builder type, being overrun by a horde of American horsemen while my poor, outnumbered Mounted Warriors just couldn't stem the tide.

The Persians can also be a PitA. They too are kinda aggressive, are industrious, and worse, they've got themselves a nasty attack UU. When near Persia, I would advise you to hit them before they hit you.* Immortals are just spearmen on defense.

-Arrian

* - Of course, I would advise that with almost any neighboring civ. Hell, even against the hardcore defender civs (Greece, Carthage) I'd argue for an early harrassment war to hamper them.

[Fatalis2]

- Germany. During my first games, they ALWAYS declared war on me, sooner or later. Now, I prefer to have them on my continent, with an allied decent neighbour between us ! They will declare war on me... my frind will do the job. Or I will first give Bismarck some gold or tech, if he comes too close to my borders... Later, when my empire will be built, I'll have my revenge... If I have a frontier with them, they will be my first target. I don't want that psychotic Bismarck reach the late industrial age, if possible...

- Zulus... If I don't have enough troops in my border cities, I'm quite sure they automotically will declare war on me, even if my empire is twice theirs... Fisrt target too, as soon as my army is ready.

- I find Babylon annoying too... just because it's very hard for me to make their cities flip...

- I don't understand why, but I often have problems to discuss with Lincoln.

- I often use Aztecs as my personal "NATO", during the early game ! I simply buy their alliance as I build my empire. The war with them will often take place at late MA - early IndA.

- Yes, the English put cities anywhere they can, but they're almost time not very strong.

- Best relationships : France, India, Egypt, China and Greece. The "dark side" of these good relationships is that two or three of these civs (Egypt, France and sometimes China) are often well developped...

[Matthijs]

For me it are defenitly Germany, Rome and Zulu's who are most annoying. for some reason they always backstab me whenever they can.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Carthage.

And it's not just the NM... it's that they 75% of the time seem to be on top, seem to have good luck conquering their neighbors, and always send a huge army my way at some point.

Those bastards. I swear that their agression level is 5.

Their well-developed infrastructure, militant ways, and potential for tech supremacy drive me insane.

The Greeks can be a hassle too, but compared to Carthage, they're nothing.

Compared to Carthage, none of the civs compare.

They weren't like this in real life!

[Agathon]

I hate the Aztecs. I hate the Aztecs. I hate the Aztecs.

The worst civs to play against IMHO are the ones who are weakened but still feel compelled to declare war on you even though they don't have a hope of winning. This is a major annoyance. I can understand why a major power would want to fight me but not someone who's been whupped fairly badly early on in the game.

In my last game (Monarch) I shared a continent with the Aztecs who had attacked me in the early game and been beaten back badly. They left me alone for nearly 1800 years and then sprang a surprise nuclear attack on one of my good border cities, which they then razed.

In response to this impertinence I used the huge stockpile of nukes I had intended for the Babylonians and flattened all but 2 of their cities in one turn (must have been about 15 nuclear strikes). Heh heh...

[TheArsenal]

I've changed my mind. My nemesis is now the Mongols.

It's 2034. A hard fought game where I have managed to conquer most of the (large map) continent I occupy so that I have now surpassed the Super Power Ottomans who are alone on the continental mass they completely conquered some hundreds of years back. All is well. I am ready to build up the last bits of culture, science and pollution reducers to cruise easily to my 2050 victory.

Enter the Mongols. War after war I have squeezed the once massive empire of the dangerous Mongols into the center choke point of the twisted figure eight like continent, but on this size map they still had too many cities to comfortably take out all the way without massive general ill will among my people. So I let them live.

Mistake.

Several Mongols troops come sliding into my territory. I ask them to leave. They declared war. Apparently, all this nation has been doing for hundreds of years is building units. 57 showed up on my eastern border. Another 40 or queued up behind them. Mostly infantry. My easy victory is now going to be a massive slug fest that I was hoping to avoid.