Vote for Weakest/Strongest Civ Bonuses

[Pyrodrew]

Religious
Expansionist
Commercial
Industrious
Militaristic
Scientific

Which one(s) are the most powerful?

I'm curious how balanced the various Civ Bonuses everyone thinks are (especially given some recent posts about excessive corruption). Just want an accurate reading, so please only vote if you've *played* the game.

Select any you want. Select only 1 if you believe that 1 is extremely better than the other 5. Select all 6 if you believe they are equally balanced.

Thanks.

[player1]

Favotive:
Commercial - look at the threads about corruption
Expansinistic - I like to get many huts with free settlers (you can also build that fast scout for 10 shields)

VERY Good:
Industrial - Excellent bonus, if I don't wan't to chose commerce, I would chose this bonus

Good:
but not as inustious - scientific

Average:
Militaristic: not my gameplay style

Weak:
Religious: Give cheap religous buildings. Ok, they give culture but scientific buildings give culture also + science benefit, Government chages are not my startegy type

[Pyrodrew]

bump

[Insigna]

Personaly i think they were balanced very well.
Expansionist might be week in the long run.

[player1]

Originally posted by Insigna
Personaly i think they were balanced very well.
Expansionist might be week in the long run.

In the longer run, you will have +50% more cities because of good start.
In the longer run both scientific & Religious are not much (you build improvments cheaper, after that, NOTHING)

Only Industrious & Commerce are both VERY GOOD in long & short run.

And I also thnik that they are balanced very well, exept maybe Religious.

[KrazyHorse]

Regarding Scientific: I just love the bonus tech in each new age. Plus, cheap libraries are a good way to get culture fast.

[Dimension]

double-post

[Dimension]

Strongest:
- Industrious
- Commercial

Average:
- Religious
- Scientific

Weakest:
- Expansionist
- Militaristic

The +1 shields in every city and faster workers makes Industrious far better than any other ability except Commercial, and as far as Commercial is concerned, the decreased corruption is much more useful than the +1 commerce in every city. That said, I don't think Industrious + Commercial makes the Persians the strongest civilization by any stretch. Even with the reduced corruption, Industrious is still probably much better than Commercial. Getting a fast start is the most important thing in Civ3, and +1 shields and faster workers is much better in the first few turns than +1 commerce and reduced corruption.

Religious/Scientific are obviously good because of the cost reduction of important buildings that you should have in almost every city. Of course, if you're talking about religious buildings, you should change "should have" to "desperately need," especially on higher difficulties. The secondary "statue of liberty" effect isn't very important, but half-price temples more than makes up for that. Scientific isn't nearly as good as most people would've expected at first--it's certainly not as good as having +2 research was in SMAC. It's certainly nice having cheap libraries and universities, but it's not like your research costs less beakers. Bronze Working is the free tech you get with Scientific, and that's certainly nice being able to start on The Colossus early, but you can probably research Bronze Working with any non-Scientific civ before you would want to start working on the wonder anyway.

Expansionist and Militaristic are lame, and the benefits they give are more of a minor convenience and certainly don't affect the game in the way the other advances do. Nobody's going to build a barracks in every city. Your average player IS going to build multiple Religious/Scientific buildings in almost every city, making those bonuses several times better. Faster experience is certainly nice, and I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you upgrade a lot of units, but you'd be hard-pressed to adopt a strategy in which that was more useful than any of the other bonuses. Everybody seems to think it's great being able to run their 0/0 scouts through enemy terriroty, but seeing as you have to wait till a city is size 3 to produce a settler, you're not going to have any problem finding the perfect base site just doing a little exploring with your warriors.

Keep in mind that these are my current opinions, and I haven't even finished a full game yet, so I'm sure I'll change my mind about most of it

Anyway, at this point I think that the Greeks and the Egyptians are much stronger than the other civilizations. The Greeks' 1/3 special unit, available at the very beginning of the game, is ridiculously powerful. Commercial + Science + an amazing defensive unit make the Greeks great for a builder-style game, and they're probably the best civlization to play for your first few games on lower difficulties while you're getting the hang of Civ3. The Egyptians are even better, though, especially on higher difficulties. Religious + Industrious means that they build their temples faster than any other civilization, and they have a great special unit that will let you go on the offensive very early. You can capture a few cities very early and also get your golden age early for a very fast start. The Greeks/Egyptians not only have really good bonuses and special units, but they complement each other perfectly.

I would like to be able to justify playing the Americans, but Expansionist isn't very good, and F-15's are awful... They're just fighters with better bombardment ability, and bombardment is nearly useless (see the thread on bombardment).

[player1]

Do you know difference between Civ2 games, with one settler against player with 2 starting settlers.
Player with 2 settlers alsost ALWAYS WINS.

Expansionistic: getting better stuff from barbarian villages <==> settler very early, even maybe before capitol gets 2 pop, and possbility for similar thnig to happen later.
With that kind of start, no kind of non-Exp. player can catch him, easily (if ever).

Americans are excellent civ, together with English, they are best expansionistic civs. (more infastructice or less corruprion, both importatnt for HUGE empires).

Other interesting civs are French, Persians & Greeks (for science geeks)

Still since I don't like playing FEMALE leaders or AMERICANS I would probably play Persians or Greeks (and maybe those later).

[Dimension]

Yes, getting an extra settler or advanced tribe early would be nice, but I'm not convinced that expansionists have a very significant improvement in what they find in huts.

You would have to get VERY lucky with huts to have any hope of convincing anybody that your expansionist huts helped you more than having one of the other bonuses would have.

For example, think of how many turns are in a game... About 400. Then think of how many cities you have in a game... 1 at the beginning, and maybe around 30-50 by the very end. Your average turn has around 20 cities, so over the course of the game, being Industrious would give you 8000 shields, or Commercial would give you 8000 commerce.

To put that in perspective, building ALL the Great Wonders in the game takes 13,800 shields, and the average advance takes under 1000 science. This is HUGE, not even considering the benefit of lower corruption or faster workers, which Industrious/Commercial give you.

Also, think about how much time in the average game you spend building Temples (60 shields), Libraries (80 shields), Cathedrals (140 shields), and Universities/Research Labs (160 each). Given that a pure ICS strategy is dead in Civ3, you have to build at the very least a Temple in every city, even if you're being increadibly aggressive and trading for most of your tech, and most people would have Temples and Cathedrals in every city by the end of the game.

So, again putting things into perspective, that means being Religious has saved you 4000 shields of production, and being Scientific has potential to save you 4800 if you build Universities in all your cities, and much more of you start building Labs. This makes Religious/Scientific both pretty impressive, without considering the "Statue of Liberty" effect or the bonus tech effect, or the fact that building these facilities faster gives you a big boost in culture.

Maybe being an expansionist civ will give you an extra settler that you wouldn't have gotten as fast popping huts with a warrior, but it just can't compare to the other bonuses.

[player1]

In fact guys from Firaxis stated that that bonus from barabarian villages isn't really low as some people think.

And something regarding Religious & Scientific:
-AFTER you build those improvments, you won't get anything extra, exept some boost for age of buildings (culture)

Also scouts can give you a very quick expansion. You can take many huts, even those near other players. Also early contact will give you bonus in excanging Techs.

Anyway this bonus is risky, since if you start on Island...
It is for those players who like to risk.

But if you start on lange contiunent, your early expansion could be of great value.

Also with early expansion you can get as much land as possibile & limit other players for gaining land for cities (AI does the same).

Anyway if you are lucky, other players won't cach up you in the future.

Conclusion:
Expansionist ability isn't weak as some people think, but also it doesn't mean it's the best. The point is that all abilities need to be balanced (and I think that they are good balanced).


P.S.
My preferences are towards pecafull game and early expansion, so my favorite bonuses are Expansionistic, Industrial (big empires need infastructure) & Commercial (less corruption for big nation).

Scientific bonus is OK.

Bonuses I don't like much are Militaristic (I am peacfull player) & Religious
(dynamic government switching isn't my style of game & culture boost for being Scientific is beter option than that for Religious, at the end you get extra science).

That doesn't mean that other bonuses are bad, I only prefer those bonuses in my style of play.

[player1]

Also by gaining early more cities & land, you'll also save MANY production points, because of GREATER population.
Of course, because of corruption, it doesn't mean you should expand through all the game. But early expansion is VERY IMPORTANT (in civ2 it decided the winner).

[Dimension]

I never said expansionist wasn't nice... just that anybody is going to focus on exploration and hut-popping, whether it's with warriors or scouts. Obviously the speed of the scout is nice, but if you DO find a barb hut, they're 0/0, which isn't so nice.

You're really downplaying the Religious bonus--it's certainly better than the few extra techs that Scientific gets. Producing Science in turns that would normally be anarchy means you're essentially getting at least a couple free techs, too, not to mention the fact that you get any production or money in anarchy, either.

The way war weariness works in Civ3 makes Religious extremely powerful, especially now that the Statue of Liberty doesn't exist. You can be an aggressive player while still using Democracy most of the time, because you can just change governments when your troops enter enemy territory. Other civlizations have to be VERY careful when waging war. You have to either 1) spend a lot of time in anarchy, 2) stay out of Democracy for long periods of time during the mid-game, or 3) just not play aggressively and wage very careful, short military campaigns.

Not playing aggressively is very much an option. If you're playing a defensive science-focused game with the Greeks, you're not going to miss the Religious bonus much. You're not doing a lot of conquering, and once you build temples/cathedrals in your main cities, you're done. For a lot of players, though, the Religious bonus is terribly important. Even in the late game, it's great to switch to Communism, take over a few cities, switch back to Democracy, and quickly build temples/cathedrals.

[Leonid]

Something that needs to be mentioned is the value of expansionist is greatly enhanced or devalued depending on the type of map you like to play on.

If you like large Pangea maps with little water than expansionist is possibly the most valuable of them all. Flip side is if you like playing archapalgeo then it is worthless ofcourse.

[Leonid]

Speaking of war weariness has anyone been able to gauge the effectivness of universal suffrage? Its supposed to decrease war weariness. I wonder if a democracy can easily start wars and fight wars with that wonder as if you were in communism. If that is so then religious is greatly devalued, since you don't ever need to switch to communism for military campaigns. So most will only ever have one or two states of anarchy the entire game. Despot to Monarch and Monarch to Democracy.

Food for thought. I guess religion is LAST in effectivness then.