And now, which civ spec. do you find useless?

[Spec]

I dont see the point of having an expantionist civ. It only gives you scouts......well...I think....Correct me if I'm wrong please cuz I'd like to know why ppl would use Expanstionist civs...


Spec.

[Zouave]

The only real benefit to expansionistic civs is the scout. Unfortunately, this wears of around the end of the ancient era. I agree, expansionistic is the weakest ability.

No poll this time?

[Spec]

I tried to make a poll this time but I screewed up and I can't delete the thread and start a new one....I dont know why....

Spec.

[Solver]

Expansionist the most useless (while not useless), I agree. Most people here will say the same.

[Salvor]

I agree that expansionist is the weakest. It is also supposed to give better benefits from goody-huts, which can give you an early tech lead, and the scout lets you contact more civs on your own continent quicker to trade them with. So it's not worthless, just not as good as the others IMO.

Militaristic takes a close second IMO. Barracks are already cheap, and the other improvements don't gain you much. It might just be me, but I don't seem to get a whole lot of leaders with militaristics compared with non-militaristic civs. But the militaristic civs seem to get better UUs, so I end up playing them not for the benefit but for the UU.

[Dis]

expansionist. I just don't get enough goody huts to worry about it. mainly due to my world settings. I'm not enough of a masochist to play huge maps with huge continents.

[Whoha]

expansionist was put in for multiplayer, In single player if the ai gets a luxury/resource/river city site first you can seize it from him with military force, this may not be possible in multiplayer as other humans could know how to fight, and will exploit their UUs(cossacks,Mounted warriors, and impis are all excellent units,though man-o-wars and f-15s suck so it would depend on if you wanted industrious or comercial in that game).

see more proof they intend to include multiplayer :P

[Aeson]

I'll take Expansionist over any other trait

Commercial in my estimation is the weakest attribute. Decreased corruption is nice, as is the bonus income, but it doesn't compare to what the other attributes have to offer. I almost always end up with a huge surplus of gold in games without playing a Commercial civ.

Expansionist is the most powerful trait if used right. It took me a while to figure out just how to use the advantages, now I'm sold though. The obvious realm of Expansionist superiority is on Huge Pangaea games. It is normal to get every ancient era tech from huts, and a couple of Settlers to boot. Later on your map is worth a lot more than it would be otherwise.

The truely powerful side of Expansionist is the other things a Scout can do though. They can stay in AI territory for extended periods of time, are cheap, and move quickly. Send them out in hordes, and just plant one on every resource you see. The AI won't be able build roads there, and will be stuck using Spearmen and Archers when the time comes. A five shield investment isn't much to ask to keep your rivals without valuable resources. With the 1.17f patch the AI asks for the Scouts to be removed on the first turn, but doesn't seem to follow up with a demand for their withdrawl for quite a while. I've had multiple Scouts in AI territory for more than 40 turns in a 1.17f game (still haven't had to remove them), and using 1.16f I've had them holding resources indefinitely. Power is having your Cavalry roll over an AI civ with no Iron, Horses, or Saltpeter. If you cringe at using such exploits, Impi (Expansionist Zulu) can do the same thing in a more limited capacity.

Another Scout trick is to use them as decoys in times of war. The AI loves to send stacks of units to try and capture "defenseless" units. Workers and Catapults also fill this role, but are more expensive, and less mobile. In my last game I had 20 English units chasing around 1 Scout for for the duration of the war, while my Mounted Warriors captured and razed the English cities. The English had no mobile units, so my scout was also able to do some pillaging at the same time. Again, a 5 shield investment that payed off quite handsomely. The fact that I had been able to scout out the English territory beforehand without having to trade maps was another plus.

[Tingkai]

Expansionist is okay. Sometimes I like being able to quickly explore a map so I can find the chokepoints to protect my empire.