Analysis of Civilization Strengths (long)

[David Weldon]

First, a brief comment about play styles: My own style is based on timing, not on a particular focus and therefore I have experienced military, political, cultural, and technological situations and victories. As a result, I believe that my analysis is useful and accurate regardless of a player's particular interests. I play Monarch or Emperor on standard or small maps generally, so there may be certain hidden aspects of tiny maps that I am not familiar with.

In rough order of importance (imho):


Commercial
==========
This is a dominating strength. The bonus trade in city home squares is cute but essentially useless, but reduced corruption is supremely powerful. This can allow small cities to produce 2 instead of 1 (due to corruption), which equals the benefits of religious or military strengths (as far as building improvements quickly is concerned). It allows large empires to outproduce other large empires and therefore secure all wonders, a larger military, and more culture than other civs. It allows more net trade, leading to increased science which allows you to start the wonders before other civs, and also to dominate militarily because of better units. Later, increased production due to the ability to instantly buy necessary units and city improvements is extremely valuable. (e.g. In the late medieval age on monarch I was producing enough gold to buy a temple and a cathedral on consecutive turns in any new village that I founded).

Of course, most the advantages here apply to larger civs, not just ones that are "commercial", but I have found that this strength has nearly the biggest impact on the game of any strength (save, perhaps, industrial).


Industrial
=========
This is also a dominating strength. The extra production is again a joke, but the increased worker rate is huge. Most bonuses in CivIII are +50%, but Industrial workers work _twice_ as fast as normal workers. Captured workers (which are completely free of upkeep costs) work as fast for Industrial civs as normal workers do for other civs! (great for slave drivers out there...) This alone allows one's entire unit allowance (or money expense) to be used for military units, leading to a larger military for those of you that like to kick ass first, and then ask diplomatically for those 5 tech advances in exchange for peace... The quicker development allows for larger cities which then yield all of the benefits of "Commercial", except for small towns and their temple build.


Religious
=========
This can be very useful. I don't believe it is quite as useful as Industrial and Commercial, but definitely good. Changing governments quickly is nice, but not necessary. Losing a total of 10 turns on two changes of government is not critical over the course of a full game. I have no problem pursuing war under a Republic because of all the happy wonders and city improvements I am able to build due to the other two strengths, so there is no need to switch back and forth. The half price temples are very useful, but if you can go from 1 to 2 shields thanks to less corruption, that has the same effect (granted this doesn't happen in every new town, but pretty close). Half price Cathedrals are cute, but not important due to the amount of money and production available by the time they can be built. I have had decent results with this strength, and in all I think it is a close third.


Militaristic
===========
This is not very useful for waging war. Anyone that thinks wars are won with their armies can get in line with the Germanic barbarians and Iraq (to name a few from very different eras). Wars are won with technology. I don't care how many _elite_ knights you have if I'm coming at them with infantry. Building barracks at half price is not useful compared to the extra production of Commercial and Industrial. Additional leaders are nice, but with the rule change so that armies are permanent once loaded, early armies are again useless in the face of superior technology. Everyone would like a leader to establish a victorious army, but non-Militaristic civs will normally get one anyway by the time they have infantry or tanks (wonderful points at which to take advantage of superior technology and do some stomping). If there were even more leaders produced, then their ability to help build wonders that you are late to start might be extremely useful. However, I have only received two leaders in the same game once, and that was with a non-militaristic civ! The larger army allowed under Industrial (due to less support for workers), and the greater tech and production of Commercial (and Industrial, indirectly) are more useful for waging war than being Militaristic. Remember: wars with equal tech units are a bad idea, period. (now, quick ambushes to secure additional cities, that's a different matter, and it doesn't require Militaristic...)

Overall this can at least be useful in the right circumstances, but it is a very round-about way to increase production of wonders, and the first three strengths seem to be clearly superior.


Expansionist
===========
Almost completely useless. Scouts are nifty for about 50 turns, and then the rest of the game they can be replaced with diplomacy or superior production allowing _more_ units to explore. Better goody huts is simply comical. Remember, the game lasts for more than 6 millennia!


Scientific
==========
I believe this is the worst strength. Half price libraries, universities, research labs, etc... and one extra advance per age are not nearly the equal of the extra science allowed via reduced corruption in Commercial or by quicker growth in Industrial civs. At least Militaristic (more leaders) and Expansionist (scouts and huts) have advantages that can't be better produced by a different strength. This is just completely eclipsed by either Industrial or Commercial.



OK, that's it for civilization strengths, of course a particular civ also has to factor in its unique unit and the timing of its Golden Age, but those are different things that I won't go into here. I'm not arguing for or against any particular civ, I would rather discuss the impact of the various civilization strengths individually. Essentially it seems that the intended benefits of four of the strengths can be duplicated or sometimes even bettered by the indirect benefits of the two "infrastructure" strengths.

I suppose you can at least use the different quality strengths to handicap yourself without having to be subjected to the incredible cheating of the more "difficult" A.I. levels.

[Pyrodrew]

Anyone curious to look at (or vote on) the Civilization Strength Bonuses Poll can go to the following link...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=31625

It is in the Civ3-Civilization Forum.

[Howling Chip]

David, thanks for the concise post. Its hard to make time for reading the game manual and strategy guide since I am playing so much. Reading your post quickly gave me another widget of insight into how the game works. Will take this info (which I am printing out) into consideration when I start my next game.

[Farmer]

Thanks for that info, David, very useful. I've put a link to it in our forums, as long as you don't mind.

[Grundel]

Very interesting how you broke down the various strenghts and weaknesses of each civ attribute. However, I also beleive that attribute strength (militaristic, expansionists, etc...) value is dependant much on your play style.

[KoalaBear33]

I haven't tried all the civilizations yet but I think scientific should be placed above expansionist. The only way expansionist can be any good is if you play small maps or one large continent.

KoalaBear33

[David Weldon]

Thanks for the positive feedback folks.

Farmer: I don't mind at all if you link to this thread.

Koala:
I won't squabble with you over Scienctific vs. Expansionist. They are both vastly less useful than any of the others. It surprises me that in the poll (when I checked it) Scientific was rated third.

Grundel:
Most likely you might choose one strength over another based on your desired play style (and therefore the order could certainly be different), but I would like to think that the comments and discussion about each strength is relatively independant of play style. Having said that, the reason I posted was to begin a discussion and see if others' experiences were similar to mine or not.

For you guys printing and linking and things, remember that these are only my opinions, they are certainly influenced by my own perceptions and shouldn't be used as any kind of proxy for the manual or civilopedia.

[Enigma]

In my opinion the lower corruption of Commecial is big, but the increased worker building of Industrious is HUGE!

I just played with my first Industrious Civ (The Americans) and and was *amazed* by the increased production!

As far rush buying, one word for you David-

LUMBERJACKING!

Should be quite easy really... I have no problem replacing population points since I can irrigate my empire so quickly.
I love industrious- road networks are very big in this game. Being able to get your railroad network working quickly makes an enourmous difference! An industrious civ running Democracy with Replacable Parts can build railroads in 1 turn! And once you are done with your workers you can put them back into cities.

I think that the extra cash you get from being commercial and having lower corruption isn't much larger than 10%, but I have quite noticable production changes in the early game with Industrious.

Scientific/Religious I lump together: these are the Culture Monger traits, both have one nice lower build cost trait, and then one sucky trait (IMHO I think Religion might be slightly better, I like switching between democracy and communism)

I like your points about the benefit of a good economy- unfortunatly I have never gotten a very good economy in this game. Unless I put more than 50% of my commerce into wealth I usually don't do too well, without selling techs to other civs.

I think the decreased barrack cost for militaristic isn't bad, but they are so cheap anyways it is nowhere near as good as a decreased cost Cathedral- 70 mins right there. I do now know how large the promotion bonus is...

Expansionist.... will take more analysis before we can figure out how good it is. The early techs and scout can allow you to be a tech trader between civs in the early game, find out where they are, expand towards any valuable flood plain tiles near them. This is of course drastically affected by map size: I can't imagine the difference in goodies from the goodie huts to be all that major when you only find 2 of them. But I found 6 as the US last game, recieved 50 gold, 2 techs, maps, and a military unit. The techs combined with earlier contact with other civs allowed me to be a tech broker in the early game. Plus I sucessfully contained the Iroquis through expansion, in this game where the AI is so aggressive containment is important. Now I am in the industrial age in this game, and because of my containment the Iroquis took 4 turns to conquer.

From now on every civ I play will be industrious, when I want to conquer the roads are amazing, for a builder being able to bring Irrigation to otherwise dry areas is AMAZING! I only wish there were really worker intense terraforming you could do like the Boreholes in SMAC- I loved seeing the 6 mins and 7 energy coming from one tile! The industrious bonus is good in the early game for building wonders, and in the mid-late game for building railroads FAST!

Now I would rank them-
1.Industrious
2.Commerical
3.Religious
4.Scientific
5.Militaristic
6.Expansionist

[Executor]

I knew from the start that commercial and industrious would be the two best attributes for a civ, which is why all my games have been using the French.

[Monoriu]

Given the way corruption works in this game, the commercial trait is a must. It also depends on your style and difficulty level. I suspect that those of us who:

a. Only allow for conquest victories
b. Like to build a lot of cities at the start
c. Play on standard or smaller maps

find the commercial trait absolutely essential.

The question is what to choose for the second trait. I agree with David that expansionist and militaristic are useless. Scientific is nice, but clearly inferior to industrious and religious. For me, the choice is between industrious and religious.

Industrious: the biggest advantage is the 2x faster workers. This is a big advantage, but is it really that big? Workers are cheap to produce. It costs a population point but population growth is seldom a problem for me. Most of my earlier to mid game cities are either stuck at 6 pop. or 12 pop., so they can afford to waste a lot of pop. points. So the bottom line is, lack of workers is never a problem for me. If I want to get the improvement fast, I just send 4-6 workers to finish the job.

Religious: The half priced temples is a big advantage. Temples are usually among the first few things I build, due to culture and happiness. In ancient era when my cities only turn out 3-4 shields per turn getting a temple twice as fast is a serious advantage in the most important race in the game: the land grab race. I can grab more land by extending my borders early on, and get more cities that way. Eliminating the periods of anarchy is also a big advantage, especially in the early game when every turn counts.

I am really not sure which one is better. For now I think they are tied.

I have only played two games so far. First time I (mistakenly) played an industrious and scientific civ (I like to play custom built civs). After I found out how corruption works I restarted and played a commercial and religious civ and so far I don't regret my choice. Next time I will probably play commercial and industrious. I may change my opinion after that

[Enigma]

I like the Persians UU (one of the few with increased *offense*, increased defense is rather redundant in this game) so right now I am torn between playing my next game as the French or the Persians.

I am in the Modern age as the Americans, started on a continent with the Iroqouis, the French, and the Aztecs. The Aztecs started in the middle of a jungle and took forever to expand. I found the Iroquis quickly and hemmed them in with my expansion. The French managed to grab a huge amount of land with sexy resources.

Aztecs west and to my north, Iroquis south and a bit west, French Southwest. I have a coastline on my east, the other continent has the Romans on the northernmost part on a medium sized chunk of land, the Egyptians below them, the Greeks below them, and the Germans in a mountainous area in the far south.

The Iroqouis and French allyed against me in the early game, but didn't really dent my defenses, they both lost interest in the fight quickly. Then around the longbowman/musketeer era I built huge amounts of longbowmen and musketeers and took a lot of land from the Iroquis. The French just get bigger and bigger this entire time. I never have any iron until I take some from the Aztecs, they lose interest in the war quickly too. France has about 2 times as many productive cities as I have, but I managed to save up and invade her in the late industrial age, she was taking the tech lead but bribed me to stop fighting her. 20 years later I get tanks and destroy her, the aztecs, and the Iroquis. At first I keep the bases, but they all give me 1 shield and 1 commerce, so I turn em all into workers.

So there is a continent that is 2/3's empty... the corruption is wacky.

Now the Greeks, Germans, and Romans are allied against me, I am about to land 24 modern armors on their continent, hopefully before they complete the space race.

Industrious is quite big to me, you can get by with fewer workers, and it adds a lot to defense: you can crank out the forts. The extra mins aren't all that bad either. And when you get railroads it means you can be the first kid on the block marching them fancy new riflemen around. Captured workers are quite useful with industrious.