Which civ type is best?

[General Ludd]

I voted for scientific, though it's hard to say with out playing the game, and espeically with out knowing how easy different resources will be to come by and what not, and also how the different goverments affect you.

I think they are all pretty well rounded and balanced, though.

And as mentioned earlier, don't mistake 'workers work faster' for 'faster production' they are deffinately refering to the worker unit. an increase in overall production would be an insanely huge advantage.

[Dauphin]

The long term beneficial effects will probably be the ones to go for.

As an observation; Expansionists will have a good start but then fade away as the benefits are very short term. Religous, militaristic and scientific regimes require active use and will only benefit those who apply their advantage to the max. IMO Commercial and Industrious are the best (especially for the uninitiated) as they will be giving benefit 100% of the time with no thought required.

[General Ludd]

As an observation; Expansionists will have a good start but then fade away as the benefits are very short term.

But the early advantage they get will influence the rest of the game, any experienced player will tell you that the early turns are more often then not the most important for deciding which countries become the most powerful, expansionists will potentialy have a much larger empire then others and much quicker, resulting in more trade, luxuries, resources, people, technology and probably everything else.

Also, don't forget that settlers reduce the population of a city by 2 now(correct me if I'm wrong), which makes this advantage that much better.

[Sun Zi 36]

The only info about the attributes I have is the table from the civ3 site (they have listed the 2 effects for each attribute there). I would think industrious and scientific is the best, which is the Chinese, also the civilization I use most often in civ2.

I think all the reduce improvement costs effects (military, scientific and religious) are moderately useful. Depends how much is reduced or are there much more improvements of the particular type than in civ2.

More likely battlefield promotions (military) are not that useful bcos u can build barracks pretty cheaply unless they change this in civ3 or unless they mean likely by like 3 times normal.

I don't think lower corruption (commercial) is useful either if in civ3 they keep it pretty fast to get Monarchy or Republic which then doesn't take a long time until u get communsim as well. This drags down the commercial attribute bcos more commerce in city centre is rather useful.

The attributes for Expansionist I think is the least useful. How much does the barbarian villages normally affect your game in civ2? And the one scout to start with I don't think would affect the game a lot. It's better for them to change it to something like less food support for settlers or settlers porduction cost reduced or faster populatin growth. But then I guess they should make some attributes a bit less useful than others so the game is not perfectly balanced. There should be some superior civilizations.

A random tech each new age (scientific) is more than moderately useful. that means 4 free technologies. Twice the wonder of Darwin's voyage in civ2 (although it was not random).

I don't think no Anarchy between gov's (religious) is useful bcos the Anarchy normally is pretty short. And with the new technology (nationalism) you can mobilse your country for war so there might be even less urge to change govs.

Lastly, industrious effects. Workers work faster to me is very useful. Builds irrigation, mines, roads faster contributes to your cities and your civ overall. And more production in city centre is about as useful as more commerce in city centre. But one thing is that productivity might not be as important bcos you can now moblize with nationalism, so I have to play to be sure of the effect.

By the way, I didn't analyse the starting techs bcos i think they are not that influecial as each civ start with 2 out of 6 of them anyway and can research them pretty easily.

To summarise: (attribute: effect 1/ effect2)
militaristic: moderately useful/ not that useful;
commercial: useful/not useful
expansionist: not useful/ not useful
scientific: useful/ useful
religious: useful/ not useful
industrious: useful/useful

So I conclude that scientific and industrious are the best.