NOT the most OP civ, or strongest civ. What is the best designed civ? It depends I guess how you define this. I define it as a civ that most accurately reflects any given player’s skill level. If you are skilled at the game, you will win often with the civ; if you are bad at the game, you will lose often. There are other ways to define this term as well which I would be interested to hear. I think most people probably agree that the worst designed civs are ones that are either “lame”, or civs that are just overly complex and therefore difficult to use.
To me, a civ like Ports is poorly designed, because it always seems to be either the S tier best civ in the game, or a C-D tier civ that is very weak, depending on what the current patch is. It is hard to buff certain areas of the civ without making other areas way too strong.
For me the answer is Japan. They are easy to learn, have very distinct unique units and buildings and cool mechanics without getting overwhelming or super gimmicky. In fact, I would say that they are so well designed that makes everybody else look bad by comparison.
Disagree about Japan, it’s clearly a civ that is lopsided in its design in that for many civs, the only way to beat it is to rush. You just have to rush every game or it’s an auto-lose against a player who knows what they are doing. That’s poor civ design.
france is deff not the best designed faction, it is too open, it gets too powerful the later the game is and it has 1 of the strongest combos in the game and upgrades for pretty much every single units.
I think African civilizations are very well designed. I’m starting to play Hausa and I can say that it is one of the best civilizations in the game.
Livestock mechanics are very versatile, as they can be used for practically any economic approach, and Hausa even more so with the bonus of a free cow per shipment.
I don’t know Ethiopian, but Hausa doesn’t seem too complex to me. It also doesn’t have strange unpredictable tricks like Mexico or construction orders that are difficult for the opponent to predict, so in this aspect it doesn’t differ much from the most standard civilizations in the game.
Ethiopia is much more frustrating to play than hausa, MM offers a solid influence income but it is at the cost of gold gather rate and not just automatic like from hausa universities. Your influence from cattle is also lower as you’ll have none unless you buy them while hausa gets them passively replacing those you sell.
It is a weird civ because with abuns and free MM from age up you actually have an incredible gold eco it is just much more micro intensive than hausa and imo difficult to balance gold/influence incomes. Another downside is lack of light infantry before fortress age and it is hard to know whether buying cows is worth it and when it is best to do so for trading cattle and influence generation.
Hausa and Ethiopia is night and day. Hausa feels very streamlined and fun to play while Ethiopia is clunky and feels like either a massive struggle or you’re using an exploit to win. They’ve got short windows with large power spikes like early age 3 and they’re busted when there’s zero early pressure like in treaty. But they also have huge gaps in their roster in age 2 and their safe MM run out around the same time as you need to transition to Fields which are very tedious and annoying so your whole economy basically goes to shit in late age 3.
Since the game came out in 2007, the CIV has always been the most versatile, adaptable, with a very decent economy with the coureour des bois, and very decent units [Skirmisher + Cav + Cannon].
All in all it currently remains as the best civ in my opinion.
thank you, this is my thoughts exactly. mountain monasteries feel like a handicap more than a bonus, cows run out and impossible to replace without dumping a shipment of livestock into it. the cows have to be paid for using mountain monasteries which, oop, are again pretty much a handicap. Your eco is tedious and your roster is either all in totally crushing a fight or just getting walked over. I do not enjoy Ethiopia. Hausa is a tremendously fun civ to play (now) and has been balanced to roughly the right power level.
They really don’t have viable heavy cav in age 2. Shotels are slow, and have low base attack so they’re garbage for raiding which is a primary use of age 2 cav. They basically are only good at killing light infantry now.
They have xbows, but that means you have to go Portugal to age up and you still have to buy a tech first. If you go Sudan you aren’t going to have enough influence to sustain Dervishes for long. The other options like the early skirm card have poor opportunity cost and Desert Archers are extremely pop inefficient now. No matter how you go, there’s one or more extra steps to get basic units everyone has by default. And if you don’t do that then you have no counter to a heavy infantry rush.
i have to disagree, a) their speed has been buffed to the same as other shock infantry and b) by this logic all native civs barring haud and lakota have no viable cav.
Civs raid with cav in age 2 as part a semi-ff build since it requires minimal investments and distracts the opponent while you gather res to age.
if you are going dedicated age 2, not even all in but even a timing instead of a semi-ff, then speed doesn’t matter at all.
their units (exception of the gascenya) are designed to tank and grind through fights , especially with abun backup, it doesn’t lend itself to a lets say back and forth play style tbh but you do just win by pumping shotels into a meat grinder while keeping your range units alive.
and even if you are not going port, just going musk hus in the form of gascenya shotel is perfectly viable and they compliement each other well, a fragile but higher dps musk that needs cover to close the distnace and a high hp cav that can constantly snare
edit: there are also some dumb outside the box option that maybe more viable in team situation. for example you note on the age 2 skirm card which for the most part is suboptimal, but if you also go port in age 2, you can easily get CIR for the neftenya even with the little starting influence+jesuit card and that would basically cancel 90% of infantry rushes.
I haven’t played Ethiopia since before the speed buff, so that probably helps a little. But even then your dps is only 90% of a Coyote Runner and much worse than Chimus that are also slippery. Coyotes are probably also sub-optimal for raiding, but Aztecs are more suited to all in early aggression instead of just harassing so it’s less noticable.
That’s kinda my point of why Ethiopia’s not fun. To win you’re grinding through an almost stalemated battle. I actually don’t think this is viable without supplementing your army with Cannoneers or an equivalent shipment. But even if it is, that requires you execute the fight very well. With light infantry you can take that fight with unequal numbers, but this strategy requires you keep a roughly equal mass. Pure heavy infantry can easily wipe out a House or War Camp if you’re not constantly fighting it so that alone could cripple your unit parity.
That’s still going with the Portugal age up which is very one dimensional. Basically all of the viable options for age 2 light infantry are from Portugal. Jesuits do have Smokeless Powder but that’s still not as good as CIR.
With all these extra steps and wasted cards just to get basic units everyone has access to it generally makes the most sense to just skip through age 2 and FF to get Neftenyas and Oromos. That’s even easier with turbo mining from MM, and once you get there, any investments into xbows or early skirms are basically a waste.
Since you’re generally rushing to age 3 because your age 2 is so limited, and there’s advantages like shadow tech natives, an early age 3 timing push is usually your best bet. But if that’s disrupted then you’re in for a rough time because your MM and cows will be running out at about the same time you have to make the tedious field transition. That’s pretty much the most frustrating eco setup in the game.
Overall, Ethiopia has extremely frustrating drawbacks and very constrained strengths which makes it a not very enjoyable civ to play.
I say Ports, French, and Brits are the best designed civ in the game. Not many out of whack features, pretty balanced unit availability, and quickly adapt to any strategy thrown at them.
Yeah though again, throughout the design of the civ its kinda designed that way, even into its treaty design, you are going to grind no matter what and the point is to grind. To me atleast its very similar to what japan does or even india on some maps.
Its definitely not a semi-ff civ, ever since the start. Hausa was the rush-ff civ and ethiopia was the japan style boom-grind civ
it even has eco cards that are designed for the grind, with all of its age 2 eco cards affecting both natural res and fields, which just means you transition better then the opponent in a lategame grind
Its not a style for everyone, but its the style of the civ and its definitely a viable play
Another maybe less discussed play with Ethiopia is the TP boom with Somalia age up since Somali coinage stacks with indian spice trade for a total +60% on TP income which is very good and it also boost your MM income.
There are options for ethiopia but I the one thing it doesnt do is allows you to escape the grind. some civs will just play like that and you will be just grinding. People also find manor boom or shrine boom into double musk/ashi pump boring as well but its not any less fun than this