Picking the right Civ!

[Out4Blood]

SoulAssassin should test his theories out on Emperor/Deity level before he cries for MP. I he'll find the AI puts a bit more resistance...

[hoyatables]

Expansionist Civs/My two cents

Well, I have to say, Expansionist is hit or miss. The beauty of them is that you find out really quickly whether they work out well or not, and can restart within an hour if you're not happy with the results. Here's a few notes:

Scouts are useful, but only on Large continents with smooth terrain. Don't pick anything less than Panagea; even with 60% water, I've still found myself stuck on relatively small continents with one other Civ. After you scour the island, they are useless. And don't play expansionist if you like lots of mountains. I believe 5 billion years has the smoothest terrain; go with that. And going for arid won't hurt, either.

My problem is that my Scouts get eaten up pretty quickly by random barbarians. It's pretty frustrating.

I think the way to do this in the early game is to build units appropriate to your civ - in other words, build workers if you are industrious/commerical; build warriors if you're militaristic, and build scouts if you're expansionist. Play to strengths - you definitely CAN get a huge tech bonus through the combo of goody huts and contact with other Civs, but there is some luck involved.

Still ,though, my best experience has been with the French. Americans, it seems, are just really tough. I'm gonna keep trying though. I just don't like the Iroquois or Aztecs, and you're always stuck with them as neighbors...well, i should just select other civs...

Oh, if you want to make your live easier, select all the non-expansionist Civs - this way you'll have less of those random cities in your unofficial territory.

[Xin Yu]

If you play commercial, then you can set your first two techs as writing and literature. in 64 turns you get there with minimum tech spending. A very good chance to get Great Library (renamed to Money Cow after building it) The only danger is that somebody built Pyramids early and you don't have anything to switch to.

[SofaKing]

1.) If the game is usually decided by the time you hit feudalism, I'm definitely doing something wrong. What the level are you playing? I'm stuck on Monarch, and it's usually the end of the middle age/beginning of the industrial that I catch up.

2.) Hoplites provide the best defense, require no resources, and can be used offensively. I use them to siege my neighbors early in the game. This allows me to expand while they cannot. Once I've taken over the land mass, then I can eliminate them at my leisure.

3.) The Persian Immortal is one of the better units is useless? What is you reason? I think they are one of the best units in the game.

[zeace]

I like the Scientific attribute because one advance can be very important in this game. All too often I find myself 1 or 2 techs behind the tech leader. Everytime he researchs something, he sells it to everyone and gets lots of money. Then he'll offer it to me, and if it's cheap enough I'll take it because even if I'm 80% done researching it, I can't afford the time it would take to catch up on my own. Because of this, I'll end up throwing out most of my research

Suddenly when I advance to a new age, though, I'll get a free advance. Sometimes this will just push me past my opponent, and suddenly I'm the one selling my research and he's the one throwing out his...

This reasoning is also a reason I really like Darwin (or whatever it is now). It is a lot of production for a small tech gain, but the difference between just behind and just ahead is HUGE.

All that said, if you're not going to be the tech leader, ignore all of this and take com or ind...

Ze Ace

[Kc7mxo]

The persian immortal is hands down one of the most useful unique units. With it you can run over any unit in ancient era, excepting hoplites. My first few games relied heavily on them, and the persians are a good civ to play in any case.

More recently I tried out the babylonians, and while I do enjoy scientific and religous bonuses, that bowmen is virtually worthless. Especially when i'm next door to the persians!

[mharmless]

Do not discount the legion. Lets look at some numers here.
Legion - 3 attack, 3 defense, 1 movment - 30 sheilds, Iron
Immortal - 4 attack, 2 defense, 1 movment - 30 sheilds, Iron

So they cost the same to build. Lets check out how they preform in combat...

+10% defense terrain
Desert, Flood Plain, Grassland, Plains, Tundra
Legion attacks Immortal = 57.69% win for Legion
Immortal attacks Legion = 54.79% win for Immortal

+25% defense terrain
Forrest, Jungle
Legion attacks Immortal = 54.54% win for Legion
Immortal attacks Legion = 51.61% win for Immortal

+35% defense terrain
Desert, Flood Plain, Grassland, Plains, Tundra, all across a river
Legion attacks Immortal = 52.63% win for Legion
Immortal attacks Legion = 49.68% win for Immortal

+50% defense terrain
Hills, Forrest or Jungle with river, town with walls, City
Legion attacks Immortal = 50.00% win for Legion
Immortal attacks Legion = 47.05% win for Immortal

+100% defense terrain
Mountains, Town with walls on hill, City on hill, metropolis
Legion attacks Immortal = 42.85% win for Legion
Immortal attacks Legion = 40.00% win for Immortal


Well then. As we can see, the legion preforms better than the Immortal under every circumstance. If blows are traded equaly between the units, the Immortal units will suffer heavier casualties and lose more units over the course of the war. The most important factor is attacking first, but at least four of our (more common) scenarios have the Immortal loseing more often than not.

[Grunthex]

Yeah, but the comparison of Immortals and Legions is mostly irrelevant. They aren't fighting each other. They're smashing down the spearmen and occasional pikeman defending towns in the ancient/very early middle ages. The immortals extra attack is priceless there. Besides, Caesar just manages to look nerdy through the whole game.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Out4Blood
SoulAssassin should test his theories out on Emperor/Deity level before he cries for MP. I he'll find the AI puts a bit more resistance...

The first game I played was on deity... thanks for the advice though. I conquered the world in 1280 AD on a small map. Most of the game was getting used to the new interfaces and stuff. I play Regent because combat is the same on all levels. On Deity the computer just takes longer to kill because he spits out more units. It isn't any more difficult than Regent.

[Sava]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Picking the right Civ!

Originally posted by Ray K


Well, duh. The human can beat any AI civ with any randomly selected civ.

As far as the hoplite being "useless" by Feudalism, I would remind you that the game should already be decided by the time you get to feudalism.

At that point, it's just a matter of finishing off the other Civs. You achieve your dominance in the early game, which is where Hoplites rule. The AI is not smart enough to mass-attack any city with 8 units, so the Hoplites are great. They are the game's defensive unit for the most important part of the game (pre-gunpowder), they are cheap, and they start in 4000 BC. So they are definitely one of the best UU in the game.

The F-16, on the other hand, is completely useless.

I just think that its more important to choose a Civ based on their abilities, not their UU's. The hoplite is a better unit in the ancient age, but not so much better that I would choose the Greeks solely based on the fact that they have the hoplite.

The AI is a pushover, even on Deity. I'm concentrating on developing strategies that would work against human players. The best way to do this is to ask myself, what would work against me. The hoplite wouldn't because I mass when I attack. It doesn't matter what unit you have persay, as long as you have a lot of them. 2 or 3 hoplites aren't going to last any longer than 2 or 3 spearmen when I mass an attack. That's what I wanted to convery. Obviously, they are better than spearmen, but they aren't the best UU in the game. I'll post one of my saved games on this thread later today so you can see how I play.

My games aren't decided by Feudalism because I play 256x256 maps. They take much more time. I'm just getting to the second major continent in this one game and the year is 1600 AD. But the first game I played was on Deity and I beat the comp in 1280 AD on a small map. So the map you play determines how fast you can win by conquering the world.

[cort]

Re: Picking the right Civ!

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
If you are an expansionistic war monger like me, pick France. The combination of Industrious and Commercial abilities makes conquering the world a lot easier.

i strongly agree that France i the best civ to play. however, if you are going to play a heavily militaristic game (as i do), after some time you will have so many slave workers that being industrious becomes meaningless. i mean slaves do not care whether you are industrious or not and you can always have more workers work on a single tile to hurry a particulary improvement.

so i bet being militaristic might worth a try, i take Romans as the second best civ.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
The persian immortal is hands down one of the most useful unique units. With it you can run over any unit in ancient era, excepting hoplites. My first few games relied heavily on them, and the persians are a good civ to play in any case.

More recently I tried out the babylonians, and while I do enjoy scientific and religous bonuses, that bowmen is virtually worthless. Especially when i'm next door to the persians!

They're probably good against the AI. But they aren't going to be much good against a player like me who masses mobile units.

1. I'm going to almost always be on the offensive.

It's the way I play, when I post a saved game, you'll see what I'm talking about. You might say that it will be different against humans, but I disagree. I would just need to plan on consolidating my forces and I would attack the Immortals in the open. 2 or 3 horsemen would easily take out an Immortal. And since their mobile, even if the Immortal gets lucky and wins a few rounds, the horsemen will retreat. Then with the extra movement, I can put a 2-3 turn distance between the Immortal and my unit and heal him for another round of attack.

That's why any UU with 1 movement sucks. It isn't restricted to just the Immortal. For offensive campaigns, any units with 1 movement point suck. Period. The ability to retreat is the most important aspect of attacking in the game. It guarantees losing less men when attacking. And instead of building units to replace the ones that got killed, I can produce anything else. That is what Civilization is all about. Production management.

[Sava]

Re: Re: Picking the right Civ!

Originally posted by cort


i strongly agree that France i the best civ to play. however, if you are going to play a heavily militaristic game (as i do), after some time you will have so many slave workers that being industrious becomes meaningless. i mean slaves do not care whether you are industrious or not and you can always have more workers work on a single tile to hurry a particulary improvement.

so i bet being militaristic might worth a try, i take Romans as the second best civ.

That's a good point, but getting to the point where being industrious doesn't matter will take more time if you aren't industrious. By using IFE math, industrious civs can complete the cycle about 25 percent faster than non-industrious Civs. That means by turn 75 I will have x number of units, but to get x number of units with another civ it would be on turn 100. All other things being equal, obviously.

I'm not saying that being militaristic sucks, I'm just saying that for the way I play, France is the way to go.

[DaBear]

Another thing to consider when picking your civ is map type. Expansionist isn't as usfull on wet (swamps), 3 billion (Mountains) or islands as your speed advantage is usually negated.

[Dis]

I'll stick with my Aztecs they rock. although one problem is triggering my golden ages too early through stone age warfare. For some reason I couldn't do anything with the romans.

But the french aren't my style. If I don't conquer the ai fast, my few low corruption cities aren't going to do anything. I need to conquer the ai to keep up with their rate of expansion. And even the jaguar warrior on a hill can make a solid defense against any stone age ai unit. This stalls the ai while I bring in the archers/horseman.

So stop telling me the french are the best!!! in my games I usually get trapped in with only 5 cities. How is industrious/commercial going to help me there? I need to break out. And rush building temples dirt cheap helps keep enemy cities under control and allow me to free up more units for more conquest.