Which civ type is best?

[Lung]

Now that we know what civs will have which attributes, we can see which civs have the best abilities! The list can be found here

It's hard to say, but i reckon expansionist and scientific are looking to be the most important. That said, the Russians are looking tough to beat!

[Buck Birdseed]

I think Religious and Industrious seem to be the best. The Egyptians are likely to be good, therefore.

[Urban Ranger]

I say they each have their advantages so your strategy must be adjusted accordingly. If you are expansionist you'll look forward to an early conquering campaign. This is esp. true if you are also militaristic (the Zulus). On the other hand commerical, scientific, or industrious are good for a long term plan. Religious seems somewhat weak.

[Buck Birdseed]

I don't think religious is that weak. The reduced cost of religious improvements is going to be very important both for happiness and culture. The other ability can be used to great effect tactically, ie. quickly switching to communism in time of war and then back to democracy.

[Urban Ranger]

The reduced building cost is nice, but it seems that the Industrious gets "Workers work faster," which seems to be an overall reduction in building costs. Unless that refers to the "worker" unit type.

As for the other benefit, namely switching quickly between forms of government, you still need to wait for various forms of governments to be discovered first, unlike the Pyramid in Civ 1. It's nice, but fairly limited.

[Buck Birdseed]

"Workers work faster" I assume refers to the worker unit. I still think Industrious is the strongest, though.

[TechWins]

I think Religious and Industrious are the two best. With religious you automatically get ceremonial burial. Which means you will be able to expand your cultural borders faster, leading to getting resources fast while possibly not having to build a colony. Religious might enable you not to have to build a colony early on. [I'm not using my biased views towards colonies]. The industrious will really help out production a lot.

I think a dangerous combination would be industrious, militariastic, and commerce. You would be able to build your units fast, then your units would be powerful, and you will have more money to spend on more units. Now that seems to be a difficult combo to stop.

All you people looking to get a very big challenge when you play the game here's a good way to do so. For this example you can change whatever civ you're going to be in this challenge forehand. You have decided to be the Romans, now go to the rules and set the Romans as receiving no civ abilities. Then set all the other civs as receiving all civ abilities. Play this on the deity level. When you first start out the game disband your free worker that you get and only keep your free settler. That should be a decent challenge, even though we haven't played the game yet.

[Lung]

Ouch! You masochist, you!! I suppose you will do that on deity, will you?!

[Urban Ranger]

While we are at it, we might as well limit ourselves to one city. As an added challenge you are limited to only one military units

[Urban Ranger]

While we are at it, we might as well limit ourselves to one city. As an added challenge you are limited to only one military unit.

[Warm Beer]

Wow, at this posting, no votes for militaristic... interesting, i figured there would be more war mongers.

Scientific is my choice for #1...commercial may be a neat combiniation w/ science. Greeks, for instance, get increased trade lower corruption and cheap science improvements... thats all good unless they start nex to the Zulus
(yes, i know i posted this in a different thead)

[Brad]

1. industrious
2. scientific
3. religious
4. commercial
5. militristic
6. expansionist

[Gramphos]

I think Industrious and Scientific is the best...

Oh no, I've to play with China

[ancient]

there all very good, but it just depends how how you play, im usually a pacifist so religion/industrial sounds good to me (egypt) i probably wont be playing militaristicly so x all of them of the list.. china with industrial/scientific sounds like a very good combo because you could have a advanced science and the industry to back it up... so defending myself and building tech improvements wouldnt be hard..

[cyril25376]

When you are a warmonger I think, miliitaristic and industrious is the best combination.
But when you like a more peaceful way, as I do, the combination of Commercial and industrious is the best.

[General Ludd]

I voted for scientific, though it's hard to say with out playing the game, and espeically with out knowing how easy different resources will be to come by and what not, and also how the different goverments affect you.

I think they are all pretty well rounded and balanced, though.

And as mentioned earlier, don't mistake 'workers work faster' for 'faster production' they are deffinately refering to the worker unit. an increase in overall production would be an insanely huge advantage.

[Dauphin]

The long term beneficial effects will probably be the ones to go for.

As an observation; Expansionists will have a good start but then fade away as the benefits are very short term. Religous, militaristic and scientific regimes require active use and will only benefit those who apply their advantage to the max. IMO Commercial and Industrious are the best (especially for the uninitiated) as they will be giving benefit 100% of the time with no thought required.

[General Ludd]

As an observation; Expansionists will have a good start but then fade away as the benefits are very short term.

But the early advantage they get will influence the rest of the game, any experienced player will tell you that the early turns are more often then not the most important for deciding which countries become the most powerful, expansionists will potentialy have a much larger empire then others and much quicker, resulting in more trade, luxuries, resources, people, technology and probably everything else.

Also, don't forget that settlers reduce the population of a city by 2 now(correct me if I'm wrong), which makes this advantage that much better.

[Sun Zi 36]

The only info about the attributes I have is the table from the civ3 site (they have listed the 2 effects for each attribute there). I would think industrious and scientific is the best, which is the Chinese, also the civilization I use most often in civ2.

I think all the reduce improvement costs effects (military, scientific and religious) are moderately useful. Depends how much is reduced or are there much more improvements of the particular type than in civ2.

More likely battlefield promotions (military) are not that useful bcos u can build barracks pretty cheaply unless they change this in civ3 or unless they mean likely by like 3 times normal.

I don't think lower corruption (commercial) is useful either if in civ3 they keep it pretty fast to get Monarchy or Republic which then doesn't take a long time until u get communsim as well. This drags down the commercial attribute bcos more commerce in city centre is rather useful.

The attributes for Expansionist I think is the least useful. How much does the barbarian villages normally affect your game in civ2? And the one scout to start with I don't think would affect the game a lot. It's better for them to change it to something like less food support for settlers or settlers porduction cost reduced or faster populatin growth. But then I guess they should make some attributes a bit less useful than others so the game is not perfectly balanced. There should be some superior civilizations.

A random tech each new age (scientific) is more than moderately useful. that means 4 free technologies. Twice the wonder of Darwin's voyage in civ2 (although it was not random).

I don't think no Anarchy between gov's (religious) is useful bcos the Anarchy normally is pretty short. And with the new technology (nationalism) you can mobilse your country for war so there might be even less urge to change govs.

Lastly, industrious effects. Workers work faster to me is very useful. Builds irrigation, mines, roads faster contributes to your cities and your civ overall. And more production in city centre is about as useful as more commerce in city centre. But one thing is that productivity might not be as important bcos you can now moblize with nationalism, so I have to play to be sure of the effect.

By the way, I didn't analyse the starting techs bcos i think they are not that influecial as each civ start with 2 out of 6 of them anyway and can research them pretty easily.

To summarise: (attribute: effect 1/ effect2)
militaristic: moderately useful/ not that useful;
commercial: useful/not useful
expansionist: not useful/ not useful
scientific: useful/ useful
religious: useful/ not useful
industrious: useful/useful

So I conclude that scientific and industrious are the best.