Civilization Thread!

[Mick]

Very little about Sweden is appealing to me. Oh goody, I get a crappy boost to influence for gifting a Great Person. Enjoy your Great Admirals, bitches.

And Plubby, I've actually stopped playing as Venice because they make the game a lock. The AI with Venice is horrid. A human with it is overpowered for the sheer money you can make.

And I've won with civs other than Korea or Venice. . Thus far, I've also won with: Babylon, Siam, Egypt, Polynesia. Morocco, Poland, India, Arabia, Rome and Greece.

Edit: While the world map is cool, it has some....drawbacks. Namely being that the damn Rock of Gilbraltor has cut off the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and there's an insane amount of resources .

[Sousa]

Polynesia and Rome aren't exactly overpowered, either. Polynesia is about as middle-of-the-road as they come.

[Pizza]

I'm saving all the easy civs for when I jump to Emperor. According to Steam achievements, I've only beaten it with 11 different civs, which seems low.

[METALMAN]

I'm curious to know who everyone thinks is really hard to win with. I had trouble with the Huns, Sweden, Austria, Japan, and America.

I tend to be bad with the more explicitly warlike civs. I never really go to war - aside from the odd limited campaign for around 5-10 turns - because I find all the micromanagement a bit too tedious. So I never really get to make the most of their abilities.

[Benji]

I'm curious to know who everyone thinks is really hard to win with. I had trouble with the Huns, Sweden, Austria, Japan, and America.

Spain is awful if you don't get a decent start or use a terra map, but it's purely a situational thing. I don't think anyone's particularly awful if you stick to the basics.

[Sousa]

I don't necessarily have trouble with warlike civs--Mongols, Zulu, and China are among my favorite--but the Huns (just to give one example) are just too much. China at least has the Paper Maker and the Zulu get economic help in the form of reduced unit support, but Attila just gets nothing. I feel like there might be a way to leverage first-turn Animal Husbandry into something, but I can't figure out what it is.

I've gotten Spain maps where I got absolutely nothing out of being Spain, and I've also gotten a Spain map where Lake Victoria and King Solomon's Mines were within spitting distance. You really do get nothing else with Spain.

[METALMAN]

The reduced unit maintenance is a decent point actually - I always try and minimise my costs for that. Sometimes a bit too much.

I usually aim for a very limited standing army. Just enough to be a deterrent but not much more. I also tend to keep an emergency fund just in case someone declares war on me when I least expect it and I need a few units.

Whenever I go to war it's usually with limited objectives. Maybe for one border city. I usually find three melee/ranged units and one artillery unit is enough for that. I'll take the city then sit on the defensive until the AI can't be bothered anymore. I'm far too lazy to go on a Blitzkrieg or something.

[Sousa]

For comparison, this is my play style.

[METALMAN]

Pffffffft. I'm not scared.

I'm glad you are being a good Protestant though. Don't want to upset the apple cart.

[Sousa]

I don't even think I founded a religion in that game. If I did it was definitely Protestantism because GERMANY.

[METALMAN]

I tend to veer dramatically between being ultra religious and not religious at all.

In my ongoing game I'm at around 1650 and have only accrued 58 faith in total. Nobody has even tried to spread their religion to me.

[Mick]

It's weird because when I try to actively get my religion going, it falls flat. But when I say screw it and try to limit it to my civ, it spreads like a wild fire.

[Mick]

I had a fantastic ending to my last game. This was a custom map of the world, huge, six other civs (Greece, Persia, Indonesia, Arabia, India and Germany). I was Venice . Anyway, I started out in modern day Cairo, with the other civs respectively starting in Sweden, South America, India, China, North America, and the Ivory Coast. Everyone excluding myself and Indonesia go insanely wide, but I run the table as I usually do when I'm Venice.

Alexander is the major thorn in my side (he's the dick this game), so I find out he's plotting against me, and he takes Order (I was Freedom), I manage to get an impressive perimeter of cavalry, Gatling guns and artillery surrounding Venice (these were upgraded as time went on, essentially becoming a ring of death composed of Giant Death Robots, Bazookas and rockets, augmented by ten stealth bombers in Venice. COME AT ME, BRO!) .

I laugh as his people pretty much say "Fuck you", getting me 5 of his cities as puppets, before they turn Freedom. At the end of the game, everyone save Greece is scared shitless, and as I finish the last part of my spaceship, I launch a full-on nuclear attack on Greece, reducing Athens to a size 1 city and flat out destroying one of his smaller cities. Before the turn's even over, I launch the ship. In my head saw it as being manned by Enrico, happily giving Greece the finger as he yells out "SO LONG, FUCKERS!".

While the map's cool, there are resources out the ass, and I probably won't be playing it ever again. It's a shame, too.

[Mick]

The stats for every leader; note when a game starts, it's +/- 2 points.

Yeah, I'm never trusting the Chinese again

[METALMAN]

Hahahahahahahahahaha Gandhi is 12 for nukes!

[Pizza]

After a long break I'm playing again. I got a terrible start as Russia, I will be ablr take advantage of literally none of their unique abilities or units unless Uranium pops up on my tiny island chain. Going for a tall science victory.

[gunnar hendershow]

Gandhi at 12 for nukes still seems too low.

And 2 for war, definitely too low.

Summary: Fuck Gandhi

[Mick]

Hahahahahahahahahaha Gandhi is 12 for nukes!

It's a shout-out to a programming error in the very first Civilization. Gandhi was set at "-1". The computer interpreted this as 255. Hence, Gandhi's been nuke happy as a result of it. I have only been nuked once in Civilization, and it was during Civ II when he nuked Pompeii .

[METALMAN]

Really? I was wondering why Gandhi was so nuke-happy. Thought perhaps it might have been a reference to India's present standoff with Pakistan.

But the reality is so much better. Amazing.

[Sousa]

Shaka has very dangerous AI (as I suspected). He loves to expand, loves to war, and stays competitive.

I can't figure out why Ahmad is so often a contender in my games based on this.