Religious vs scientific

[player1]

Relisious is better then Scientific, because happiness boot is better then science boost.

Of course if you play on lower diff. levels, Scientific is better.

But on higher levels, I realy have probelm when playing Civs without Religious trait.
(Religious trait addict?)

[Arrian]

"Builder" - Egypt or Babylon
"Warmonger" - Japan or the Iroquois (not militaristic, but it's hard to argue with a stack of Mounted Warriors). The Aztecs are popular too, but like Aeson, I don't like the ultra-early GA.

Those are my suggestions (Babylon may be right for you, considering your love of Scientific).

-Arrian

[Txurce]

If you don't mind an early GA, then Egypt doubles as a warmonger civ, since its war chariots are basically cheap horses when shields are in short supply. Coupled with its roadbuilding workers, they make for one aggressive early civ, if you choose to play them that way. (But they're also abuilder civ with a timed GA, which is why they're probably #1.)

[Lord Merciless]

My rank of Civ Traits:

1. Industrious: I think the time saved by fast workers can't be appreciated enough.

1. Religious: I rank Religious just as good as Industrious. Cheap temples and no Anarchy are extremely valuable.

3. Militaristic: Warmongering is the basic strategy to win at high difficulty levels. With wars come the GLs, slave workers, cities, and a weakened enemy. The cheap barracks and abundance of Elite units are often underappreciated.

4. Scientific: Three cheap buildings are nice, but they come in appearance way too late in the game. Three free techs are also great, but pale in comparison if you can easily blackmail 5 techs from just one frightened AI Civ at a single peace treaty negotiation.

5. Expantionist: Only valuable on large+ maps.

6. Commercial: It's broken. I'm waiting for PTW to give it a try.

=> Egyptians should be the strongest Civ overall, followed by Chinese, Japanese, and Aztecs as next. Persians and Babylonians are not bad either.
Greeks and English suffer to due the Commercial trait.

[Dimension]

I'm surprised more people don't like China. Everybody seems to agree that warmongering is the way to go on harder difficulties, and China's UU is by far my favorite in the game -- a 3-move unit that comes long before Cavalry. If you're playing China, Religious isn't worth much, because your only government switch will probably be Despotism -> Monarchy. By the time you get Democracy, you'll be to busy killing everybody with Riders. Cheap temples are always great, but since China is Industrious, it's not hard to get roads on a couple luxuries fast.

Obviously you can evaluate civ traits on a basis of overall worth, since it would be next to impossible to find a situation where Commercial was better than Industrious. That said, any analysis of depth is inherently flawed if you're not considering playstyle, difficulty level, and the overall synergy of the civilizations. Monkspider started a nice thread about trait combinations:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55811

To quote myself, if anything else is to be said about civ traits, it should probably be put into the context of playstyle with some sort of a relative scale, like:

Builder
0 - Industrious/Expansionist (America)
1 - Scientific/Industrious (Persia)
2 - Scientific/Religious (Babylon)
3 - Industrious/Religious (Egypt)
4 - Religious/Militaristic (Aztecs,Japan)
5 - Militaristic/Industrious (China)
6 - Militaristic/Expansionist (Zululand)
Warmonger

Then people could argue about what traits fit where. Arbitrary analysis isn't going to get you anywhere.

Anyway, I guess I just wanted to point out that there are situations when neither Scientific nor Religious are the most desirable thing to have.

[bungee_70]

How to deal with corruption in a domination victory?

I'm now very advanced on a game with Egyptians to see how they work on monarch. The war chariot is valuable, but I find them not powerful enough. I'm however grateful to the retreat capability. I'm on a standard map, so I'm targeting a domination victory. I need to conquer only one other civ to win, but corruption is scaring me.
I wanted to know what are your tricks when you need to conquer half of the world, considering fast corruption growing as you drive to your goal?

[Lord Merciless]

Re: How to deal with corruption in a domination victory?

Originally posted by bungee_70
I'm now very advanced on a game with Egyptians to see how they work on monarch. The war chariot is valuable, but I find them not powerful enough. I'm however grateful to the retreat capability. I'm on a standard map, so I'm targeting a domination victory. I need to conquer only one other civ to win, but corruption is scaring me.
I wanted to know what are your tricks when you need to conquer half of the world, considering fast corruption growing as you drive to your goal?

Cross continent invasions are always tricky. You need a very large initial force and to establish a foothold on that continent. If your own civ is very strong in culture(more than 1/2 of yours), don't even bother to capture their cities first, but raze them and bring your own settlers along. Also, you have to purchase initial city improvements anyway. Only after you have a firm hold on your enemy's continent and have a GL generated, can you think of rushing a new Palace.

[bungee_70]

It's on the same continent. I have a large border, too large to have a general offensive. Anyway, I know how to attack, it's just the fact of corruption which I suppose will hurt all my civ because I have a huge number of cities already.

[Dimension]

You're looking for tricks for dealing with corruption?

There is very little I've seen people suggest other than basically "just deal with it." It really depends on how you're winning.

Space race:
I think most people going for a space race victory will keep their empire concentrated one one large continent or two smaller ones. You turn your empire into a research powerhouse and develop your core cities into major production centers. You will be using Democracy and your empire will not be massive, so corruption isn't a very big deal.

Cultural:
You need a larger empire than for space race, but still not a completely massive one, just a mid-sized one with every possible cultural improvment in every city. It's nice to keep wars going on a few fronts, getting leaders to rush wonders in your capital and try and get the 20,000 culture there for a faster win. As long as you don't over-expand, building all your culture-producing stuff isn't a problem, although corruption can be obnoxious.

Military:
You just raze every city, maybe keeping one on each continent to heal units. Corruption is a non-issue, because you don't need a large empire at all.

Domination:
Since you are basically winning by having a massive empire, there isn't any alternative other than having a massively corrupt empire. It doesn't need to be productive, though. It can be nice to have an airport in one city per continent for airlifting and connecting to the trade network, but you really shouldn't be worrying about developing distant cities, because they will never be productive unless you move your palace to a new continent, which just isn't a good idea in the late game because it will cripple at least part of your large core of productive cities. You just want to have a main production area around your palace and FP and don't worry about the other cities. On harder levels, you'll definitely want them connected to the trade network to get luxuries, but as long as they're not rioting, forget about them. If they're large, you'll have to starve them or build a marketplace and a couple other things. If you're religious, you definitely want to capture the Sistene Chapel early and rush Temples & Cathedrals. Religious civs are great for Domination wins because you can switch to Despotism and use population to rush things. Of course, pop rushing makes people unhappy, too, but it's worth it if you're on a hard difficulty and everybody's already unhappy, especially if you've got Sistene.

[bungee_70]

Thks, it answers my question. I guess I'll build a massive army while I'm still productive and slaughter him. Too bad for corruption.

[sprucemoose3311]

i think firaxis is evil cause they made France the best nation. Look at the UU, the techs they start with, and the combination of commercial and industrious.

your workers can fully develope 21 squares before a city reaches size 5.

Musketeer!

Masonry, alphabet...piramyds and straight line to republic and map (if i remember right)

and yaaa its france....

[Arrian]

Well, the french workers can build all the roads, mines and irrigation that they want, but my horde of Japanese horsemen will take it all away from them long before they get to their silly musketeers. I fart in Joan's general direction.

-Arrian
(yeah, the AI tends to do well with France)

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Arrian
Well, the french workers can build all the roads, mines and irrigation that they want, but my horde of Japanese horsemen will take it all away from them long before they get to their silly musketeers. I fart in Joan's general direction.

-Arrian
(yeah, the AI tends to do well with France)

But who will be able to build faster and deploy troops to the front quicker? What would happen to your own roads and mines you spent twice as much time to build as the French?

What happens if Egyptians come knocking at your gates with horsemen that cost only 2/3 of yours?

[King of Rasslin]

I will relax because they can't get to my cities. And if they could, forests can be built. They aren't too strong on the defence, either. Eygpt is great, but not great enough to stop me.

China would own them. In comparing industrious civs, I like China the most because of the best UU in the game, and they start with the warrior code tech that comes with archers from the start. Japan is also great, and my favorite civ overall.

And religious is the best, you know it.

[Dimorier Maximus]

If you are debating this so hard, why not just pick the Babylonians? The Babylonians can crush Persia before Persia can even say the word Immortal. Plus, you get religious and scientific bonuses. That means you can get culture out the wazoo for cheaper than your opponents.

Sure, in the mid-game, those fast working workers are good because the non-industrious civs are getting bogged down, but the Babylonians are a great rush civilization and you should be able to pull ahead of the comp early on and stay there.