Civs from easiest to hardest

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Arrian
Well, the civs you (and others) will find easiest to play will generally be the ones that fit your playstyle.

For me, the easiest have been:

Babylonians
Egyptians
Iroquois
Persians

The hardest for me would probably be:

Zulu
Romans
Americans
English

Also, keep in mind that the type of map will also greatly influence this. A huge, pangea, low # of civs map will suddenly make the English a good civ to play. A small, 'pelago map would make playing them very challenging. I usually play on Normal/Continents, for the record.

I think you place too much emphasis on UU's. Frankly, I couldn't care less about what a civ's UU is. It's all about the civ attributes. So the Babylonian bowmen suck - I don't care, the attributes (rel/sci) are awesome.

The Russians, I think, get screwed because of the way the upgrade path works... you cannot upgrade to a UU. Therefore, they must build all of their Cossacks from scratch... and since horse units do not upgrade beyond Cavalry/Cossacks, it's a "dead end" unit. Now, take the Egyptians. Their UU is at the beginning of the upgrade path, so they can build some w.chariots and later upgrade them... all the way to Cavalry.

-Arrian

Much of this has changed. The UU upgrade has been fixed, I have come to see certain UUs as much more important than my original post indicates, and most importantly, my playstyle has evolved.

Egypt is my overall favorite civ, and probably the easiest to play. They are extremely flexible: you can build and warmonger.

Persia remains strong because of their industriousness and their powerful UU.

The Iroquois have at least 1 strong trait (rel) and possibly two if playing on the right map settings, plus what is probably the best UU in the game (one could argue for the Rider).

China and Japan are each excellent warmonger civs that have militaristic + a strong trait, and a mobile medieval UU. Solid. Honorable mention goes to the Mean Green Machine (Aztecs), though GA timing issues can make them more difficult for some.

The Babs have a weak, poorly timed UU (though that can be a blessing in disguise) and are not industrious, but they do get a TON of building discounts.

The French are pretty solid, and I think they are easier to play than Carthage, because Carthage has a very problematic 30-shield ancient age UU. That requires some fancy footwork.

The Ottomans are probably tougher to play than Persia, because you cannot rely on Immortals to give you an advantage early on, but later you get these crazy SOBs with a revolver in each hand who mow down musketmen like grass (I recently took 4 cities with Sipahi before losing a single unit, they were all size 7 or bigger, had musketmen, and 1 or 2 were on hills. The total campaign, in which I took more than 20 cities, cost me 5-10 Sipahi).

Basically, I think that any civ that has at least one of the top 2 traits (which IMO are Religious and Industrious) and either a good 2nd trait OR a powerful or well-timed UU qualifies as relatively easy to play. Egypt wins by virtue of having both top traits and a very effective, if not powerful, UU.

-Arrian

[Zero]

Notice how your choice of Hard to play civs have Trait of (something) + Expansionistic. Most people prefer expansionistic with either Militaristic or religious. Com+exp, Sci+exp and Ind+exp is certainly a unique combination. I dont know how to play english and Russians well as of now, but Americans certainly can be played very well with their industrial and expansionistic trait. Their UU, isnt too good comes it comes much too late, but when ur in modern age, it is kinda nifty to have F-15 over jet fighter... I admit its not as good as any other UU, but its not terrible either.

[Zero]

and analysis of ur "getting difficult" civs.

Germans are excellent rushers. Even tho you are far from obtaining ur UU, you immediately start out with archers and spearmen at your disposal. This allows some quick conquering your neighbors while some civs didnt even have chance to build spearmen. Mil trait is always good for warmongering and sci is a little icing for whenever you reach an era, you can immediately go for feudalism, nationalism or other early era military techs. Getting panzer when tank warfare rolls in is also another nice icing on the cake. Getting a GA (if you havent) and popping out panzers like a popcorn machine is even better.

Indians are great in that their knights dont rely on resource. this is downplayed alot. I know that if you have the resource its not much of a deal, but there comes a time when you play many times, your face with not having a horse (or iron but this is lesser occurance to me). Especially when map generates resources as being grouped and one civ has like 90% of that resource on that map on his territory. Indians are also great peaceful civ, they have rel and comm. They can generate alot of income from less corruption and strengthen their cultures fast. com/rel is a nice combo, which is why i like the spanish. They are certainly a civ worth a try.

French musketeer is quite debateably the worst UU. IMO, musketeer is worse than F-15. (I use the F-15) They are UU of an already useless and wasteful unit and the bonous doesn't even help the original unit. But they are com/ind trait. I would play them much like I would with America and Germany, pretend that I dont have a UU. Now with PTW, if you dont like France, you can give carthage a try, but if someone took Carthage and i wanted Com/Ind, I wouldnt be too afraid of choosing france. I would mentally think of it as Carthage minus numidian.

[Zero]

To add lil more to "average" civs to make them sound better

Chinese rider move of three is awesome actually. Conside that you can enter an enemy territory of city influencing cultural radius of 2 tiles in one turn and to attack, it doesnt give enemy much time to retaliate using offensive units sentried in the city. You already stated how good mil/ind is so i wont go into it... except front line worker + 3 move unit = godly reinforcement.

Babylonians UU aint too good IMO. They are balanced and I will use them, but if I were to go for playing balanced unit, I'd rather choose Romans or Japan. Japan gets its lot later though, and Romans need iron and is later than bowman... Sounds like I'm bashing babs now What im trying to get to is that Babs are more valauable for attaining cultural victory more than anything else. They are the only sci/rel civ. They are Ideal for going that route. Most improvement that generate cultures are either scientific or religious improvement.
Still no resource for UU is critical here, and makes good rush since normally if you paired 7 archers and 3 spearmen for example, you would only have 7 attacks and if seventh attack didnt capture the city, with Babs you ave 3 more tries.

Romans deserve to be in easiest list. Their UU is great and has a very long lifespan (all the way to riflemen). With ptw fixing swordmen deadend issue, its even better, although using swordmen as MP inside core empire for those gov with MP ability is still a better idea. Mil/Com is an excellent combo. You can really balloon up your military and still recieve sizable income early on.

Greeks - Even scientific civs need to build GL. ancient era is when you get least benefit of sci trait. If you beeline to literature, get Great library, slide to 100% tax and ride out the ancient techs slowly while saving money and building up libraries slowly, you can really get your sci going at medieval era. Theres always early GA problem, but so does aztecs, and they are the best civ IMO. Sci/Com is a great combo. Often maintaining good tech research and getting sizable income is hard to come by.

[Zero]

Originally posted by djafrot
I have to agree on those Aztecs. Someone earlier said they have the expansionist abilities without the characteristic, and they're dead on. Yeah, you get the occasional barbarian, but they're usually more of a boon (pushing up your experience) than a problem. And the tech's... I swear in one game (on a big map) I got twelve of 'em. Having the huge number of units flying around scares the living crap out of your neighbours, and for some reason they seem to really fight well despite the 1:1 rating.

PLUS with the Azzies you get militaristic bonuses to experiences AND cheap religious stuff.

I used to play with the Persians because of the UU's and the good characteristics, but now those Immortals are slow as mud. Takes WAY too long to get to the front, and for the same cost I can have 3 JW's. No contest!

Ive been hammering that point for months now and I am not sure I am the first, (surely many people recognize this). Only problem is the GA issue for them but Barbs dont trigger GA and if you're a good diplomat, you can avoid warfare until it is necessary. By then you're like to have 8 - 9 JWs from all that exploring and iron wokring ready to go. and Wham! you can prohibit AIs from trigger GA by upgrading them to elite swordsmen!

When you wanna trigger a GA, it may be annoying but its not impossible. You can trigger GA in industrial time with JWs, its tedious to set up a calvary and prepare 4-5 JWs and some artillery, but its very possible. I trigger most of my GA thru wonders (which comes too early for most civ with wonders)anyway so its not huge problem for me.

PTW has to fix the cant build UUs any more thing. I like to build my UUs for all the eras... especially JWs. vanilla civ had this feature but it didnt make it to PTW...

[Arrian]

Wham! you can prohibit AIs from trigger GA by upgrading them to elite swordsmen!

I assume you mean veteran swordsmen. Elite units are demoted to vets when they are upgraded.

-Arrian

[lateralis]

I tend to rank the egyptians as the easiest civ to play as the combo of cheap happiness improvements, no anarchy, and fast workers, to me, makes it so easy to get a leg up early and then just ride it out. I have only ever used war chariots to trigger golden ages long after their usefull life. I usually only build one or two and keep them around to take down a badly wounded archer or longbowman.

and about the americans being a difficult civ, I won 2 of my first few regent games (on my way up the difficulty ladder) wth america. Maybe I just get lucky with them, but I've found them realtively easy to play.

the hardest I've played so far is england. The only reason I'm even playing them is that they were chosen for the mac GOTM this month as a training game. "How to win a military victory with two shty civ traits." we're playing on monarch (which I tend to do pretty well on) and boy am I getting a run for my money. Man-o-wars are good for one thing only, generating a GA. And that still took three of them to take down an ironclad.

anyhow, my 2 cents.

lateralis

[Brizey]

Once again, the best thing about the Musketeer is the timing of the GA. The extra income allows you to beeline for miltrad.

[joncnunn]

If your less interested in the UU, Babylon is even easier because of the half price scientific improvements and 3 free techs. Actually, the best use of Eqypt's WC is to keep on building them long after their no longer state of the art and upgrade them to state of the art up until you have your GA.

I had a fairly easy time as the Americans in one of my early games as well.

England is the worst civ. As far as having your GA though, there's much better ways to go about it as Enlgand than the obsolete by the time it's built Man of War.

There are 3 Great Wonders that by themselves trigure your GA as England, the Collosus, the Great Light House, and Magellain, which the last coming at an excelent time. Also, the pair of Adam Smith + Copercus would also trigure your GA if you want to build more useful wonders while triguring the GA.

Originally posted by lateralis
I tend to rank the egyptians as the easiest civ to play as the combo of cheap happiness improvements, no anarchy, and fast workers, to me, makes it so easy to get a leg up early and then just ride it out. I have only ever used war chariots to trigger golden ages long after their usefull life. I usually only build one or two and keep them around to take down a badly wounded archer or longbowman.

and about the americans being a difficult civ, I won 2 of my first few regent games (on my way up the difficulty ladder) wth america. Maybe I just get lucky with them, but I've found them realtively easy to play.

the hardest I've played so far is england. The only reason I'm even playing them is that they were chosen for the mac GOTM this month as a training game. "How to win a military victory with two shty civ traits." we're playing on monarch (which I tend to do pretty well on) and boy am I getting a run for my money. Man-o-wars are good for one thing only, generating a GA. And that still took three of them to take down an ironclad.

anyhow, my 2 cents.

lateralis

[Dominae]

Some comments on the "ease" of play:

1. Traits

Industrious is the "easiest" trait; you can be a beginner at the game and you'll benefit from it almost just as much as a veteran ("almost" because beginners usually won't think to build military road networks, etc.). Religious is the next easiest, because dealing with unhappiness is relatively simple when Temples and Cathedrals cost half as much. Also, the 1-turn Anarchy means that you can jump from one government to the next, without much planning. No comment about Scientific and Militaristic and Commercial (although Commercial is slightly easier if you're not experienced with Palace-jumping, FP placement, etc.). Expansionist is most difficult to play well, meaning that the difference between a veteran Expansionist player and a novice one is huge. In addition to effective Scouting (see Aeson's excellent thread), there's the option of going for a Granary early on, not to mention effective city placement with most of map revealed. Each of these is not easy for the novice player.

2. UUs

As I mentioned in another thread, Jags and Impi are "clearly" powerful units, but most players do not use them effectively. You need to adjust your strategy quite drastically to make the best use of them, which is far from easy. Managing an early GA (highly recommended with the Aztecs, Babs or Zulus) is also a difficult skill.

The UUs that are simply better in the stats that the standard versions are typically used for are the easiest to use (confusing sentence, I know). Mounted Warrios, Immortals, Panzers and Hoplites are considered great units, I think, because they are easy to use and their benefits are very "tangible".

The UUs that alter a standard unit's secondary stats (Musketeer, Legion, Samurai) are also relatively easy to use because they are better, but still not significantly altered.

The new UUs from PTW are all quite interesting, since they combine many tweaks to the standard units. I would say all of them are quite hard to use (anyone dominated with Conquistadors lately!?!).

3. Civs

Obviously the combination of an easy UU with easy traits makes for an easy civ to play. The Egyptians are thus naturally at the top of the list, since the only thing remotely "difficult" about them is the possibility of an early GA.

Militaristic and Expansionsist civs (Mongols, Zulus and Vikings) are, IMO, the most difficult, since they require pure aggression, while most Civ players like to stop and build periodically. The Zulus, with a difficult UU to boot, is probably the toughest civ to play.

The "crappy" civs (England, Korea, Spain) are difficult because they combine no "easy" traits with bad UUs.


Dominae

[Mad Bomber]

Re: Civs from easiest to hardest

Originally posted by Arathorn

Russians – The Cossack is the only UU I wish I could simply remove. It breaks the horsemen/knight upgrade path, which is horribly painful. It’s only marginally useful, as defense for a fast offensive unit usually is. You have to build all of them from the ground up, they’re barely better than cavalry, can’t upgrade, and put a GA in an odd time slot. NO THANKS! Add in questionable value in expansionist, and the scientific trait can’t bring them up. The main offensive thread is completely disrupted and knights hang around way too long. It’s a huge hurdle with no reward for leaping it.

Arathorn

Have to disagree with you regarding the Russians. The Cossack is a terribly powerful unit if one beelines to Military Tradition. The cossack will end up fighting either musketmen or other cavalry (or worse) and either option it can handle quite well. Also having your GA kick off right in time to get Copernicus, Newtons, Bach's and Shakspeares is nice. And facing a virtual wall of cossacks is no picnic either.

[Konquest02]

Originally posted by Dominae

The "crappy" civs (England, Korea, Spain) are difficult because they combine no "easy" traits with bad UUs.

Dominae

I actually like playing a game with the crappy civs once in a while as they offer a totally different challenge as one is usually faced.

In civ3, the English and the Indians are the 2 civs I take when wanting for a challenge. They are not easy to play but they are quite fun...

--Kon--

[Arrian]

The "worst" civs in my book:

England*
Korea
Greece
Russia*
Zulu*
Mongols*
Vikings*
Germany
Rome

* - expansionist is a wildcard, and can be quite powerful depending on map settings.

-Arrian

[Brizey]

Arrian:

Now that Archers can be upgraded to Berzerks, the Scandies are much improved. You do one early archer rush (or an ultra-early then early), then one long sustained campaign with Berzerks. If you can pre-build Leos and beeline for invention, and save up a few thousand gold, watch out world. You hit the near continents on Galleys, and the far continents once you get Astronomy. I recently played a game where I was still using up my leftover Berzerks with Galleys against rifleman. The losses were attrocious, but I was getting ready for the infantry-tank era anyway.

Thirty Berzerks against spearman, pikeman, and an occasional musketman with no chance of retaliation is a serious force.

I believe the Scandies were made expansionist to purposely weaken them on arch. maps where the Berzerk is by far the most unbalanced unit in the game. I was shocked when they added the archer to Berzerk upgrade-I though the omission was intentional.

-Brizey

[Arrian]

Hmm... Ok, I'll grant you that a 6/2/1 amphibious unit is pretty powerful, so maybe the Vikings should come off my list.

But I'd still trade it for a 4/3/3 unit + industrious instead of expansiontist.

-Arrian