What's your favorite civ in the demo?

[Rolfski]

I played the demo last two days:

It's very nice, definitely better than EE or AoK/AoC: more thinking involved, epic feeling, good unit AI, excellent UI (tooltips e.g.), less micromanagement, less clickfest.

However, battles are still a bit messy and untactical like most other rts games because of the real time pacing. Also, you evolve through technologies a bit too fast to make good use of them (at least in the demo) and diplomacy is messed up (weird AI war declarations and offer rejections). Graphics are good as long as you play at normal speed and fully zoomed in (actually in contruary to EE). Unfortunately that's mostly not the case.


My question is, what's your favorite nation in the demo?

I like the Germans most. They have good economic/production bonusses for fairly early booming but they really kick ass in mid/late games when most of the fighting in my games takes place. That's when their unique tanks/infs and fighter bonusses come in real handy.

2nd: Egyptians (for wonder play and early booming)
3rd: Bantu (speed, pop and extra city)
4th: English (besides income bonus not much to offer on land maps imo)

So what's your favorite?

[MahoTsukai]

Germans got the Volksgrenadier and Tiger 2, so I prefer Germans.

But once the game is released, I'm gonna hop on the Soviet side, gotta love playing with the red army

[s_qwert63]

Originally posted by MahoTsukai
Germans got the Volksgrenadier and Tiger 2, so I prefer Germans.

But once the game is released, I'm gonna hop on the Soviet side, gotta love playing with the red army

same

RKKA powa!

one thing i liked! about the demo is that if you play as the egyptians for example you get
BMP's and T72 looking tanks
while if you play as the germans you get the Leopard and the Bradley
i think it was one of the ideas i proposed a year ago

[Mahdimael]

Germans seem to be pretty powerful early and late game, and their early industrial bonuses really add up.

I like the British, but I'd like them more if there were island type maps, I think. The ship building bonus would be a great asset

Egyptians seem like they would run away with a Wonder victory scenario. The Bantu are good for land rushing.

I like the battles so far...in every case where I've had a coherent army, I usually can win. Whenever I was pumping out units like mad to save a city, I got whupped. Seems reasonable.

[MahoTsukai]

Originally posted by s_qwert63


same

RKKA powa!

one thing i liked! about the demo is that if you play as the egyptians for example you get
BMP's and T72 looking tanks
while if you play as the germans you get the Leopard and the Bradley
i think it was one of the ideas i proposed a year ago

didnt knew that generic art changed from civ to civ ?

As I told my wife, Brian Reynolds did it again (she is already sick with SMAX)

[DarthVeda]

BANTU! Hands down. They get pop limit of 300 at the end compared to 200 for others. You can have a raging economy going AND a rediculously huge army. This is a HUGE advantage over your oponents.

[s_qwert63]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
BANTU! Hands down. They get pop limit of 300 at the end compared to 200 for others. You can have a raging economy going AND a rediculously huge army. This is a HUGE advantage over your oponents.

300
/me goes playing bantu

+ if the bantu have an extra 100, the chinese should have an extra 1000 or something... that would reflect reality.

[Madine]

I think the innate Bantu bonus only gets you to 250, could be wrong though.

[albiedamned]

So far I've played the British, Egyptians, and Bantu (in that order). Of those three I think I like Egyptians the best. I thought I would like the Bantu since I prefer a more peaceful builder style. But the extra city bonus in the early going isn't all that useful given the commerce cap. Yeah you can claim more territory, but it's not like this gets you more resources without doing the same commerce research as everyone else. The pop cap bonus is nice because it means you can neglect the higher level military research and still have room for more units.

But overall I liked the Egyptians better. Their unique units are nicely balanced - build the light camel and chariots and all you need is some heavy infantry to make an army that can handle anything. Plus their extra farms and their free granary make a big difference in the early game. And the +2 gold per farm helps a lot early on when gold is hard to come by (few trade routes, taxation not researched yet).

I'll probably try the Germans tonight. If I can stay awake - I played till 4am last night.

[DarthVeda]

Originally posted by Madine
I think the innate Bantu bonus only gets you to 250, could be wrong though.

Once you get the end game technology that allows maximum population you get 300. Or at least I swear that pop meter read 300.

I mean it must have... I had a huge civilian population on top of my like 100-200 military units..

[Boris Godunov]

Some of the wonders increase your max pop, I believe. I was playing the Germans and had 250.

[Madine]

The official site says the Bantu can go above the max cap by 25%, which would be 250. There are some wonders and probably special resources that can also increase your population though.

[DarthVeda]

So I must have had whatever wonder does that. 300 pop limit... unstoppable...

[stesergio]

Anyone out there with the full game tried the Chineese? The auto-producing citizens sounds really neat. So far in the demo, I have had nothing but sucess with the Germans. Not so much luck with the others.

[Mahdimael]

Sounds like a good Chinese tactic is to make citizens and convert them to militia/guerillas, etc