Vote for Weakest/Strongest Civ Bonuses

[Pyrodrew]

Religious
Expansionist
Commercial
Industrious
Militaristic
Scientific

Which one(s) are the most powerful?

I'm curious how balanced the various Civ Bonuses everyone thinks are (especially given some recent posts about excessive corruption). Just want an accurate reading, so please only vote if you've *played* the game.

Select any you want. Select only 1 if you believe that 1 is extremely better than the other 5. Select all 6 if you believe they are equally balanced.

Thanks.

[player1]

Favotive:
Commercial - look at the threads about corruption
Expansinistic - I like to get many huts with free settlers (you can also build that fast scout for 10 shields)

VERY Good:
Industrial - Excellent bonus, if I don't wan't to chose commerce, I would chose this bonus

Good:
but not as inustious - scientific

Average:
Militaristic: not my gameplay style

Weak:
Religious: Give cheap religous buildings. Ok, they give culture but scientific buildings give culture also + science benefit, Government chages are not my startegy type

[Pyrodrew]

bump

[Insigna]

Personaly i think they were balanced very well.
Expansionist might be week in the long run.

[player1]

Originally posted by Insigna
Personaly i think they were balanced very well.
Expansionist might be week in the long run.

In the longer run, you will have +50% more cities because of good start.
In the longer run both scientific & Religious are not much (you build improvments cheaper, after that, NOTHING)

Only Industrious & Commerce are both VERY GOOD in long & short run.

And I also thnik that they are balanced very well, exept maybe Religious.

[KrazyHorse]

Regarding Scientific: I just love the bonus tech in each new age. Plus, cheap libraries are a good way to get culture fast.

[Dimension]

double-post

[Dimension]

Strongest:
- Industrious
- Commercial

Average:
- Religious
- Scientific

Weakest:
- Expansionist
- Militaristic

The +1 shields in every city and faster workers makes Industrious far better than any other ability except Commercial, and as far as Commercial is concerned, the decreased corruption is much more useful than the +1 commerce in every city. That said, I don't think Industrious + Commercial makes the Persians the strongest civilization by any stretch. Even with the reduced corruption, Industrious is still probably much better than Commercial. Getting a fast start is the most important thing in Civ3, and +1 shields and faster workers is much better in the first few turns than +1 commerce and reduced corruption.

Religious/Scientific are obviously good because of the cost reduction of important buildings that you should have in almost every city. Of course, if you're talking about religious buildings, you should change "should have" to "desperately need," especially on higher difficulties. The secondary "statue of liberty" effect isn't very important, but half-price temples more than makes up for that. Scientific isn't nearly as good as most people would've expected at first--it's certainly not as good as having +2 research was in SMAC. It's certainly nice having cheap libraries and universities, but it's not like your research costs less beakers. Bronze Working is the free tech you get with Scientific, and that's certainly nice being able to start on The Colossus early, but you can probably research Bronze Working with any non-Scientific civ before you would want to start working on the wonder anyway.

Expansionist and Militaristic are lame, and the benefits they give are more of a minor convenience and certainly don't affect the game in the way the other advances do. Nobody's going to build a barracks in every city. Your average player IS going to build multiple Religious/Scientific buildings in almost every city, making those bonuses several times better. Faster experience is certainly nice, and I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you upgrade a lot of units, but you'd be hard-pressed to adopt a strategy in which that was more useful than any of the other bonuses. Everybody seems to think it's great being able to run their 0/0 scouts through enemy terriroty, but seeing as you have to wait till a city is size 3 to produce a settler, you're not going to have any problem finding the perfect base site just doing a little exploring with your warriors.

Keep in mind that these are my current opinions, and I haven't even finished a full game yet, so I'm sure I'll change my mind about most of it

Anyway, at this point I think that the Greeks and the Egyptians are much stronger than the other civilizations. The Greeks' 1/3 special unit, available at the very beginning of the game, is ridiculously powerful. Commercial + Science + an amazing defensive unit make the Greeks great for a builder-style game, and they're probably the best civlization to play for your first few games on lower difficulties while you're getting the hang of Civ3. The Egyptians are even better, though, especially on higher difficulties. Religious + Industrious means that they build their temples faster than any other civilization, and they have a great special unit that will let you go on the offensive very early. You can capture a few cities very early and also get your golden age early for a very fast start. The Greeks/Egyptians not only have really good bonuses and special units, but they complement each other perfectly.

I would like to be able to justify playing the Americans, but Expansionist isn't very good, and F-15's are awful... They're just fighters with better bombardment ability, and bombardment is nearly useless (see the thread on bombardment).

[player1]

Do you know difference between Civ2 games, with one settler against player with 2 starting settlers.
Player with 2 settlers alsost ALWAYS WINS.

Expansionistic: getting better stuff from barbarian villages <==> settler very early, even maybe before capitol gets 2 pop, and possbility for similar thnig to happen later.
With that kind of start, no kind of non-Exp. player can catch him, easily (if ever).

Americans are excellent civ, together with English, they are best expansionistic civs. (more infastructice or less corruprion, both importatnt for HUGE empires).

Other interesting civs are French, Persians & Greeks (for science geeks)

Still since I don't like playing FEMALE leaders or AMERICANS I would probably play Persians or Greeks (and maybe those later).

[Dimension]

Yes, getting an extra settler or advanced tribe early would be nice, but I'm not convinced that expansionists have a very significant improvement in what they find in huts.

You would have to get VERY lucky with huts to have any hope of convincing anybody that your expansionist huts helped you more than having one of the other bonuses would have.

For example, think of how many turns are in a game... About 400. Then think of how many cities you have in a game... 1 at the beginning, and maybe around 30-50 by the very end. Your average turn has around 20 cities, so over the course of the game, being Industrious would give you 8000 shields, or Commercial would give you 8000 commerce.

To put that in perspective, building ALL the Great Wonders in the game takes 13,800 shields, and the average advance takes under 1000 science. This is HUGE, not even considering the benefit of lower corruption or faster workers, which Industrious/Commercial give you.

Also, think about how much time in the average game you spend building Temples (60 shields), Libraries (80 shields), Cathedrals (140 shields), and Universities/Research Labs (160 each). Given that a pure ICS strategy is dead in Civ3, you have to build at the very least a Temple in every city, even if you're being increadibly aggressive and trading for most of your tech, and most people would have Temples and Cathedrals in every city by the end of the game.

So, again putting things into perspective, that means being Religious has saved you 4000 shields of production, and being Scientific has potential to save you 4800 if you build Universities in all your cities, and much more of you start building Labs. This makes Religious/Scientific both pretty impressive, without considering the "Statue of Liberty" effect or the bonus tech effect, or the fact that building these facilities faster gives you a big boost in culture.

Maybe being an expansionist civ will give you an extra settler that you wouldn't have gotten as fast popping huts with a warrior, but it just can't compare to the other bonuses.

[player1]

In fact guys from Firaxis stated that that bonus from barabarian villages isn't really low as some people think.

And something regarding Religious & Scientific:
-AFTER you build those improvments, you won't get anything extra, exept some boost for age of buildings (culture)

Also scouts can give you a very quick expansion. You can take many huts, even those near other players. Also early contact will give you bonus in excanging Techs.

Anyway this bonus is risky, since if you start on Island...
It is for those players who like to risk.

But if you start on lange contiunent, your early expansion could be of great value.

Also with early expansion you can get as much land as possibile & limit other players for gaining land for cities (AI does the same).

Anyway if you are lucky, other players won't cach up you in the future.

Conclusion:
Expansionist ability isn't weak as some people think, but also it doesn't mean it's the best. The point is that all abilities need to be balanced (and I think that they are good balanced).


P.S.
My preferences are towards pecafull game and early expansion, so my favorite bonuses are Expansionistic, Industrial (big empires need infastructure) & Commercial (less corruption for big nation).

Scientific bonus is OK.

Bonuses I don't like much are Militaristic (I am peacfull player) & Religious
(dynamic government switching isn't my style of game & culture boost for being Scientific is beter option than that for Religious, at the end you get extra science).

That doesn't mean that other bonuses are bad, I only prefer those bonuses in my style of play.

[player1]

Also by gaining early more cities & land, you'll also save MANY production points, because of GREATER population.
Of course, because of corruption, it doesn't mean you should expand through all the game. But early expansion is VERY IMPORTANT (in civ2 it decided the winner).

[Dimension]

I never said expansionist wasn't nice... just that anybody is going to focus on exploration and hut-popping, whether it's with warriors or scouts. Obviously the speed of the scout is nice, but if you DO find a barb hut, they're 0/0, which isn't so nice.

You're really downplaying the Religious bonus--it's certainly better than the few extra techs that Scientific gets. Producing Science in turns that would normally be anarchy means you're essentially getting at least a couple free techs, too, not to mention the fact that you get any production or money in anarchy, either.

The way war weariness works in Civ3 makes Religious extremely powerful, especially now that the Statue of Liberty doesn't exist. You can be an aggressive player while still using Democracy most of the time, because you can just change governments when your troops enter enemy territory. Other civlizations have to be VERY careful when waging war. You have to either 1) spend a lot of time in anarchy, 2) stay out of Democracy for long periods of time during the mid-game, or 3) just not play aggressively and wage very careful, short military campaigns.

Not playing aggressively is very much an option. If you're playing a defensive science-focused game with the Greeks, you're not going to miss the Religious bonus much. You're not doing a lot of conquering, and once you build temples/cathedrals in your main cities, you're done. For a lot of players, though, the Religious bonus is terribly important. Even in the late game, it's great to switch to Communism, take over a few cities, switch back to Democracy, and quickly build temples/cathedrals.

[Leonid]

Something that needs to be mentioned is the value of expansionist is greatly enhanced or devalued depending on the type of map you like to play on.

If you like large Pangea maps with little water than expansionist is possibly the most valuable of them all. Flip side is if you like playing archapalgeo then it is worthless ofcourse.

[Leonid]

Speaking of war weariness has anyone been able to gauge the effectivness of universal suffrage? Its supposed to decrease war weariness. I wonder if a democracy can easily start wars and fight wars with that wonder as if you were in communism. If that is so then religious is greatly devalued, since you don't ever need to switch to communism for military campaigns. So most will only ever have one or two states of anarchy the entire game. Despot to Monarch and Monarch to Democracy.

Food for thought. I guess religion is LAST in effectivness then.

[Dimension]

There are a LOT of turns before you can build Sufferage.

I find it pretty annoying how ambiguous war weariness is. Isn't there a gauge anywhere? I'm having some trouble with it right now in a game I'm playing. There's only one Roman city left that's a major production center I'm trying to take over, but war weariness is becoming a real problem.

I'm not playing a religious civilization, so I don't really want to switch back to Monarchy just to take over once city, but my cities keep having disorder. Currently, I don't even have any units outside my city, but my cities still just went into disorder because I'm still officially at war with the Romans, and the Romans refuse to talk to me so I can't end the war.

[player1]

If you have warrior or even Speramen, Getting barabrains in huts won't help you.

And possibility of gettin gbarbarins in huts is greatly reduced for Expansionistic civs.

Anyway, as I said, this ability is for players wich like to risk.
If you are lucky, you can easyly become BEST CIV in the game.
But, if you are unlucky, others civ will make better because of their other bonuses.

And don't forget, beweare of Expansionistic neghbours, thet'll get all of yours huts (instead of you).

[Martinus]

I don't think Religious CSA is as bad as some people find it. In particular, with my cultural/perfectionist style, I found it pretty handy several times. Not only I build temples faster in my bordering towns, allowing for cultural expansion (I usually get more cities through this way than by founding them with my settlers), it is very useful when you have a "peaceful" government and you are suddenly attacked by another civ (especially when you have nationalism).

Then, a quicke change to Monarchy/Communism, while drafting units for defence, may be pretty useful.

I also like Industrious CSA very much - it helps to build everything even quicker.

All in all, with my style I would probably find Militaristic and Expansionistic least useful - but that's my style.

[Pyrodrew]

*bump*

[mharmless]

I voted for all but expansionist, which I feel could use a boost. Now, to defend my favorite trait of all, Militaristic:

Expansionist and Militaristic are lame, and the benefits they give are more of a minor convenience and certainly don't affect the game in the way the other advances do. Nobody's going to build a barracks in every city. Your average player IS going to build multiple Religious/Scientific buildings in almost every city, making those bonuses several times better. Faster experience is certainly nice, and I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you upgrade a lot of units, but you'd be hard-pressed to adopt a strategy in which that was more useful than any of the other bonuses.

First off, barracks aren't the only cheap building. you get 10 sheild walls, and half price airports & harbors. Further, I quite frankly DO build barracks in every town, which will lead us nicely into the strategy that makes militaristic the most potent bonus:

Conquer the entire world

I build settlers and warriors, explore as usual right off. Build cities in nice locations (hills are a must, ocean or river access nice as well). City overlap is not much of a concern, although it is considered. City build order at the begining is focused on more settlers, and barracks are built while waiting on a city to get sufficent pop to push out annother settler. With a 20 sheild cost on the barracks, most early cities can have it done in 7-10 turns.

Upon first contact with annother civ, expansion is slowed or halted. Tax rate is set to 10% science 90% gold. City build queue are switched to ensure they have temple, barracks, and walls. Forced labor is used to hasten these constructions. The moment a city has all three, it is moved to building units. For this early conquest, labor is forced to spawn units when the city is at size 2.

Useing the massive army just constructed, and split into groups of 4-6, crush one to three cities of your neighboor. With each city, occupy it with most of your army to stop dissent. First build a temple, and the moment the city stops resisting use forced labor to build the temple. POOF two population gone. Force walls, then force barracks. Now you have reduced a jewel of their empire into a veteran unit produceing Thrall that will never put up a fight again.

After the first one to three cities are seized, sue for peace. Only accept if they will give you all their tech and money. Try for a city while you are at it, but it isn't essential. During the peace, keep the millitary production going. Keep useing forced labor, keep the populations low. Once you have secured the cities thru forced labor and you are able to adequately protect them, declare war again and seize more cities as above. Sue for peace as above, repeat untill your continent is cleansed.

You should have galleys and a vast number of cities by this point. Build lots of galleys useing forced labor, but allow your inner cities to develop up some. Forbiden pallace should usualy be build in the most central location possible in your home land, the real palace will be moved later. If a city is suffering less than 50% corruption, then develop it. If it is suffering more than 50%, keep it small and use it as no more than a unit farm. If you can't afford more units, then use these cities to generate wealth untill you lose some armies. Do NOT build more improvments. Temple, Barracks, Walls, Harbors (only if you need it to get the population to grow or you plan to designate the city as a naval powerhouse), and that is it for these corrupt cities.

Throw these galleys out there, it is irrelevant if you lose some. You are looking for land, any you can find. You need contact, badly. If you find uninhabited land, settle it. Minimal cities, as above. If you are fortunate you will find a civ near you that galleys can reach. If it looks bad, focus the science toward astronomy and start on the great lighthouse (most games I have a great leader sitting arround (thanks to militaristic) whom is expended at this point to instant build my lighthouse). Keep building galleys and armies. When the time comes you can upgrade them to caravels.

Once you have a target you can reach, flood him. You should have 60+ offensive units at this point, and the means to deliver them all in two trips. Occupy his cities just like you did to the other guy. Flood them with more units than the population, then begin killing off the people with forced labor. You can turn even great cities like Athans or Paris into little more than living cemeteries cranking out more and more offensive units.

You may need to build a couple of harbors in the first cities you take, in order to bring home needed resources or to get your iron to the colonies.

After takeing several cities (preferably at once), get a favorable peace just like you did on the other contient. Bring over more and more troops, the flood should be non stop. After suppressing the captured cities, take some more. Repeat till you acheive a domination victory, or military victory if domination was disabled.

Offensive, always offensive. Take more and more, sign peace treaties only to keep yourself on par technologicaly. You will win thru vast armies of elite units and your wonders will all come from the great leaders you generate in combat. Corruption will be immense, but you will stay a despot the entire game in order to keep those cities small and managable with forced labor. If you haven't won by the time you have communism, switch goverments then and berate yourself for being slow.

Tacticaly, your actions depend on the types of units you have available. I prefer to use mixed armies of offensive and defensive units, and include a couple of fast units for the sole use of cutting roads and isolateing cities and resources. I tend to ignore catapults, although if the game isn't over by the advent of cannons I will begin deploying them with the infantry. Rivers are important locations, particulary in the ancient world. that 25% bonus when defending across one is huge, try to avoid attacking a city accross a river. Cross first, then attack next turn.

Key wonders are the Lighthouse, the Pyramids, and the Heroic Epic. Usualy I take pyramids from sombody else and build the lighthouse if I need it. Pyramids almost double the rate at which you pop out units, so very important, but you can get by without it if you have to. Seize them as soon as possible. First leader should make an army, and you should win a battle with it ASAP. Then get the heroic epic done as a top priority. All other wonders will probably end up derived from the leaders you get in the game. If you have no pressing use for a leader, move the capitol with it, preferably into the middle of a decent continent. Record for me so far was eight leaders, and I used two to move the palace that game.

The vast majority of games end before the industrial age even has a chance to start. I have not lost a single game at Regent while employing this strategy.