My addiction is playing the game with the Ingame Editor mode, picking Spain and restarting until I find a map with a couple of natural wonders nearby. Actually I just did that; just picking up the 500 for discovering the natural wonder allows you to buy settlers without wasting turns on building them and this is such a huuuuuge advantage.
The Huns are definitely S tier. Free Animal Husbandry shows the horses in the early stage, which is also a very first tech you go with any civilization, +1 production in all pastures is insane itself. The horse archers are really early camel archers, even do not require horses, with early wars they get easily 3 range with logistics, they are even viable as a mini camel archers in later eras. The Battering Ram is also insane, mainly if you get this from the Ancient Ruins by a warrior, this means you discovered El dorado with an extra unit. Why? You can tribute near city states with single Battering Ram in early stages, getting almost 500 golds in total. It is more like you decide whether you go for early wars or early science. If your land is too good with many pastures, just play normally with mass production. If not, go for war and get many cities. They are so versatile.
Yeah but The Huns need to succeed in their early warmongering or they are kinda screwed in the late game, which means they can't be S tier. A civ that can play early solid defense like Babylon will crush them in the late game.
17:25 pillaging isn't for siege, it's to heal your units when they're in enemy territory. Very useful to have it as a free ability if you have a small army.
I think Germany is massively underrated in this video. Their ability to grow an army simply by pillaging barbarian camps early in the game is extremely powerful.
For real. Germany is a easy A-Tier and the only reason it is not S-Tier is because its a 67% chance that barbarians will join you. Its a gamble. And while its in your favor you can potentially be screwed over in some games. If this would be a 100% chance Germany would ascent to be a domination S+ Tier. Early germany is the equivalent of Saurons army of orcs. You outnumber the enemys forces 4 to 1 and you get access to handaxe throwers which are really good units for attacking a city. You can be any civ in the game. If you start on the same landmass as germany and germany goes for domination your run is over before it has begun. The barbarian army is hands down the most powerful ability in the game.
Problem is also that they rely on the encampment locations being favourable, and also that they get to kill them. Won't happen much in MP; everyone want to kill those camps.
My dudes you’re forgetting the absolute massive production bonus you can get from the Hanse. With 10 trade routes you can get up to 50% more production, IN ALL YOUR CITIES!
One thing you left out about the Shoshone: because of the explosive landgrab mechanic, every single immediate neighbor will hate your guts when you're settling, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it during that phase. This is magnified on smaller maps. Of course, not as significant an issue if you're going for Domination or even building tall, but, the only playstyle you should avoid as Shoshone would be tall (unless you're planning on settling that final undiscovered island and rando islands in a Continents game much later on).
Actually tall works great as Shoshone. Basically what you would do is you would grab the best spots early and would get a lot of land for it, and rather than using your land-grabbing abilities to expand everywhere quickly, you would instead use it to create a rapid snowball effect that cascades through the game. My personal favorite playstyle as Shoshone though is Autocracy culture victory. Save your guilds until the endgame, use your snowball to pick up Leaning Tower of Pisa to help with that, build all the culture wonders, then in the mid-late game go conquering and grab other civs' great works, and also pick up Cult of Personality to help out with tourism modifiers.
As Shoshone I found it best to settle 10 tiles apart (depending on resources, you can block city states from other civs so you own them easier in voting. 4 cities till industrial. Reformation belief to buy any specialist with faith then go wide for culture building. Save your writers from start where possible and use them late with the international games for a 100% boost of around 10000 culture .
Persia is in a league of its own if you get Chichen Itza and go freedom. You can get almost a permanent golden age going, which gives you extra movement in combat.
In my opinion, Russia is absolutely high A tier simply due to the fact they have production bonus at ALL times. Tundras do not hurt this advantage at all. Not to mention that you'll have tons of strategical resources every time, which you can either use in conquest or trade. Very versatile nation imo.
you are underselling the Mesoamericans. Aztecs are a science civ, Top tier A++, their downside is the jungle start which turns into advantage late game. Incas are the top A tier civ for flexibility, top S for fun to play. what they can do no one else can. the also have the best military trait of all tactical advantage on the field. S tier should only be Babylon and Poland, they are the only ones i feel like cheating when playing on anything lower that Deity and Persia just called, they are insulted with that C rating
I personally would rank Denmark as a D-tier civ instead of an F because, as you mentioned, the promotions of the Berserker and the Ski Infantry actually carry over *and* they're on the same unit path. Meaning that surviving Berserkers will eventually become Ski Infantries and have all those unique promotions that they can then carry over when they become Great War Infantry/Infantry etc. Also: You want those (generically good) melee units anyway, so it doesn't really matter that they're far apart in the tech tree - *and* the Berserker is actually unlocked earlier than the unit it replaces, which is also useful.
I don't like bootlickers and I'm not a Vikings bootlicker. However, one of Civ 5's few sins was leaving them decaying. It is true that the Bersekers in history were not monsters as in the stories, but rather, they were above average and helped to make up the Varangian Guard. So they deserved at least +2 strength points or some better bonus among those they already have.
Great vid, always love civ 5 content, but IMO you undersold the Aztecs, particularly the floating gardens. Even without lakes it's probably the best UB in the game. 15% increased growth is insane, it can lead to some 30 pop cities by mid-late game. Major science powerhouse.
The maya beg to differ but yeah i have to agree the floating garden alone puts Aztecs in A tier already since growth is king but a cheap shrine with science? Maya is so damn good early game and one of the few civs that always justify picking liberty over tradition and going wide
@@DiscusvissenRocken the pyramid is high tier but I'm still taking floating garden for it's general versatility and godlike scaling. The amount of specialists it allows you to use and still continue growing is nuts. Turning any lake into a mini Victoria is also nearly game breaking but that's obviously too RNG based.
@@sure7130 ohh i am deffo not scoffing at the floating garden but do not take a extremely early game 2 science building lightly. Shrines are extremely cheap to build and maya with 4 cities with these babies is the same bonus as Babylon with their early academy while rushing a religion at the same time. But if rng smiles on you Aztecs can realy snowball like few civs can
Pretty sure vs an intelligent group of humans, the Ethiopian Stele is the strongest building since it basically guarantees a 1st - 2nd religion. But in multiplayer half the games are won or lost by turn 120-ish on quick speed. Floating is only incredible if you make to the late game _and_ have mostly freshwater cities which isn't easy on the Vanilla Pangea Map without resetting till you find good Aztec lands.
I love that you're making content for such an old game! I've been playing over a decade now and have thousands of hours. I think you should set your criteria for what makes a civ good at the start of the video and clarify you mean for single player. I exclusively play Multiplayer FFA and the balance of power for civs change drastically. For example Egypt is considered very decent because you're not playing against the AI's tech advantage and other players are less likely to go for wonders knowing Egypt is in game. Spain is banned from virtually every game and I don't think you give them enough credit. When they find an early wonder they can buy a settler straight cash, and there double yields apply to their pantheon for natural wonders as well. But Spain players also have a rep for quitting if they don't find any...it's kind of all or nothing. If you don't consider them good because they are inconsistent that is fair, but, You should rank Ethiopia higher if that's a criteria you are judging on. Ethiopia is v consistent because of stele-they get first pantheon often so are more guaranteed strong early bonuses. Also i don't think America is totally trash tier-they have a plains/river start bias which is the most desirable start and because of their more efficient scouting they are more likely to find more ruins early game, and those early turns are critical. Anyway I could probably drone on for every civ, Filthy Robot probably has the best MP focused content and Tier lists for V. Thanks and keep making more for civ5!!!!
Totally agree Filthy has an excellent tier list.. Although my fave civ Iroquois everyone has at the bottom..I completely understand why that is. I just find them really fun, and you can upgrade some Mohawks....
I wonder if he knows Filthy. He could learn so much from his games. For example, he doesn't lock city tiles and doesn't production focus (which drives me insane). Agree on Persia and Spain. Both are powerhouses. Aztec are way better than he rates them. Floating gardens are so good. Population = science. Science wins games, doesn't matter what victory condition you go for.
I turned on a game last night at 9pm didnt turn it off until 430am the next morning. I focused on tech n economy and expansion early game, but once i got that long bow man I started my conquest of My Continent 😂
One strat with the Huns, that can happen with some luck on the early game is to find some ancient ruins with a warrior and get them upgraded: For some reason, the game gets them to be a Battering Ram. Imagine that you get one in the first 10 turns, in any kind of speed or difficulty, with a nearby civ. Declare War. In most cases, the other civ can't manage a proper defense, and you can get a capital with just one Battering Ram. The downside being you better keep it as a puppet city until you can make a courthouse and manage the unhappiness mechanic.
@@jesterclownmime the ai starts out with quite a few extra warriors on immortal and deity, the battering Ram loses effectiveness if the AI has more than one unit they can use to defend. Rushing by getting the horse archers early is the best strategy at higher levels
@@hs5312 I'm aware of how many warriors they get. I'm telling you I have taken capitals on deity several times in the first 10 turns as Huns. Its not impossible.
Rome above Inca??? I dont think you've given Inca a proper go..They have one of the best starting bias in the game. And all units being able to treat hills like flat land is amazing because your capital will always be surrounded by hills.. You will also usually have loads of mountains nearby, so you will be scientifically set, and the unique farms are awesome. Best suited for longer games,, Standard or epic.. They are one of the best civs in the game
Absolutely. Inca with an average Incan start on an average map is like playing a generic Civ at 1-2 difficulties easier, or Iroquois/Venice 2-3 difficulties easier. Inca with an especially good start or on an ideal map (e.g. Highlands) can be silly OP at any difficulty.
This tier list is a bit silly, really. Inca are a bit situational (no mountains, no terrass farm party) but the free roads on hills, ignore terrain cost on hills alone are so huge. Both for your worker efficiency and militarily.
It's also makes them useless escorts which is main job of early units. You basically trading valuable early game presence for inconsequential bonus to mediocre unit. Only competitive unit in bazooka's time period that can trigger retreat is infantry as most units are ranged. It could work on crossbowmens but you would need to waste so much early that you would become irrelevant in medival times and as medival units are so strong what may mean gg
Spain has potential to be completely insane since 500 gold is exactly enough to buy a settler, so if you spawn close to a natural wonder you can immediately get a second city, put it next to the wonder and get a disgusting yield immediately.
A lot of people seem to think the Floating Garden is only good with lakes, but the food bonus is so good that you can build super tall cities with no lakes at all, just putting all your cities on rivers. I think it's one of the best UBs in the game. Speaking of the best UBs, I'm really not sure how you managed to talk about the Maya without mentioning the Pyramid at all. I enjoyed the video though, even when I didn't agree with some of your placements. It's interesting to get different perspectives on these things.
I would argue that Ethiopia deserves to be higher. For one, the Faith generation of the Stele means you’ll commonly be the first to found a religion since it replaces the Monument as the very first available building, giving you a boost in the early game. Secondly, the +20% combat bonus against Civs with more cities than you means that if you’re neighbours with Domination Civs that capture, Diplomatic Civs that annex, or Wide Civs that spam cities en mass, the bonus - in conjunction with area denial units like artillery & Wonders like Himeji Castle - means you can produce a formidable defence via your *very* tall Empire that the enemy will hurl itself against & be broken, allowing you to fight defensive wars as a sort of ‘Anti-Domination’ Civ with relative ease.
And with Defender of the faith (which you will get because of the awesome Stelle) you are pretty much unconquerable 👌 Ethiopia is great to play as. And so annoying when it's an opponent
Japans biggest problem is samurai. Its not upgradable to musketman, but to rifleman. Its very painful downgrade, since samurais starts with shock I which is complete waste of promotion. For meele units drill is way more important. If you manage to get Alhambra and recruit some of them, you should upgrade samurais into drill upgrades. Zero is okay flying units. But as we all know, that AI is bad with aircraft, zero rarely shines. You prefer using oil for bombers - deals more damage and are just more consistant in warfare. Against aircraft, anti-aircraft guns are just enough to deal with enemies' flying units. Bushido ability is good, but not essential, rarely is a clutch winner. Coastal starting bias is what I love in most civs. In here its also good since from BNW Japan gives culture from fishing boats and atolls. Which is kinda good with synergy of pantheon that gives +1 hammer from them as well. For me personally, Japan should have been kept on D tier. All of abilites aren't necesarily important. Samurai is basically bad, Zero is okay, but not super good nor useable.
Japan has to be my least favorite civ, It always get's the worst start. That being said ive had some of my most fun games with tundra japan start in multiplayer, rushing my neighbor, then mass samurai irrel war. Still fun. However garbage civ.
My opa grandpa in German let me use his steam account to play civ and he showed me how to play good tactics and he played the Germans and so did I I decided to experiment with other empires I’m currently trying ganghis khan which so far everyone wants me dead
Egypt is good for domination, culture and diplomacy victory. Domination, because war chariot are apparently really good units for early aggression, so on smaller maps they can kick asses. Later on if you manage to build Brandenburg Gate and Alhambra, your XCOM squads with nukes can basically conquer cities in seconds. Also, Burial tomb is a colloseum without maintenance building without obsoleting coloseum itself, which is a very strong building for medieval warfare as well to handle happiness problem. Culture for obvious reasons - tons of wonders, guarantees so much culture. Diplomacy due to high amount of city state missions are about gaining great people, which you usually do have from wonders, about generating culture, which you usually have tons from wonders as well, about building wonders, which you eventually will build thanks to the trait... Its almost half of the pool of city state quests that doesn't base on gold. Speaking of which, you also can have a lot of that if you avoid early warfare and recruit minimum military units.
For Byzantium there is one thing to consider - Dromon. With promotions, this ship can fight with galeases. Can also handle with even caravels on huge mass. But this is double edged sword - this ship makes Byzantium being one of the stronger civs for Archipelago, but definitely one of the weakest everywhere else. Cataphract no point to say much. You recruit horseman due to their mobility. Cutting movement points by 1 for unique unit is such a pain in the ass. Even for additional strength and higher strength than usual horseman against cities (-25% combat strength for cataphract vs -33% for regular horseman), its still kinda bad, since there are civs like Assyria or The Huns that single handedly hits cities like a truck, while cataphract is still touching it gently. For unique ability there is no much to say - if there are no civs that tends to focus on religion (e.g. Ethiopia, Celts, Spain, Siam, Arabia, Egypt, The Huns, Persia and so on), this could be potentially good ability, but lets be real. On standard map size or bigger its impossible to avoid those civs. Which can usually on Deity cause to have totally useless trait, while every civ in the game can potentially use their abilities to their advantages.
46:00 Don't forget that their barrack replacement allows them to grow their borders 25% faster so you can position yourself in a way where you aren't perpetually stuck with just tundra. You can always put leningrad on the coast somewhere greener and not really be at a growth disadvantage because your ostrog makes up for the diffrence of time in which it was settled. Not to mention I don't feel like the bias is as strong as all the other ones. Usually I get plains as Russia. Maybe I'm just really lucky? I dunno
I love playing Korea, sci is the way. Poland is too broken for me, S+ maybe. With Korea there is still a challenge but Poland can be like God sometimes. I like China and Rome too.
Polynesia is absolute S tier on any map with a bunch of water on it. You can ignore everything else, just embark those scouts and basically you won the game. Venice is probably my favourite Domination civ in the game. I rate it at least at A-tier. I would put it on S, but I have never played anything but Domination with it so I can't judge the other victory conditions. The Venice starting bias is so amazing too.
Love this content. Poland, Korea, and Babylon are S tier for me. That said, I think my favourite civs are the one with really fun mechanics like the Inca, Venice, and Shoshone.
One time I spawned next to Harold bluetooth and Genghis Khan as Babylon and got absolutely merked by the berserkers even when I was almost an era ahead
IMO, the Inca belong in the S tier or at least in a high A one, the half cost elsewhere is ridiculously useful. You can maintain whatever you want, accumulate an enormous treasure, it is too good to pass
Incan city builds are insane in mountainous areas. They can turn worthless lands for literally every other civ into something that can out shine a 15+ hill Petra capitol city.
Honestly, I feel as though Egypt is deserving of a high A or even an S rank. That 20% extra production to wonders is often enough for you to beat the AI to certain early wonders, and let's you squeeze in an extra wonder or 2 per era. The War Chariot is just a straight upgrade over Chariot Archers, and is extremely useful for early defense and scouting. And in my opinion, the Burial Tomb is one of the best buildings in the game. Civ V's extreme dependence on Happiness is easied a lot with Burial Tombs, allowing you to possibly get an extra city or 2, or allow you to take an hold an opponent's city earlier, with less of an economic penalty. Otherwise, I'm pretty much in agreement with you on everything else. Though, I might also drop Japan to D, just because of how situational and infrequently their special units and abilities are used, from my experience with them.
You know what's strange,, I always play immortal and never do well with Egypt..Yet the Iroquois who are ranked as one of the worst civs, with them I always do well.. I would still have Iroquois ranked low because your forced to play a certain way..But that way in which your forced to play is so much fun..Liberty, commerce is the way to go..Trading posts on the forest ls awesome..And so long as you start with lots of forests, your army will be a defensive power house..Just make sure you upgrade at least six Mohawks.
I only play multiplayer FFA and Eygpt is def top tier. Their war chariot is one of best early war units and the wonder construction is golden since human opponents don't have the same advantages AI does, plus they're unlikely to go for wonders knowing eygpt is in the game (and wonders are for the most part worse than building up your civ)
@@okdude8215 on Naval maps Byzantium is way better than this guy thinks. Dromon rushes are very effective and cataphracts are also nothing to scoff at since they do have defensive bonusses unlike any other horse units meaning they are a lot harder to kill. But dromons alone should put Byzantium in a C tier since they are very powerful on coastal map and dominante the seas for a very long time with nothing that can deal with them effectively since they obliterate triremes effortlessly. Not as scary as England but still nothing to take lightly!
Egypt is really difficulty dependant, imho. On lower difficulties, the production bonus to wonders is insanely valuable - but on Deity, almost everything has to go right to even attempt to build certain wonders before the AI with its insane boni can snatch it away.
i wish royal library gave +15 exp instead of +10 so you could produce triple promoted units from all your cities without having to go autocracy that would be a really cool bonus zulu gets that just for being zulu, without any libraries let alone great works of writing...
The Ottomans are pretty underrated... Having the ability to heal 50 hp from killing a unit allows you to easily rush cities and bring in cannons or trebuchets to take over cities. If a city is coastal, then you simply surround it with frigates and privateers, and use your unique units to pry away at the land defenses, it really helps especially when defending since you can hold a river for example and heal if you kill a unit. That's why I think that the ottomans are pretty underrated, but they're not close to being the best civ.
I disagree berserker begins being obsolete very fast. Berserker is unlocked a tech earlier, with metal casting, which is actually a useful tech due to workshops, comparing to longswordsmen being unlocked on Steel. Also disagree that berserker is bad. 3 movement points is great against opponent with great wall, movement after landing from being embarked is excellent for archipelago maps. If you went tradition you usually have garrisoned units inside cities even on archipelago. So this is technically a reason to use them for conquering cities. I agree, caravel is just better to do so in this particular map type, but Berserker can always be used on coastal fights on Pangeas/Continents too. Norwegian Ski Infantry is also not the worst - having greater mobility on hilly maps and tundras/snows is advantageous on maps like Tilted Axis, but they are getting obsolete relatively quickly for great war infantry. And this is also super situational, because this map type is being played super rarely.
I super disagree with the huns. You have to understand one thing about my comment here - I play ONLY marathon game phase. And you have to trust me - Animal Husbandry tech on start is A LOT of science saved in early game. This civ starts with this tech. On legendary start/abuntant resources, their +1 production from pastures is up to 5 turns saved in terms of recruiting any units in capital. Doubled razing speed is working in every era and is by far one of the most overlooked ability in the entire game. This ability saves you so much trouble with happiness while warfaring. Since you are getting aggressive expansion diplomatic penalty relatively quickly in civ V, happiness starts to be a huge problem very quickly, which this ability actually is to solve this problem. On top of that, I said earlier - for marathon game phase those two unique units can conquer entire continent very quickly. Horse archers becomes obslotete after first musketmans. No, not pikeman - musketman. Getting logistics with horse archer is trivial. Getting cover II with battle ram is also trivial. Its good to have shock III with ram too, so they aren't destroyed that easily with swordsman or pikeman. If you manage to get march with that machine too, you pretty much are invincible up to gunpowder. For me, The Huns, definitely A tier. Con for them is in fact, your win condition is relatively simple, but is challenging on many cases and the faster game phase, the harder this civ is.
With Venice: -Use the merchant on a city-state near AI civ. Spam landsknechts from it. Plunder. With Spain: -Find wonder, get 500g, buy a settler and settle it. Repeat. Get the natural wonder pantheon. Get religion. Buy military units with faith. Conquer natural wonders. Unleash the SPANISH INQUISITION on conquered cities. El imperio donde nunca se pone el sol. Maybe not strategies for victory, but fun scenarios to play.
I still cannot understand the huns rating. Start with a free tech, that gives you early production boost, and better production on that production boost. Ancient/classical era units so impactful theyre actually worth the hammer investment. Ruins battering ram will take out a flatland city w/o any units, and only need a horse archer or 2 if there are some units. I dont even think the units are the best part of the huns, starting with a free tech and early production boost is super helpful
I disagree with your ranking of Germany. The fact that you can have a large army at the beggining of the game by destroying barbarian camps and gain more gold then other civs, plus 25% less maitanence for land units. Couple that with Honor policy which gives you furder bost vs barbarians which makes it more easier to gain new units and adopting Autocracy with Nationalism gives another 33% decrease in maitanence which makes in total 58% gives you the ability to mass a huge army with which you can just swarm your enemies. You also get a strong unique unit and Hansa which gives you a huge production with each trade route you have with city states( +5 production, +2 gold) which can turn you into a industrial juggernaut. In my opinion Germany should be S tier. Probably the best civ for domination victory.
Nice vid. Interesting take on it. One thing I didn’t hear you discuss is how difficulty level affects the relative strength of the Civs. IMHO some of the Civs that are relatively mediocre on Deity difficulty can become stellar when you play on Emperor or below. Mongolia for example I rarely get much use out of Keshiks because they don’t come early enough and are obsoleted by the AI on Deity too soon. Where on Emperor they can be a powerhouse. I think that affects a lot of Civs that rely on a mid-game UU. It’s even more pronounced on Quick speed. I think the top three would have to be Poland, Babylon and Korea (in order of my preference 😉). I was very interested to see you put the Shoshone in S tier. I love them, but don’t know if they belong in S tier on harder difficulty. On the other hand if you play a straight up 4 city Tradition game it’s possible to beat Deity with any Civ…with a little luck.
For Greece I'd make an argument that with companion cavalry being great for flanking and their secret buff that trespassing doesn't hurt your influence that they could be an A tier civ, especially for diplomacy. I like moving armies through city-states bordering my own empire frequently
-In average difficulty I'll put atleast Songhaï in B rank with Germany, because of their plunder bonus that is very powerful during all the game and their single building which is really very interesting when you have a lot of city. -In divinity on a huge map with between 12 and 22 civilisations, I play Songhaï .If you want to play victory by domination while being at war for the whole game, it's the best of the best. You just have to plunder cities without ever stopping xD No need to bother protecting the cities you take, just keep growing and evolving your army and weakening the others civilisation (and don't stop making road to connect every cities). There will just be hard enough time to pass because of negative happiness.But for the gold deficit, it will be filled by looting and requesting tribes from the city state. And if you can't win by domination in time you just have to fall back on cultural victory :) -And if you play on an island type map in divinity, Polynesia is the best for a culture victory.
I really appreciated this video! Very helpful because i am still learning. My husband has been playing for like 10 years and is offended you ranked Carthage low because its his die hard favorite 😂 his argument is that they take a bit to get going but after about 150 turns they absolutely dominate. Mainly they have a crap ton of money from those instant and free city connections. Also he noticed when he takes over cities he barely loses happiness because again, instant connection to the capital. Otherwise hes pleased with most of your other rankings
It's very sweet that your husband is sharing his favorite game(s) with you - Civ games can be complicated, so (almost) everybody is still learning. Carthage is very map dependant, imho. The free harbors are insane on Archipelago maps and great on Small Islands, but I would probably pick a different civ for Continents or Pangea.
Great that you are playing. I still love this game. If you want to get good at this game, watch Filthy Robot. He has a RUclips channel with over-explain games. You will annihilate your husband's Cartheginians in no time. He also made a tier-list that I rate much higher than this one.
America is much better than you're giving it credit for. The sight range is nice for ranged warfare, especially artillery wars. The B-17 is actually amazing since bombers are the time most wars break out on higher difficulties as going to war too early has too much of an opportunity cost in terms of growth and science. Last but certainly not least the tile purchasing is actually incredibly good as it allows you to optimize your city locations in terms of having good stuff on the 3rd ring, as with tile purchasing those tiles are much more attainable than normal. None of their bonuses are flashy but they're overlooked and undervalued way too often. Should be either a low B tier or high C tier. Assyria is on the other hand of the spectrum, you grossly overestimated their bonuses. The siege tower is nice and all but Mathematics is 1 of the latest techs you get normally, and if you rush it you're paying a hefty price in not having the other techs online sooner. Similarly on higher difficulties early wars stifle your growth too much so are rarely worth it, doubly so when you also rush a subpar tech to unlock your UU. The Royal Library is completely pointless as it doesn't provide enough xp to give another promotion and of course it needs a great work to even do its job. Their best bonus is actually the free tech they receive on each city capture, which you didn't talk about at all. While early wars on higher difficulties are still painful, I find this bonus works best for comp/crossbow rushes against aggressive AIs to get them off your back and catch up in science without sacrificing your growth too much. However the window this bonus is useful is very short as by the time you get to public schools you should already caught up with the AI on tech if not be the outright tech leader(typically not with Assyria unless you had an amazing map/start) at which point you simply have no techs left to steal. D rank at most, on the cusp of F. The best part about Austria is actually their hill starting bias which is incredibly powerful. The Coffee House is a solid building, mostly for science victories, and their unique unit is solid but nothing exceptional. Their diplomatic marriage actually makes them incredibly good at domination, you don't need city states with good tiles you just need city states in bomber range of AI capitals to buy the city state, send your bombers into it than cap an AI capital. That's the Austrian blitz warfare which outdoes the German version. A tier for sure, a strong A at that. Aztecs a culture civ? What? Not even pre BNW were Aztecs good at culture, it's just an early boost to get their initial culture 'techs' sooner. Aztecs are actually a domination/science civ with their immense growth potential. The Jaguar is their least interesting bonus and their Floating Gardens doesn't require lakes, it's either lakes or the usual rivers, making it flat out better than the Watermill which is already a very good building. Aztecs are actually on the verge of S tier, either a low S tier or very high A, you just completely missed out on the growth aspect of the Aztecs which is their main selling point... You're grossly underselling the Celts' faith bonus. It nearly guarantees first religion in most games unless you get very unlucky(or choose a geographic map without a lot of forests like great plains for whatever reason), and first religion is incredibly powerful. Sure, there is no faith victory but the bonuses you can get from an early religion are incredibly powerful. The rest of their bonuses are nice to have but nothing to write home about. Their unique unit is unfortunately a swordsman unit, which is rather pointless on higher difficulties as you really don't want to get ironworking particularly early, you generally want to go civil service before it which gives you the pikeman which is just better... Similarly their unique building is unfortunately the 3rd tier culture building, which you rarely want to build when not going for a culture victory(which is the worst one to go for on higher difficulties). Still, just the early faith for first religion in and of itself is so powerful to merit B tier for the Celts. China doesn't actually have any science related bonuses, their papermaker doesn't give additional science, all it does is remove the typical gold maintenance of libraries and turn it into a gold bonus, which is incredible for gold generation but does nothing for science. So yes China is basically limited to being a domination civ, but it's 1 of the best at that. The best crossbow rush civ in the entire game and afterwards you still have the best most and best great generals(double bonus) for future ground warfare. Inca is actually S tier because hill starts are so powerful and Incas make those especially sustainable. When starting near a mountain range you can get incredibly productive and incredibly fertile cities which no other civ can do and that's just so powerful. Of course they get shafted without hills but again just as with the Celts don't pick a geographic map that's typically flat, like again the great plains.
I think Russia is underestimated here: since you try to dominate full map and conquer territory, you'll get a massive amount of strategic resources that will scale your production skyrocket in mid game. I never lost playing as Russia. If nobody stop Russia in the match the victory is after them. Solid A tier, as for me!
Great video, really enjoyed listening to it. I'd of maybe put the Inca a little higher, the hill movement helps works build improvements faster, find ruins faster, jump on a hill with an archer and fire eerrr likely a strong economy due to cheap road (also really fun trying to route a road on hills between city's for no road upkeep). You likely mentioned some of that...but maybe a couple of new points.. Looking forward to you next civ 5 drop
My main problem with Ethiopia is that this civ is stupidly easy and boring to play early game due to Stele being so strong. Later on, this civ is getting interesting. On slower game phases, where obsoletion tech problem isn't as problematic as it is on normal/fast game phases - Mehal Sefari is good. Really good. -10% required hammers for them to recruit is strong, drill I is also very crucial. On top of that they are really hard to beat inside your territory. If you place them on top of hill citadel, Mechanized infantry won't beat them. Giant deathrobot can struggle against them even. For instance: 34 strength*1.45 (drill III, trivial to get, since they start with drill I)*1.2(if inside your borders while having less cities than aggressor)*1.15 (great general)*2(citadel defensive bonus)*1.25(hill bonus)=170 defensive strength. Consider that, I didn't even count Himeji Castle perk (+15% strength inside friendly territory), up to +30% while being close to capital or +25% from authocracy. Not to mention about flanking defense from honor tenet. Ethiopia is a queen of turtles, sorry Babylon, you are good at defending, but ethiopia is better at that. All in all, for my taste Ethiopia is A tier minimum, Monument is mandatory in every city. Stele quadruples potential of this building in every city, which pumps on later into the game. Its good to play them as tradition, Liberty, Honor and Piety. And this civ is very consistant every single way you choose to upgrade your culture.
I think you’ve misunderstood India. India is not a tall building Civ. Their ability doesn’t look like it at first, but it’s actually the only Civ where your cities grow tall enough to create a local happiness profit in the long run, which means that in the medieval and Renaissance eras you want to start planting more cities. Building tall with India does not help, because you’ll never have enough happiness to get lots of golden ages, and even if you do, Persia is the golden age Civ. The best thing to do with India is to build tall AND wide. My best game as India saw me plant 3 cities including the capital in the ancient era, then place down 5 more in the medieval and Renaissance eras. I was unhappy in the game ONCE in the ancient era and never again. It is a master of single digit happiness until ideology, and it avoids the mid-game happiness slump which is why your mid-game cities can actually grow tall enough by the end to be productive additions to the empire. All of this put together means India is one of the most unique playstyles, because you don’t do early expansion but you get quick catch-up unlike any other Civ in the game and you become one of the strongest civs by the end because of having 8-12 25 pop cities. In my game my capital was 50 pop, my second and third cities were 40 pop, and my 5 mid game expands were 20-30 pop. I had double digit happiness by the end and insane production, to the point where most of my cities had a world wonder to get the 33% culture bonus from Aesthetics. It’s my favorite Civ to play because of how different expansion is.
Totally - ideally I’d be building tall and wide all the time 😅 Edit: likely differing strengths on variable difficulties for India more so than others. The criteria (as always) for my rankings is in the description and I’m assuming standard diff. I’m not convinced their potential local happiness strat is that impactful here.
@@JumboPixel I think India does work best on larger maps where the city happiness penalty is lower and the local happiness profit comes sooner. But I always play on Huge maps so it wrks perfectly for me. Edit: So just to add some math to it, on Huge maps new cities for normal civs produce 1.8 unhappiness, for India that is 3.6. The local city happiness cap is 2/3 of population so exporting is harder. However once you get to 15 population on Huge maps, your local city happiness starts to overtake local city unhappiness, which means you will start to produce a happiness profit. So if you have 3 cities planted in the ancient era that, on quick speed, get to 20 population in 100 turns (easily doable, especially if you get to Temple of Artemis and Civil Service quickly), then you can put down 5 more cities pretty quickly. Then you have another 150 turns to grow those to be productive by the late game. The massive size of your first three cities should offset the increased tech costs from the later 5 cities, and by the late game they should all have enough production to easily put down science buildings and destroy the AI in science. Also, if you grab Neuschwanstein, your happiness is going to explode because of happiness profit from Mughal Forts, and you can probably even go warmongering in the late game if you so desire.
dissagree on Zulu, its the War Civ in all Ages. Impis can be upgraded into Riflemen->Great War Inf. etc. and they are complete bonkers with the special Promotions.
There are Many different ways to play civilization, obviously. But Civ 5 has some unique features that lend to a more strategic playthrough. For example, using terrain (forest, hills, rivers) to add strength to your military units early game. Your placement of cities is extremely important and strategic in the long game. I personally find wide playthroughs (lots of strategically placed cities) with high advantages in keys areas ( science, culture, religion) make for extremely strong civs. I agree that certain civilizations have advantages, but honestly, if you play to your strengths, you can win with any civilization. Carthage is more powerful than you ranked them (play to their strengths, ocean tiles and navy), the Shoshone with the Commanche are insane if you play aggressively enough and want to expand your empire in early mid game (they DOMINATE land warfare if played smart). Rock on Civ players! Keep on keeping on!
Here's a tip. Whenever you take a city and you want to raze it, make sure you sell all the buildings first. You can sell one building per turn and this could get you a lot of extra gold.
Spain is pretty rng reliant on Nat wonders but man some of them are super good during early game, mount sinai lets you rush religion with 16 faith per turn (20 if you have the natural wonder pantheon thing). Solomons mines or lake Victoria can really shoot your production/growth quite early on. Tho if there aren’t any wonders nearby I tend to rush conquistadors and caravels and just send me off on a grand adventure or conquer civs that have nat wonders.
Haha don't forget the best part: the 500 gold if you find it first meaning a free settler to buy. Imagine finding Great barrier with spain: 1k gold meaning 2 instant settlers to buy on normal speed, settle it and get 2 4 food, 2 hammer 3 gold and 4 science tiles early game and 8 faith on each if you get one with nature. Spain is indeed RNG dependant but insane if you can pull it off, and imagine getting great barrier and lake Victoria early game... it is downright unreal how hard you will snowball
I would make a case to bump Arabia up to S tier because of the bazaar. They say money cant buy happiness but that doesn't apply to civ 5! the extra money from the building and also selling the luxuries can be used to buy happiness buildings like colosseums or used to buy out city states with new luxuries. additionally, you can just trade the extra luxuries with the A.I. for even more happiness. the reason why this is so powerful is due to the fact that happiness is the crux of civ 5 due to the very restricting unhappiness debuff's. having tons of happiness can allow you to expand wide militarily supported with your OP camel archers, or expand tall and trade using your caravan buffs. Otherwise I agree with all your picks except for Byzantium just because the dromons are so cool.
Vs ais Arabia is deffo S tier because of camels and bazaars. Camels are the most broken units in the game and all that bazaar extra lux gold from ais is always good. Vs humans i would rate Arabia A since you will have a huge bullseye on you because people are scared of camels meaning they will try and suicide rush you if they can before you get to camels. And this guy deffo underestimates dromons and cataphracts lmao dromon rushes are what makes Byzantium way better than this guy thinks. Deffo not F tier and far above Carthage imo
@@DiscusvissenRocken always nice to see a fellow Byzantium enthusiast 😂. Yea I love Byzantium so much just cuz the dromon is like the coolest unit in the game which makes the civ very fun to play as. Byzantium is fur sure under rated cuz the ability forces you to get a strong religion and a strong religion can be used for any victory condition. Also the fact that the dromons upgrade to galleass and then eventually frigates is very usefull. I would say that if the cataphtact replaced the knight instead of the horseman, you could make an argument for high B tier. But as they stand for me it's low B tier high C tier.
@@Swarm66 the religious ability is a coin flip but i have had sone really good games where it worked out and if it does one extra belief is not something to scoff at, but for me the best part of Byzantium is the dromon. These are really good and i have done many succesful dromon rushes vs both players and ais since there is nothing that can stop them untill galeasses come around since these babies rip triremes to pieces
@@DiscusvissenRocken yea, the dromons are absolutely nuts. For me though, the ability isn't as much of a coin flip and is just as good. I usually play against AI and i get a religion almost every game regardless. even on immortal difficult I can still get a religion 95% of the time. And yea once you get that bonus beleif your religion just becomes overpowered
@@Swarm66 if you get tithe and the other good belief then you can indeed create a monster religion. Vs the ai this might indeed work out a lot better since the ai has a habit of picking the worthless beliefs instead of the good ones so you might get away with not getting first religion. but vs players you might struggle to get 1th religion, especially if you have to compete vs Ethiopia and/or Celts or if someone gets a faith NW, and good players will always snag the best beliefs if they get the chance.
Well, many nations i would place different. I think it depends on the playstyle. I prefer building, dont like early rushes or wars, so i choose all civs, that support the very early progress in game. Anyway thank you for this video and go on making this good stuff!
France themic bonus applies to Oxford university as well. This is a small misconception in wikia about only world wonders. France isn't terrible to get culture victory. Obviously its worse than Brasil, but yet with a bit better potential in terms of getting art works via expansion to other civs from Musketeers unique unit making your life a little easier in industrial warfare. I claim, France deserve D tier, isn't as bad as Byzantium.
Japan is absolutely fantastic when not playing with the Gods&Kings expansion. I have a few memories of how a few of my troops would get surrounded by 3, 4 sometimes even 5 units. Get beaten to 1 HP, then proceed to kill every single unit the AI suicided against you, since 1/10 HP was enough to never take damage again if your unit could dish out enough damage to kill the attacker. Never saw it again once I installed Gods&Kings, when they increased max health from 10 to 100.
Love that your still putting out content for this game. I would have ranked Spain higher on the list because I usually get a hold of 2 to 3 natural wonders when playing them and not through war which gives me great bonuses and IMHO, they are the best Civ to combat Poland with! Tercio units are great against the Polish special cavalry and using Conquistadors to pillage their lands. The Zulu are good against Poland too but I never have a game as the Zulus where the computer puts Poland close to you.
Conquistador is more expensive Knight with useless bonus. One of the worst special unit in game as knights are important medival units. Only slingers are worst as they will retreat and leave your workers to barbarians.
@@suchamysz I, in no way, agree with you and don’t believe you’ll find anyone that does. Conquistadors are the main unit I use to secure natural wonders and explore during the medieval and renaissance periods.
@@ThatJerseyBloke it is too late then. Not only bonuses from wonders are worth less in comparison to what you can produce in medival, there is also gigantic opportunity cost for placing city in such important phase of a game. Knights and crossbowmens are becoming online and if you need them to defend or to conquer you should produce them. There are universities and you want them asap in every city working specialists. There are important wonders like Chitzen Itza, Notre Dame or Alhembra which is win condition by itself (it's allows you to have blitz X-COM). All that important things compete with that quest for Eldorado. If you have great place to settle then of course you should do it. In classical or ancient era, because cities needs to grow and for that, time is needed. Not to mention that for new city you need happiness so its not always advisable especially that you may use that happiness to conquer. I would also add that I may be biased, because I like to play rather less than more citys but medival era is era of conquest not colonisation. I also understand and like flavour that horse settlers bring. My favourite civ is Polynesia because of maoi which just looks cool. But you cannot make tier list based on flavour
@@suchamysz Your delusional and have never played Spain or your just trolling. 3 natural wonders controlled by me as Spain and I can steamroll the game!
@@ThatJerseyBloke these 3 wonders would be all that's left from your technologically illiterate nation after I unleash unclear hell upon it while you would be occupied by wasting engineers on something trashy like Kremlin.
Sweden is another one that I think you’ve severely underrated. I recently played a game with Sweden and found myself in pure tundra with barely any plains around. Then I discovered there was a spot for my capital with a ton of deer, a river, a hill, and a mountain. Now I certainly got lucky, but there’s definitely a lot of deer in tundra that you could use Goddess of the Hunt pantheon on and get lots of food from. I had a 20 pop capital in 90 turns with that, and even if I had less deer my cap would still have been easy to grow. Beyond that, the best way to combine the UUs of Sweden with the UA is to find an unpopular warmonger and go to war with them, but don’t conquer their cities. Play a very messy war where you kill lots of units to farm XP and get lots of great generals. Meanwhile, the declarations of friendship you get from hating the same leader will give you more of other types of great people. These two put together will net you lots of great people. When I played the game the great people effects were broken. With the leaning tower and national epic and garden and ideology bonus I already had 100% great people bonus, but I was already able to get like 60% from the ancient era alone from declarations of friendship. My capital was just a great person farm by the end. One of the most fun and easy games I’ve ever played, and I could easy play it again with a lot of the same strats.
That’s an awesome strategy that I’ll have to try! A lot of dependencies there though in reality. To mention a few: finding a lucky spot, getting lots of deer, getting the right pantheon, having a suitably unpopular yet weak warmonger neighbour, etc. Let’s hope that neighbour isn’t the Tundra-biased Russia too.
@@JumboPixel Well because your UUs come in the Industrial(?) era, you really can wait until then to attack, and then you'll be a monster attacker because Caroleans come with March. The way to do it is to get your units in formation-four Caroleans in the front, two artillery in the back, and a Hakkapelitta stacked with a Great General in the middle. Then go and farm Russia's units. As for the rest, unless you get a *really* bad start, you'll likely get at least a few of those; I just happened to get a lot of really good things. But also if you spawn in tundra, typically you get plains nearby as well, so if you don't get all the deer, you'll get some civil service farmland. Tundra also often has a lot of forest or hills which means you can have a lot of production, and camps of course give production if you get them. Basically, while tundra is a subpar start compared to other starts, it's not quite as bad as people think it is, and is certainly better than non-Petra desert.
What difficulty do you play on?? If you play Sweden on immortal or diety, unless your very lucky you won't be getting a religion. And you certainly won't be getting an early pantheon.
Ive been digging polynesia, i make 4/5 scouts in a row and get all the ruins and 30 gold for city state discoverys. Kind of wish scouts scaled with eras. Can never get them to level 3.
I've been playing America lately, and I'm actually starting to appreciate the power to purchase land at a cheaper price. It means early on when you settle cities you get to CHOOSE your borders and be extremely competitive for resources while still having a narrow/tall civilization. If your civ is more expansion-based (ie. more cities) you have no choice but to have a wide civilization, but America can be tall and expansive at the same time. I would give it an A or B.
I heard someone once say America is like shoeshine lite. Easier land expansion (at a cost) and help w/ ruins (spotting and getting more ruins as opposed to choosing ruin). Imo america favors liberty opener (increased sight lets you see if your lands are good enough for liberty before having to choose), and liberty works better w war bc decentralized hammers are better for making units, on top of americas other war bonuses
Inca is overrated. Im close to finish my inca game right now, and I agree, no penalty while crossing hills is a good mobility ability. Terrace farms are nah... average. My best yield terrace farm in this game was 4 food 3 hammers. Isn't the worst, but many things were meaningful - 2 hills = +2 food, +1 food from fertilizer/civil service and +1 food in base. +1 hammer from hydro plant. Out of all ~30 cities I've had... 1 terrace farm like that. ONE. It is not a rant towards this building. I just claim, that Polder from the Netherlands is way more reliable tile upgrade kicks with almost full potential way earlier than terrace farm, and I personally prefer using hills for mines, because those can give me up to 5 production (+1 base, +1 five year plan, +1 hydro plant). And for the food I prefer just building a farm on grassland river, on top of wheat or even having fishes. And dont forget, that you have to sacrifice tiles for mountains to have decent singular tile. I just don't see myself this building being super good. Only worth mentioning is tile maintenance being reduced. It's not that much of a gold saved, but definitely is helpful early game (way more useful than German ability in terms of unit maintenance reduced by 25%). In fact this ability later on saves hundreds of gold. And if you synergise that with Machu Picchu, you are a golden powerhouse. Slinger as a unique unit is bad. Costs same as regular archer, have worse defensive capabilities, but can get out from the risky battle if possible. But yet, not that useful ability against barbarian, maybe sometimes useful against AI, but also relatively rarely, since they are dying from bombardment very quickly either way.
Something you might of missed with Shoshone comanche unit. They are extremely cheap and upgrade Into tanks. You can use them to essentially get tanks discounted.
if i remember right Huns also get to upgrade scouts straight into their battering rams through ruins, they can very easily take out early game cities by themselves and catapult your start. +1from pasture is also insane and they also have plains start bias, easily the best one.
@@JumboPixel doesnt matter, the snowballing potential is massive: having animal husbandry right off the start the early production and the free science speed up your early city development and national college by a decent amount. furthermore, the battering ram can two-shot cities even on immortal and deity, especially if you support with horse archers. so, if you take another capital, ideally after they build a useful wonder, you get a super strong city in a good location for free
Absolutely disagree with the Aztec rating. Their UB isn't locked to lakes but also works on rivers and gives you bonuses depending on the river's length. Their growth boon is HUGE leading to a very strong science based late game and their early culture from kills combined with Honor means they can every quickly get ahead of over civs regarding policies. They're super versatile, their UU scales well into Classical Era and they have the highest pop growth potential in the game. Easily A tier.
I mean if you use modded maps that have a river or something every few tiles sure, but on Vanilla Pangea most your cities will not be on fresh water unless you reset. And if you're resetting for great lands, there's far stronger civs anyways.
@@Seven_Leaf I've never personally had issue when it comes to river spawns in this game. I don't know if I'm just lucky but usually my starting city starts on fresh water.
I don't quite agree with Venice's B-tier, as its overall effectiveness depends on if you are playing against AI or human players. In multiplayer, it's clearly F as everyone would just shut their trade routes down and destroy them early before Venice develops into Bill Gates with the power of just churning out a unit every turn with cash. But against AI, I would put it on S. Just because the AI is too stupid to destroy Venice's economy and thus utterly helpless once a huge army stands at their gates. With just more to come since Venice can simply afford it. This also them to focus on wonders, since they can buy everything else.
Great vid. I should comment that I recently played a game as Hiawatha (Iroquois) and found the extra mobility of my units, especially in early game, to be a game changer. I would definitely rate them higher than you have done.
So happy you placed Iroquois at C tier..Most people have them in F tier..But I always play immortal and I have to say I love playing Iroquois..A very fun civ.. Especially if you get alot of iron so you can pump out and upgrade lots of mohawks
That's because all of their bonusses just don't work and are detrimental in the long run. And who even cares about mohawks when you can have impis, legions or way earlier hoplites or immortals. And their unique building is worse than the standard building 😆 So there is just no reason to pick this civ unless you want to specifically play iroquois for giggles because they have nothing that even is noticable let along stand out hence why everyone ranks it F
That's cause they are. No other civ has a unique building that is straight up worse that the standard building. And not only that, it replaces one of the single most crucial buildings for every city of your empire with hot garbage.
Iroquois is painful to play as civ. Longhouse is literal downgrade for slower game phase later on, early on this actually kicks in, but you don't have to wait long to see lacking of % production from workshop missing. Mohawk warrior is decent unit - doesnt require iron, have bonus while fighting on forests and jungles... Its okay, not too strong, but not weak either. Unique ability is... garbage most case scenario. First to begin with - they create cities connections via forests... while those are inside our territory. Not useful at all. Secondly, after finding railroads becomes obsolete. You either way will be forced to build roads/railroads later on. And... thats pretty much it. I dont like three things about iroquois. First is that you are basically forced to play as liberty civ. Sorry, but I don't see much potential in huge cities in Longhouses. And for this condition you need so much happiness. Which causes the second problem - you dont have any unique salvage of this problem from your abilities and unique buildings. At last, I don't like keeping forests. Im an order lover - Five year plan is my favourite tenet in the game and becomes equalized with longhoused +1 hammer from forests sawmills. But what does that cost? Hammers from chopping forests. I hate keeping this tiles. I know this production is crucial early game for libraries and NC, but I'm forced to save it for later. Which isn't ideal. Tradition is more solid, but you are basically forced to change your strategy 180 degrees. And on deity it isnt good. NC being more expensive is also a problem. If you play liberty you have to settle your cities early, no matter how trash they are. If you have less than 5 cities with liberty you might as well should restart the game. Because most case scenario your opponents go for piety or tradition which will cause you to start losing even more science towards them. No tradition is necesarry to keep your cities small and have high settler/worker pumpage with decent production. For me personally... I don't know whether its not my style of the game or its just that bad to be utilized. I've found this civ to be so inmanagable for deity that I had to switch to Immortal. And even then I had to restart my game 2 times, because I was too slow with my expansion. Maybe its also caused by game phase? All I know, Im glad that Ive got achievment of completing the game as Iroquois and hopefully I'll never play as them again. F tier for sure.
I totally disagree with Germany being that high. Hansa has pretty bad ability to be honest. +5% production for each trade route to city state is kinda unreliable. First to begin with - trade routes with city states at deity aren't worth using either with this bonus. You should focus maintaining trade routes with other AIs because they generate additional science, which is way more important than +5% production (which is basically 1-2, maybe 3 hammer per turn at rennaisance-industrial) and 1 gold per turn isn't as viable as sometimes even +4 science per turn. Not to mention, this science is affected by universities and later on with Free Thought that buffs even more science output from university. Also this buff is inconsistant because AI can still embargo city states that blocks you to utilize this ability. This happens in my games like in every 3rd game to pass this resolution. Panzer is fairly strong unit, but as you said earlier - appears super late into the game, which is kinda good but not really. Most of the time my games ends up with dom victory in first techs of information era - where panzers aren't that common yet, I personally used tanks maybe 2-3 times in total? -25% unit maintenance is allright ability, but considerably better for me is having flat gold from doubled resources such as from bazaar. Defeating barbarians is also kinda meme ability - having access to their unique units with 67% chance isn't terrible, but I don't find this ability to be that useful early game on deity, where there isn't much space to farm barbarian encampments early game. Relatively useable ability for lower dificulty levels than Immortal, maybe usable on emperor, but definitely on king is viable strategy for early dom victory. For me Germany doesn't deserve being higher than C tier. No starting bias is also a con because they can be spawned in tundras or jungles I just don't prefer to play on.
i agree mostly, my S tier is Korea, Babylon , Shoshone and Venice. I think Venice is a matter of opinion on how strong you think it is it could be anywhere.
@@tomrotelli1355they can be extremely broken with certain starts, such as Petra starts or with hanging gardens. As it would allowed them to grow quite a bit faster.
@@luisyfonsy711 this is true, however you are unlikely to get Petra because of the start bias and Temple of Artamis is better than HG. HG actually isn't the greatest for aztecs because you should be starting on freshwater anyway.
@@tomrotelli1355 Hanging gardens is great for any civ, because 6 food early on is a ton. Hanging gardens gives faster growth early on which = more science, more production, more gold etc. Which helps you reach universities faster. Sure it is a little bit nicer to build hanging gardens without a freshwater start for free gardens, but it's still incredibly strong without it. It is also nearly impossible to actually get temple of Artemis on immortal difficulty, while hanging gardens is doable, due to ai rarely taking tradition. However I do agree that temple of Artemis do set you up for a greater late game. The Aztecs are however a tier 1 civ, as it is pretty much a science civ and every civ that gets a bonus to science is gonna be tier 1.
@@luisyfonsy711 I reckon you are right for single player immortal, I played alot of multiplayer though and would say tier 1 would be the broken civs like babylon, huns. TBH poland is better multiplayer than Aztec. Aztecs would be tier 2 in multiplay, not broken but super strong. I honestly could dominate more games with Arabia than Aztecs.
I'd say America should be probably exactly in the middle of all civs by rank. Their bonuses are quite useful but very dull. Strictly the middle of the road.
I think you're really underrating Byzantium, while their religion can be hit or miss depending on faith, their Catahphracts feel incredibly powerful with their full advantage of terrain, not to mention early coast harass from Dromons (though i admit, Arabias Camel Archers) are superior. I think that given HOW powerful their religion CAN be it deserves to at least be on par or better than Carthage.
There's a fun cheezy strat called sacred sites where you can win on like turn 150 with byz city spamming (it's a culture victory from tourism and you can generate tourism far longer than anyone else)
I disagree with the Celts economy. They usually have good economy due to faith. If you get early religion you have a chance of getting Tithe perk that holds your economy on fairly good state. Their ability allows you to postpone temples to the later game if even to forget about this building. Also their unique unit if warrior promoted to it from ruins, will guarantee you additional source of faith for early game, which is again, not too bad. Starting bias is also really good due to having high production potential to be chopped for necesarry buildings, such as Library and NC. From the other hand, this bias usually gives you a start with trash luxuries such as Silk, Sugar, Truffles or Dyes, which is kinda bad.
Venice is very depedent on other civs (not taking out city states) and size of map. On a huge map having one (1) city is very limiting. On a very small map wity city states not as bad....
I would switch the maya and the Shoshone. In higher difficulties the early advantage of the pathfinder and land grabs just don’t do enough to outscale the AI, whereas the Mayan pyramids basically get you on par with the AI by the medieval era/renaissance era. It’s seriously busted!
I find your take on Denmark really strange. You completely skip over their biggest asset - the way their land units can jump between land and sea as if the sea was just open plains. This is something no one has and it can be potentially super powerful in war. It is, of course, fairly situational. Pillaging, though, is really not. You pillage ALL the time when at war, so your take really surprises me.
Spain is S-Tier clearly. You will find wonders most of the time and you get 500 gold which is a free city early game. And if you can place it on the wonder in many cases you are so overpowered that you win the game easily. Also, the Iroquois are F-Tier. Indonesia is not as bad as you think because they get those free luxury resources which allows them to settle anywhere or get high happiness and good trade.
I was stunned by a few of your ratings, but when I picked out one of the explanations and you talked about Ethiopia with the Stele to then claim you want to go SMALL and TALL? Dude you lost all credit there. Sure a special building that doesn't give extra happiness doesn't scream wide empires, but you should at least go as wide as possible with any amazing special building civ like Ethiopia, Mayans, China and Egypt. From other video's I already got the impression that you don't half understand how powerfull a strong religion is to any of the victory types.
America has no advantages untill the renaissance? Dude what? When do you think the +1 line of sight bonus comes most to play? From the fucking start finding ruins more succesfully. When do you think half prize tile purchasing comes to play the most? Right from the fucking start especially when you decide to go Liberty to work you best tiles as soon as possible. You SHOULD know how important a solid start is to the outcome of your total game, and both these bonusses give America great tools to be more consisntent with those starts. Sure those bonusses won't win you games by theirselves, but the way you look at their bonusses and state that they only got advantages in the renaissanse would almost make me believe you don't actually play the game if the proof wasn't there that you do.
Byzantine in the F. Funny thing that my first ever victory against deity AI was with Byzantine. Cataphacts are actually insane, you can easily fight medeval armies with them. Exstra belief in religion is very unreliable bonus though
Huns are easy A tier to low S tier civ, ez. Horse archers don't require horses and don't have rough terrain penalty. Battering rams are super strong and you can get one from a ruin. The Huns are rlly rlly good at domination.
When it came to England, I felt that Civi5 had done them dirty. Considering the country's rich history, and the numerous great people who helped shape the modern world, I always thought they should either have a great person generator (like 15% or something) or generate extra culture when they expend a great person.
A lot of Civ V's civs feel very ecclectic, especially the vanilla ones. Later ones tend to have themes matching their leaders, units and bonuses together around a particular era.
Imo, Spain out of this tier list. But they are mostly good. Chance of not finding a natural wonder around you is low, but never zero. But if that happens, you have nothing else. (Around 5 percent) More often then not, you can find 1 natural wonder 1st, and settle near it instantly. With "one with nature" it is a guaranteed 1st relgion and a huge bonus depending on the wonder. It is A or high B tier this time (12 prod Solomon mines is insane.) (Around 45% chance) If you find two first (or at least 1 first and settle near 2) you have an S tier civ. (Around 40% chance) If you are lucky to have 3 or more early on, then game over, you won. You will have more cities with sky-high religion and other big-big bonuses. (Around 10%)
In multiplayer I would definitely put arabia at S tier, I like playing America alot, so I would move them up to C, heroic epic, double cover minute man is an extremely powerful sneak attack in an era when most people are trying to sim city. Huns are S tier, I have no idea why you put that OP civ so low. Spain should definitly move up, but it's just horrible if you don't find a wonder so perhaps you are right.
People need to keep in mind a F tier civilization can still do really well with a good player and good strategy. I always wished Denmark would be better than they are since the Vikings took over all of Europe pretty much.
My Civ5 Addiction is playing Spain and grabbing ''One with Nature'' before even finding a Natural Wonder, we highrolling or we losing.
Man's on the hunt for that primo dopamine rush
My addiction is playing the game with the Ingame Editor mode, picking Spain and restarting until I find a map with a couple of natural wonders nearby. Actually I just did that; just picking up the 500 for discovering the natural wonder allows you to buy settlers without wasting turns on building them and this is such a huuuuuge advantage.
The Huns are definitely S tier. Free Animal Husbandry shows the horses in the early stage, which is also a very first tech you go with any civilization, +1 production in all pastures is insane itself. The horse archers are really early camel archers, even do not require horses, with early wars they get easily 3 range with logistics, they are even viable as a mini camel archers in later eras. The Battering Ram is also insane, mainly if you get this from the Ancient Ruins by a warrior, this means you discovered El dorado with an extra unit. Why? You can tribute near city states with single Battering Ram in early stages, getting almost 500 golds in total. It is more like you decide whether you go for early wars or early science. If your land is too good with many pastures, just play normally with mass production. If not, go for war and get many cities. They are so versatile.
Yeah but The Huns need to succeed in their early warmongering or they are kinda screwed in the late game, which means they can't be S tier. A civ that can play early solid defense like Babylon will crush them in the late game.
I agree that they're definitely A or S tier depending on your play style.
17:25 pillaging isn't for siege, it's to heal your units when they're in enemy territory. Very useful to have it as a free ability if you have a small army.
Misspoke sorry - good call
Yep, and also it's great to keep your opponents weakened.. Slowing down their growth, production etc, etc..
@@JumboPixelwhat is this sound 19:27 the click sound
I think Germany is massively underrated in this video. Their ability to grow an army simply by pillaging barbarian camps early in the game is extremely powerful.
...and ruining your economy. Been there, done that.
For real. Germany is a easy A-Tier and the only reason it is not S-Tier is because its a 67% chance that barbarians will join you. Its a gamble. And while its in your favor you can potentially be screwed over in some games. If this would be a 100% chance Germany would ascent to be a domination S+ Tier. Early germany is the equivalent of Saurons army of orcs. You outnumber the enemys forces 4 to 1 and you get access to handaxe throwers which are really good units for attacking a city. You can be any civ in the game. If you start on the same landmass as germany and germany goes for domination your run is over before it has begun. The barbarian army is hands down the most powerful ability in the game.
Problem is also that they rely on the encampment locations being favourable, and also that they get to kill them. Won't happen much in MP; everyone want to kill those camps.
My dudes you’re forgetting the absolute massive production bonus you can get from the Hanse. With 10 trade routes you can get up to 50% more production, IN ALL YOUR CITIES!
Germany sux enormous ballz
One thing you left out about the Shoshone: because of the explosive landgrab mechanic, every single immediate neighbor will hate your guts when you're settling, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it during that phase. This is magnified on smaller maps. Of course, not as significant an issue if you're going for Domination or even building tall, but, the only playstyle you should avoid as Shoshone would be tall (unless you're planning on settling that final undiscovered island and rando islands in a Continents game much later on).
Actually tall works great as Shoshone. Basically what you would do is you would grab the best spots early and would get a lot of land for it, and rather than using your land-grabbing abilities to expand everywhere quickly, you would instead use it to create a rapid snowball effect that cascades through the game.
My personal favorite playstyle as Shoshone though is Autocracy culture victory. Save your guilds until the endgame, use your snowball to pick up Leaning Tower of Pisa to help with that, build all the culture wonders, then in the mid-late game go conquering and grab other civs' great works, and also pick up Cult of Personality to help out with tourism modifiers.
As Shoshone I found it best to settle 10 tiles apart (depending on resources, you can block city states from other civs so you own them easier in voting. 4 cities till industrial. Reformation belief to buy any specialist with faith then go wide for culture building. Save your writers from start where possible and use them late with the international games for a 100% boost of around 10000 culture .
Persia is in a league of its own if you get Chichen Itza and go freedom. You can get almost a permanent golden age going, which gives you extra movement in combat.
true
As said, IF.
Chichen Itza is available on higher difficlty only by conquest. Hopely not on the other end of map.
Extreme multiplayer civ though
Agreed 👍
In my opinion, Russia is absolutely high A tier simply due to the fact they have production bonus at ALL times. Tundras do not hurt this advantage at all. Not to mention that you'll have tons of strategical resources every time, which you can either use in conquest or trade. Very versatile nation imo.
Monster of production
you are underselling the Mesoamericans.
Aztecs are a science civ, Top tier A++, their downside is the jungle start which turns into advantage late game.
Incas are the top A tier civ for flexibility, top S for fun to play. what they can do no one else can. the also have the best military trait of all tactical advantage on the field.
S tier should only be Babylon and Poland, they are the only ones i feel like cheating when playing on anything lower that Deity
and Persia just called, they are insulted with that C rating
I personally would rank Denmark as a D-tier civ instead of an F because, as you mentioned, the promotions of the Berserker and the Ski Infantry actually carry over *and* they're on the same unit path. Meaning that surviving Berserkers will eventually become Ski Infantries and have all those unique promotions that they can then carry over when they become Great War Infantry/Infantry etc.
Also: You want those (generically good) melee units anyway, so it doesn't really matter that they're far apart in the tech tree - *and* the Berserker is actually unlocked earlier than the unit it replaces, which is also useful.
I don't like bootlickers and I'm not a Vikings bootlicker. However, one of Civ 5's few sins was leaving them decaying. It is true that the Bersekers in history were not monsters as in the stories, but rather, they were above average and helped to make up the Varangian Guard. So they deserved at least +2 strength points or some better bonus among those they already have.
Great vid, always love civ 5 content, but IMO you undersold the Aztecs, particularly the floating gardens. Even without lakes it's probably the best UB in the game. 15% increased growth is insane, it can lead to some 30 pop cities by mid-late game. Major science powerhouse.
Totally agree, they are much more of a science power house than a domination civ
The maya beg to differ but yeah i have to agree the floating garden alone puts Aztecs in A tier already since growth is king but a cheap shrine with science? Maya is so damn good early game and one of the few civs that always justify picking liberty over tradition and going wide
@@DiscusvissenRocken the pyramid is high tier but I'm still taking floating garden for it's general versatility and godlike scaling. The amount of specialists it allows you to use and still continue growing is nuts. Turning any lake into a mini Victoria is also nearly game breaking but that's obviously too RNG based.
@@sure7130 ohh i am deffo not scoffing at the floating garden but do not take a extremely early game 2 science building lightly. Shrines are extremely cheap to build and maya with 4 cities with these babies is the same bonus as Babylon with their early academy while rushing a religion at the same time. But if rng smiles on you Aztecs can realy snowball like few civs can
Pretty sure vs an intelligent group of humans, the Ethiopian Stele is the strongest building since it basically guarantees a 1st - 2nd religion. But in multiplayer half the games are won or lost by turn 120-ish on quick speed. Floating is only incredible if you make to the late game _and_ have mostly freshwater cities which isn't easy on the Vanilla Pangea Map without resetting till you find good Aztec lands.
I love that you're making content for such an old game! I've been playing over a decade now and have thousands of hours. I think you should set your criteria for what makes a civ good at the start of the video and clarify you mean for single player. I exclusively play Multiplayer FFA and the balance of power for civs change drastically. For example Egypt is considered very decent because you're not playing against the AI's tech advantage and other players are less likely to go for wonders knowing Egypt is in game. Spain is banned from virtually every game and I don't think you give them enough credit. When they find an early wonder they can buy a settler straight cash, and there double yields apply to their pantheon for natural wonders as well. But Spain players also have a rep for quitting if they don't find any...it's kind of all or nothing. If you don't consider them good because they are inconsistent that is fair, but, You should rank Ethiopia higher if that's a criteria you are judging on. Ethiopia is v consistent because of stele-they get first pantheon often so are more guaranteed strong early bonuses. Also i don't think America is totally trash tier-they have a plains/river start bias which is the most desirable start and because of their more efficient scouting they are more likely to find more ruins early game, and those early turns are critical. Anyway I could probably drone on for every civ, Filthy Robot probably has the best MP focused content and Tier lists for V. Thanks and keep making more for civ5!!!!
Totally agree Filthy has an excellent tier list.. Although my fave civ Iroquois everyone has at the bottom..I completely understand why that is. I just find them really fun, and you can upgrade some Mohawks....
I wonder if he knows Filthy. He could learn so much from his games. For example, he doesn't lock city tiles and doesn't production focus (which drives me insane). Agree on Persia and Spain. Both are powerhouses. Aztec are way better than he rates them. Floating gardens are so good. Population = science. Science wins games, doesn't matter what victory condition you go for.
I LOVE THIS GAME! I’d love to see more civ 5 content !
Me too.. I hope civ 7 is closer to civ 5 than civ 6.. I'm a bit of an outsider as I really like the Iroquois with a liberty, commerce start.
Likewise.
I play it every week to this day.
@@markmorris7123 Petition for civ 5 remastered
I turned on a game last night at 9pm didnt turn it off until 430am the next morning. I focused on tech n economy and expansion early game, but once i got that long bow man I started my conquest of My Continent 😂
One strat with the Huns, that can happen with some luck on the early game is to find some ancient ruins with a warrior and get them upgraded: For some reason, the game gets them to be a Battering Ram. Imagine that you get one in the first 10 turns, in any kind of speed or difficulty, with a nearby civ. Declare War. In most cases, the other civ can't manage a proper defense, and you can get a capital with just one Battering Ram. The downside being you better keep it as a puppet city until you can make a courthouse and manage the unhappiness mechanic.
Only works at emperor and lower higher difficulty the AI starts with too many units
@@hs5312 Incorrect, you can take capitals within the first few turns if you time it right on Deity, depends when they get wall tech before you.
@@jesterclownmime the ai starts out with quite a few extra warriors on immortal and deity, the battering Ram loses effectiveness if the AI has more than one unit they can use to defend. Rushing by getting the horse archers early is the best strategy at higher levels
@@hs5312 I'm aware of how many warriors they get. I'm telling you I have taken capitals on deity several times in the first 10 turns as Huns. Its not impossible.
@@jesterclownmime more often than not it’s unlikely
Rome above Inca??? I dont think you've given Inca a proper go..They have one of the best starting bias in the game. And all units being able to treat hills like flat land is amazing because your capital will always be surrounded by hills.. You will also usually have loads of mountains nearby, so you will be scientifically set, and the unique farms are awesome. Best suited for longer games,, Standard or epic.. They are one of the best civs in the game
Absolutely. Inca with an average Incan start on an average map is like playing a generic Civ at 1-2 difficulties easier, or Iroquois/Venice 2-3 difficulties easier.
Inca with an especially good start or on an ideal map (e.g. Highlands) can be silly OP at any difficulty.
The incans are quite literally a tier above
Exactly. Inca is leagues above Rome...
Agree. Inca are rock solid. Outstanding econ and, given the hill bias, really hard to attack effectively
This tier list is a bit silly, really. Inca are a bit situational (no mountains, no terrass farm party) but the free roads on hills, ignore terrain cost on hills alone are so huge. Both for your worker efficiency and militarily.
Don’t forget that the Incan slingers withdraw from melee, so if you pump out a bunch and get them upgraded constantly, you have immortal bazookas
It's also makes them useless escorts which is main job of early units. You basically trading valuable early game presence for inconsequential bonus to mediocre unit. Only competitive unit in bazooka's time period that can trigger retreat is infantry as most units are ranged. It could work on crossbowmens but you would need to waste so much early that you would become irrelevant in medival times and as medival units are so strong what may mean gg
I rather my archers not run away and leave my settlers to get captured by barbs
Spain has potential to be completely insane since 500 gold is exactly enough to buy a settler, so if you spawn close to a natural wonder you can immediately get a second city, put it next to the wonder and get a disgusting yield immediately.
A lot of people seem to think the Floating Garden is only good with lakes, but the food bonus is so good that you can build super tall cities with no lakes at all, just putting all your cities on rivers. I think it's one of the best UBs in the game. Speaking of the best UBs, I'm really not sure how you managed to talk about the Maya without mentioning the Pyramid at all. I enjoyed the video though, even when I didn't agree with some of your placements. It's interesting to get different perspectives on these things.
I would argue that Ethiopia deserves to be higher. For one, the Faith generation of the Stele means you’ll commonly be the first to found a religion since it replaces the Monument as the very first available building, giving you a boost in the early game. Secondly, the +20% combat bonus against Civs with more cities than you means that if you’re neighbours with Domination Civs that capture, Diplomatic Civs that annex, or Wide Civs that spam cities en mass, the bonus - in conjunction with area denial units like artillery & Wonders like Himeji Castle - means you can produce a formidable defence via your *very* tall Empire that the enemy will hurl itself against & be broken, allowing you to fight defensive wars as a sort of ‘Anti-Domination’ Civ with relative ease.
And with Defender of the faith (which you will get because of the awesome Stelle) you are pretty much unconquerable 👌
Ethiopia is great to play as. And so annoying when it's an opponent
Japans biggest problem is samurai. Its not upgradable to musketman, but to rifleman. Its very painful downgrade, since samurais starts with shock I which is complete waste of promotion. For meele units drill is way more important. If you manage to get Alhambra and recruit some of them, you should upgrade samurais into drill upgrades.
Zero is okay flying units. But as we all know, that AI is bad with aircraft, zero rarely shines. You prefer using oil for bombers - deals more damage and are just more consistant in warfare. Against aircraft, anti-aircraft guns are just enough to deal with enemies' flying units. Bushido ability is good, but not essential, rarely is a clutch winner. Coastal starting bias is what I love in most civs. In here its also good since from BNW Japan gives culture from fishing boats and atolls. Which is kinda good with synergy of pantheon that gives +1 hammer from them as well.
For me personally, Japan should have been kept on D tier. All of abilites aren't necesarily important. Samurai is basically bad, Zero is okay, but not super good nor useable.
Japan has to be my least favorite civ, It always get's the worst start. That being said ive had some of my most fun games with tundra japan start in multiplayer, rushing my neighbor, then mass samurai irrel war. Still fun. However garbage civ.
My opa grandpa in German let me use his steam account to play civ and he showed me how to play good tactics and he played the Germans and so did I I decided to experiment with other empires I’m currently trying ganghis khan which so far everyone wants me dead
Egypt is good for domination, culture and diplomacy victory.
Domination, because war chariot are apparently really good units for early aggression, so on smaller maps they can kick asses. Later on if you manage to build Brandenburg Gate and Alhambra, your XCOM squads with nukes can basically conquer cities in seconds. Also, Burial tomb is a colloseum without maintenance building without obsoleting coloseum itself, which is a very strong building for medieval warfare as well to handle happiness problem.
Culture for obvious reasons - tons of wonders, guarantees so much culture.
Diplomacy due to high amount of city state missions are about gaining great people, which you usually do have from wonders, about generating culture, which you usually have tons from wonders as well, about building wonders, which you eventually will build thanks to the trait... Its almost half of the pool of city state quests that doesn't base on gold. Speaking of which, you also can have a lot of that if you avoid early warfare and recruit minimum military units.
For Byzantium there is one thing to consider - Dromon. With promotions, this ship can fight with galeases. Can also handle with even caravels on huge mass. But this is double edged sword - this ship makes Byzantium being one of the stronger civs for Archipelago, but definitely one of the weakest everywhere else. Cataphract no point to say much. You recruit horseman due to their mobility. Cutting movement points by 1 for unique unit is such a pain in the ass. Even for additional strength and higher strength than usual horseman against cities (-25% combat strength for cataphract vs -33% for regular horseman), its still kinda bad, since there are civs like Assyria or The Huns that single handedly hits cities like a truck, while cataphract is still touching it gently. For unique ability there is no much to say - if there are no civs that tends to focus on religion (e.g. Ethiopia, Celts, Spain, Siam, Arabia, Egypt, The Huns, Persia and so on), this could be potentially good ability, but lets be real. On standard map size or bigger its impossible to avoid those civs. Which can usually on Deity cause to have totally useless trait, while every civ in the game can potentially use their abilities to their advantages.
46:00 Don't forget that their barrack replacement allows them to grow their borders 25% faster so you can position yourself in a way where you aren't perpetually stuck with just tundra. You can always put leningrad on the coast somewhere greener and not really be at a growth disadvantage because your ostrog makes up for the diffrence of time in which it was settled. Not to mention I don't feel like the bias is as strong as all the other ones. Usually I get plains as Russia. Maybe I'm just really lucky? I dunno
I love playing Korea, sci is the way. Poland is too broken for me, S+ maybe. With Korea there is still a challenge but Poland can be like God sometimes. I like China and Rome too.
Polynesia is absolute S tier on any map with a bunch of water on it. You can ignore everything else, just embark those scouts and basically you won the game.
Venice is probably my favourite Domination civ in the game. I rate it at least at A-tier. I would put it on S, but I have never played anything but Domination with it so I can't judge the other victory conditions. The Venice starting bias is so amazing too.
Love this content. Poland, Korea, and Babylon are S tier for me. That said, I think my favourite civs are the one with really fun mechanics like the Inca, Venice, and Shoshone.
In my opinion I think Venice isn’t very fun because you can’t pump out settlers but then again I play on settler.😊
One time I spawned next to Harold bluetooth and Genghis Khan as Babylon and got absolutely merked by the berserkers even when I was almost an era ahead
IMO, the Inca belong in the S tier or at least in a high A one, the half cost elsewhere is ridiculously useful.
You can maintain whatever you want, accumulate an enormous treasure, it is too good to pass
They also have the easiest turtle
@@hs5312 yeah inca ruins the map lol.
Incan city builds are insane in mountainous areas. They can turn worthless lands for literally every other civ into something that can out shine a 15+ hill Petra capitol city.
This is so true. By end game i was effortlessly raking in like 800 gold per turn
Honestly, I feel as though Egypt is deserving of a high A or even an S rank. That 20% extra production to wonders is often enough for you to beat the AI to certain early wonders, and let's you squeeze in an extra wonder or 2 per era. The War Chariot is just a straight upgrade over Chariot Archers, and is extremely useful for early defense and scouting. And in my opinion, the Burial Tomb is one of the best buildings in the game. Civ V's extreme dependence on Happiness is easied a lot with Burial Tombs, allowing you to possibly get an extra city or 2, or allow you to take an hold an opponent's city earlier, with less of an economic penalty.
Otherwise, I'm pretty much in agreement with you on everything else. Though, I might also drop Japan to D, just because of how situational and infrequently their special units and abilities are used, from my experience with them.
You know what's strange,, I always play immortal and never do well with Egypt..Yet the Iroquois who are ranked as one of the worst civs, with them I always do well.. I would still have Iroquois ranked low because your forced to play a certain way..But that way in which your forced to play is so much fun..Liberty, commerce is the way to go..Trading posts on the forest ls awesome..And so long as you start with lots of forests, your army will be a defensive power house..Just make sure you upgrade at least six Mohawks.
I could make peace with egypt being S , byzantium is not an f tho, d is more like it cuz if things go your way you can soar high like he said
I only play multiplayer FFA and Eygpt is def top tier. Their war chariot is one of best early war units and the wonder construction is golden since human opponents don't have the same advantages AI does, plus they're unlikely to go for wonders knowing eygpt is in the game (and wonders are for the most part worse than building up your civ)
@@okdude8215 on Naval maps Byzantium is way better than this guy thinks. Dromon rushes are very effective and cataphracts are also nothing to scoff at since they do have defensive bonusses unlike any other horse units meaning they are a lot harder to kill. But dromons alone should put Byzantium in a C tier since they are very powerful on coastal map and dominante the seas for a very long time with nothing that can deal with them effectively since they obliterate triremes effortlessly. Not as scary as England but still nothing to take lightly!
Egypt is really difficulty dependant, imho. On lower difficulties, the production bonus to wonders is insanely valuable - but on Deity, almost everything has to go right to even attempt to build certain wonders before the AI with its insane boni can snatch it away.
i wish royal library gave +15 exp instead of +10 so you could produce triple promoted units from all your cities without having to go autocracy
that would be a really cool bonus
zulu gets that just for being zulu, without any libraries let alone great works of writing...
The Ottomans are pretty underrated... Having the ability to heal 50 hp from killing a unit allows you to easily rush cities and bring in cannons or trebuchets to take over cities. If a city is coastal, then you simply surround it with frigates and privateers, and use your unique units to pry away at the land defenses, it really helps especially when defending since you can hold a river for example and heal if you kill a unit. That's why I think that the ottomans are pretty underrated, but they're not close to being the best civ.
I kinda love playing as the Celts. I have had some good cultural victories with them
I disagree berserker begins being obsolete very fast. Berserker is unlocked a tech earlier, with metal casting, which is actually a useful tech due to workshops, comparing to longswordsmen being unlocked on Steel. Also disagree that berserker is bad. 3 movement points is great against opponent with great wall, movement after landing from being embarked is excellent for archipelago maps. If you went tradition you usually have garrisoned units inside cities even on archipelago. So this is technically a reason to use them for conquering cities. I agree, caravel is just better to do so in this particular map type, but Berserker can always be used on coastal fights on Pangeas/Continents too. Norwegian Ski Infantry is also not the worst - having greater mobility on hilly maps and tundras/snows is advantageous on maps like Tilted Axis, but they are getting obsolete relatively quickly for great war infantry. And this is also super situational, because this map type is being played super rarely.
I super disagree with the huns.
You have to understand one thing about my comment here - I play ONLY marathon game phase. And you have to trust me - Animal Husbandry tech on start is A LOT of science saved in early game. This civ starts with this tech. On legendary start/abuntant resources, their +1 production from pastures is up to 5 turns saved in terms of recruiting any units in capital. Doubled razing speed is working in every era and is by far one of the most overlooked ability in the entire game. This ability saves you so much trouble with happiness while warfaring. Since you are getting aggressive expansion diplomatic penalty relatively quickly in civ V, happiness starts to be a huge problem very quickly, which this ability actually is to solve this problem.
On top of that, I said earlier - for marathon game phase those two unique units can conquer entire continent very quickly. Horse archers becomes obslotete after first musketmans. No, not pikeman - musketman. Getting logistics with horse archer is trivial. Getting cover II with battle ram is also trivial. Its good to have shock III with ram too, so they aren't destroyed that easily with swordsman or pikeman. If you manage to get march with that machine too, you pretty much are invincible up to gunpowder.
For me, The Huns, definitely A tier. Con for them is in fact, your win condition is relatively simple, but is challenging on many cases and the faster game phase, the harder this civ is.
With Venice:
-Use the merchant on a city-state near AI civ. Spam landsknechts from it. Plunder.
With Spain:
-Find wonder, get 500g, buy a settler and settle it. Repeat. Get the natural wonder pantheon. Get religion. Buy military units with faith. Conquer natural wonders. Unleash the SPANISH INQUISITION on conquered cities. El imperio donde nunca se pone el sol.
Maybe not strategies for victory, but fun scenarios to play.
I still cannot understand the huns rating. Start with a free tech, that gives you early production boost, and better production on that production boost. Ancient/classical era units so impactful theyre actually worth the hammer investment. Ruins battering ram will take out a flatland city w/o any units, and only need a horse archer or 2 if there are some units. I dont even think the units are the best part of the huns, starting with a free tech and early production boost is super helpful
I disagree with your ranking of Germany. The fact that you can have a large army at the beggining of the game by destroying barbarian camps and gain more gold then other civs, plus 25% less maitanence for land units. Couple that with Honor policy which gives you furder bost vs barbarians which makes it more easier to gain new units and adopting Autocracy with Nationalism gives another 33% decrease in maitanence which makes in total 58% gives you the ability to mass a huge army with which you can just swarm your enemies. You also get a strong unique unit and Hansa which gives you a huge production with each trade route you have with city states( +5 production, +2 gold) which can turn you into a industrial juggernaut. In my opinion Germany should be S tier. Probably the best civ for domination victory.
Nice vid. Interesting take on it. One thing I didn’t hear you discuss is how difficulty level affects the relative strength of the Civs. IMHO some of the Civs that are relatively mediocre on Deity difficulty can become stellar when you play on Emperor or below. Mongolia for example I rarely get much use out of Keshiks because they don’t come early enough and are obsoleted by the AI on Deity too soon. Where on Emperor they can be a powerhouse. I think that affects a lot of Civs that rely on a mid-game UU. It’s even more pronounced on Quick speed. I think the top three would have to be Poland, Babylon and Korea (in order of my preference 😉). I was very interested to see you put the Shoshone in S tier. I love them, but don’t know if they belong in S tier on harder difficulty.
On the other hand if you play a straight up 4 city Tradition game it’s possible to beat Deity with any Civ…with a little luck.
Shoeshone are definitely not S tier or A tier..
@@markmorris7123 They are definitely A tier at the very least. Can't possibly put them lower.
For Greece I'd make an argument that with companion cavalry being great for flanking and their secret buff that trespassing doesn't hurt your influence that they could be an A tier civ, especially for diplomacy. I like moving armies through city-states bordering my own empire frequently
-In average difficulty I'll put atleast Songhaï in B rank with Germany, because of their plunder bonus that is very powerful during all the game and their single building which is really very interesting when you have a lot of city.
-In divinity on a huge map with between 12 and 22 civilisations, I play Songhaï .If you want to play victory by domination while being at war for the whole game, it's the best of the best. You just have to plunder cities without ever stopping xD No need to bother protecting the cities you take, just keep growing and evolving your army and weakening the others civilisation (and don't stop making road to connect every cities).
There will just be hard enough time to pass because of negative happiness.But for the gold deficit, it will be filled by looting and requesting tribes from the city state. And if you can't win by domination in time you just have to fall back on cultural victory :)
-And if you play on an island type map in divinity, Polynesia is the best for a culture victory.
I really appreciated this video! Very helpful because i am still learning. My husband has been playing for like 10 years and is offended you ranked Carthage low because its his die hard favorite 😂 his argument is that they take a bit to get going but after about 150 turns they absolutely dominate. Mainly they have a crap ton of money from those instant and free city connections. Also he noticed when he takes over cities he barely loses happiness because again, instant connection to the capital. Otherwise hes pleased with most of your other rankings
It's very sweet that your husband is sharing his favorite game(s) with you - Civ games can be complicated, so (almost) everybody is still learning. Carthage is very map dependant, imho. The free harbors are insane on Archipelago maps and great on Small Islands, but I would probably pick a different civ for Continents or Pangea.
@@Nr4747 really good point I agree
Great that you are playing. I still love this game. If you want to get good at this game, watch Filthy Robot. He has a RUclips channel with over-explain games. You will annihilate your husband's Cartheginians in no time. He also made a tier-list that I rate much higher than this one.
@marcvandijk2971 thank you I appreciate that!
America is much better than you're giving it credit for. The sight range is nice for ranged warfare, especially artillery wars. The B-17 is actually amazing since bombers are the time most wars break out on higher difficulties as going to war too early has too much of an opportunity cost in terms of growth and science. Last but certainly not least the tile purchasing is actually incredibly good as it allows you to optimize your city locations in terms of having good stuff on the 3rd ring, as with tile purchasing those tiles are much more attainable than normal. None of their bonuses are flashy but they're overlooked and undervalued way too often. Should be either a low B tier or high C tier. Assyria is on the other hand of the spectrum, you grossly overestimated their bonuses. The siege tower is nice and all but Mathematics is 1 of the latest techs you get normally, and if you rush it you're paying a hefty price in not having the other techs online sooner. Similarly on higher difficulties early wars stifle your growth too much so are rarely worth it, doubly so when you also rush a subpar tech to unlock your UU. The Royal Library is completely pointless as it doesn't provide enough xp to give another promotion and of course it needs a great work to even do its job. Their best bonus is actually the free tech they receive on each city capture, which you didn't talk about at all. While early wars on higher difficulties are still painful, I find this bonus works best for comp/crossbow rushes against aggressive AIs to get them off your back and catch up in science without sacrificing your growth too much. However the window this bonus is useful is very short as by the time you get to public schools you should already caught up with the AI on tech if not be the outright tech leader(typically not with Assyria unless you had an amazing map/start) at which point you simply have no techs left to steal. D rank at most, on the cusp of F.
The best part about Austria is actually their hill starting bias which is incredibly powerful. The Coffee House is a solid building, mostly for science victories, and their unique unit is solid but nothing exceptional. Their diplomatic marriage actually makes them incredibly good at domination, you don't need city states with good tiles you just need city states in bomber range of AI capitals to buy the city state, send your bombers into it than cap an AI capital. That's the Austrian blitz warfare which outdoes the German version. A tier for sure, a strong A at that. Aztecs a culture civ? What? Not even pre BNW were Aztecs good at culture, it's just an early boost to get their initial culture 'techs' sooner. Aztecs are actually a domination/science civ with their immense growth potential. The Jaguar is their least interesting bonus and their Floating Gardens doesn't require lakes, it's either lakes or the usual rivers, making it flat out better than the Watermill which is already a very good building. Aztecs are actually on the verge of S tier, either a low S tier or very high A, you just completely missed out on the growth aspect of the Aztecs which is their main selling point...
You're grossly underselling the Celts' faith bonus. It nearly guarantees first religion in most games unless you get very unlucky(or choose a geographic map without a lot of forests like great plains for whatever reason), and first religion is incredibly powerful. Sure, there is no faith victory but the bonuses you can get from an early religion are incredibly powerful. The rest of their bonuses are nice to have but nothing to write home about. Their unique unit is unfortunately a swordsman unit, which is rather pointless on higher difficulties as you really don't want to get ironworking particularly early, you generally want to go civil service before it which gives you the pikeman which is just better... Similarly their unique building is unfortunately the 3rd tier culture building, which you rarely want to build when not going for a culture victory(which is the worst one to go for on higher difficulties). Still, just the early faith for first religion in and of itself is so powerful to merit B tier for the Celts. China doesn't actually have any science related bonuses, their papermaker doesn't give additional science, all it does is remove the typical gold maintenance of libraries and turn it into a gold bonus, which is incredible for gold generation but does nothing for science. So yes China is basically limited to being a domination civ, but it's 1 of the best at that. The best crossbow rush civ in the entire game and afterwards you still have the best most and best great generals(double bonus) for future ground warfare. Inca is actually S tier because hill starts are so powerful and Incas make those especially sustainable. When starting near a mountain range you can get incredibly productive and incredibly fertile cities which no other civ can do and that's just so powerful. Of course they get shafted without hills but again just as with the Celts don't pick a geographic map that's typically flat, like again the great plains.
I think Russia is underestimated here: since you try to dominate full map and conquer territory, you'll get a massive amount of strategic resources that will scale your production skyrocket in mid game. I never lost playing as Russia. If nobody stop Russia in the match the victory is after them. Solid A tier, as for me!
plus the money from trading those extra strat resources makes you quite an economic powerhouse too.
Thanks for the list! I think it's a difficult topic since difficulty, speed and map can change everything.
Playing with Netherlands you could sponsor non stop war action against your neighbors. What cold be better?
Why do all Civ V tier lists use Moctezuma's portrait for the Aztecs instead of their symbol
They are probably all using the same free assets they downloaded from somewhere.
Great video, really enjoyed listening to it. I'd of maybe put the Inca a little higher, the hill movement helps works build improvements faster, find ruins faster, jump on a hill with an archer and fire eerrr likely a strong economy due to cheap road (also really fun trying to route a road on hills between city's for no road upkeep). You likely mentioned some of that...but maybe a couple of new points.. Looking forward to you next civ 5 drop
Yeah. Incas are no favourite of mine, but they're certainly powerful.
Yeah is S tier for sure..That's why I never play them.. Feels like I'm cheating..Their capital is ALWAYS amazing
They are largely dependent on their start but top tier for sure, every online multiplayer bans them.
Every Civ in Civ 5 is crazy much. Great that you made the effort, but I don't think I want to know how long this video took you to make.
😂 waaay too long
My main problem with Ethiopia is that this civ is stupidly easy and boring to play early game due to Stele being so strong. Later on, this civ is getting interesting. On slower game phases, where obsoletion tech problem isn't as problematic as it is on normal/fast game phases - Mehal Sefari is good. Really good. -10% required hammers for them to recruit is strong, drill I is also very crucial. On top of that they are really hard to beat inside your territory. If you place them on top of hill citadel, Mechanized infantry won't beat them. Giant deathrobot can struggle against them even. For instance: 34 strength*1.45 (drill III, trivial to get, since they start with drill I)*1.2(if inside your borders while having less cities than aggressor)*1.15 (great general)*2(citadel defensive bonus)*1.25(hill bonus)=170 defensive strength. Consider that, I didn't even count Himeji Castle perk (+15% strength inside friendly territory), up to +30% while being close to capital or +25% from authocracy. Not to mention about flanking defense from honor tenet. Ethiopia is a queen of turtles, sorry Babylon, you are good at defending, but ethiopia is better at that.
All in all, for my taste Ethiopia is A tier minimum, Monument is mandatory in every city. Stele quadruples potential of this building in every city, which pumps on later into the game. Its good to play them as tradition, Liberty, Honor and Piety. And this civ is very consistant every single way you choose to upgrade your culture.
I think you’ve misunderstood India. India is not a tall building Civ. Their ability doesn’t look like it at first, but it’s actually the only Civ where your cities grow tall enough to create a local happiness profit in the long run, which means that in the medieval and Renaissance eras you want to start planting more cities. Building tall with India does not help, because you’ll never have enough happiness to get lots of golden ages, and even if you do, Persia is the golden age Civ. The best thing to do with India is to build tall AND wide. My best game as India saw me plant 3 cities including the capital in the ancient era, then place down 5 more in the medieval and Renaissance eras. I was unhappy in the game ONCE in the ancient era and never again. It is a master of single digit happiness until ideology, and it avoids the mid-game happiness slump which is why your mid-game cities can actually grow tall enough by the end to be productive additions to the empire.
All of this put together means India is one of the most unique playstyles, because you don’t do early expansion but you get quick catch-up unlike any other Civ in the game and you become one of the strongest civs by the end because of having 8-12 25 pop cities. In my game my capital was 50 pop, my second and third cities were 40 pop, and my 5 mid game expands were 20-30 pop. I had double digit happiness by the end and insane production, to the point where most of my cities had a world wonder to get the 33% culture bonus from Aesthetics. It’s my favorite Civ to play because of how different expansion is.
Totally - ideally I’d be building tall and wide all the time 😅
Edit: likely differing strengths on variable difficulties for India more so than others. The criteria (as always) for my rankings is in the description and I’m assuming standard diff. I’m not convinced their potential local happiness strat is that impactful here.
@@JumboPixel I think India does work best on larger maps where the city happiness penalty is lower and the local happiness profit comes sooner. But I always play on Huge maps so it wrks perfectly for me.
Edit: So just to add some math to it, on Huge maps new cities for normal civs produce 1.8 unhappiness, for India that is 3.6. The local city happiness cap is 2/3 of population so exporting is harder. However once you get to 15 population on Huge maps, your local city happiness starts to overtake local city unhappiness, which means you will start to produce a happiness profit.
So if you have 3 cities planted in the ancient era that, on quick speed, get to 20 population in 100 turns (easily doable, especially if you get to Temple of Artemis and Civil Service quickly), then you can put down 5 more cities pretty quickly. Then you have another 150 turns to grow those to be productive by the late game. The massive size of your first three cities should offset the increased tech costs from the later 5 cities, and by the late game they should all have enough production to easily put down science buildings and destroy the AI in science.
Also, if you grab Neuschwanstein, your happiness is going to explode because of happiness profit from Mughal Forts, and you can probably even go warmongering in the late game if you so desire.
True, but on the harder difficulty settings in can be difficult to expand unless you do it early.
dissagree on Zulu, its the War Civ in all Ages. Impis can be upgraded into Riflemen->Great War Inf. etc. and they are complete bonkers with the special Promotions.
There are Many different ways to play civilization, obviously. But Civ 5 has some unique features that lend to a more strategic playthrough. For example, using terrain (forest, hills, rivers) to add strength to your military units early game. Your placement of cities is extremely important and strategic in the long game. I personally find wide playthroughs (lots of strategically placed cities) with high advantages in keys areas ( science, culture, religion) make for extremely strong civs. I agree that certain civilizations have advantages, but honestly, if you play to your strengths, you can win with any civilization. Carthage is more powerful than you ranked them (play to their strengths, ocean tiles and navy), the Shoshone with the Commanche are insane if you play aggressively enough and want to expand your empire in early mid game (they DOMINATE land warfare if played smart). Rock on Civ players! Keep on keeping on!
Here's a tip. Whenever you take a city and you want to raze it, make sure you sell all the buildings first. You can sell one building per turn and this could get you a lot of extra gold.
India is nuts. You can end up with endless population compared to anyone else.
Spain is pretty rng reliant on Nat wonders but man some of them are super good during early game, mount sinai lets you rush religion with 16 faith per turn (20 if you have the natural wonder pantheon thing). Solomons mines or lake Victoria can really shoot your production/growth quite early on.
Tho if there aren’t any wonders nearby I tend to rush conquistadors and caravels and just send me off on a grand adventure or conquer civs that have nat wonders.
Haha don't forget the best part: the 500 gold if you find it first meaning a free settler to buy. Imagine finding Great barrier with spain: 1k gold meaning 2 instant settlers to buy on normal speed, settle it and get 2 4 food, 2 hammer 3 gold and 4 science tiles early game and 8 faith on each if you get one with nature. Spain is indeed RNG dependant but insane if you can pull it off, and imagine getting great barrier and lake Victoria early game... it is downright unreal how hard you will snowball
You forget that one with nature is doubled by spain as well. Its 24 total.
So yeah, they're either the best civ or the worst depending upon if there's a natural wonder close to them.
I would make a case to bump Arabia up to S tier because of the bazaar. They say money cant buy happiness but that doesn't apply to civ 5! the extra money from the building and also selling the luxuries can be used to buy happiness buildings like colosseums or used to buy out city states with new luxuries. additionally, you can just trade the extra luxuries with the A.I. for even more happiness. the reason why this is so powerful is due to the fact that happiness is the crux of civ 5 due to the very restricting unhappiness debuff's. having tons of happiness can allow you to expand wide militarily supported with your OP camel archers, or expand tall and trade using your caravan buffs. Otherwise I agree with all your picks except for Byzantium just because the dromons are so cool.
Vs ais Arabia is deffo S tier because of camels and bazaars. Camels are the most broken units in the game and all that bazaar extra lux gold from ais is always good. Vs humans i would rate Arabia A since you will have a huge bullseye on you because people are scared of camels meaning they will try and suicide rush you if they can before you get to camels. And this guy deffo underestimates dromons and cataphracts lmao dromon rushes are what makes Byzantium way better than this guy thinks. Deffo not F tier and far above Carthage imo
@@DiscusvissenRocken always nice to see a fellow Byzantium enthusiast 😂. Yea I love Byzantium so much just cuz the dromon is like the coolest unit in the game which makes the civ very fun to play as. Byzantium is fur sure under rated cuz the ability forces you to get a strong religion and a strong religion can be used for any victory condition. Also the fact that the dromons upgrade to galleass and then eventually frigates is very usefull. I would say that if the cataphtact replaced the knight instead of the horseman, you could make an argument for high B tier. But as they stand for me it's low B tier high C tier.
@@Swarm66 the religious ability is a coin flip but i have had sone really good games where it worked out and if it does one extra belief is not something to scoff at, but for me the best part of Byzantium is the dromon. These are really good and i have done many succesful dromon rushes vs both players and ais since there is nothing that can stop them untill galeasses come around since these babies rip triremes to pieces
@@DiscusvissenRocken yea, the dromons are absolutely nuts. For me though, the ability isn't as much of a coin flip and is just as good. I usually play against AI and i get a religion almost every game regardless. even on immortal difficult I can still get a religion 95% of the time. And yea once you get that bonus beleif your religion just becomes overpowered
@@Swarm66 if you get tithe and the other good belief then you can indeed create a monster religion. Vs the ai this might indeed work out a lot better since the ai has a habit of picking the worthless beliefs instead of the good ones so you might get away with not getting first religion. but vs players you might struggle to get 1th religion, especially if you have to compete vs Ethiopia and/or Celts or if someone gets a faith NW, and good players will always snag the best beliefs if they get the chance.
I've always said it: Venice is it's own tier
Well, many nations i would place different. I think it depends on the playstyle. I prefer building, dont like early rushes or wars, so i choose all civs, that support the very early progress in game. Anyway thank you for this video and go on making this good stuff!
Netherlands ability helps with happiness alot actually ai is more likely to trade if you give them your last luxury this also helps any all ways
France themic bonus applies to Oxford university as well. This is a small misconception in wikia about only world wonders.
France isn't terrible to get culture victory. Obviously its worse than Brasil, but yet with a bit better potential in terms of getting art works via expansion to other civs from Musketeers unique unit making your life a little easier in industrial warfare. I claim, France deserve D tier, isn't as bad as Byzantium.
Japan is absolutely fantastic when not playing with the Gods&Kings expansion. I have a few memories of how a few of my troops would get surrounded by 3, 4 sometimes even 5 units. Get beaten to 1 HP, then proceed to kill every single unit the AI suicided against you, since 1/10 HP was enough to never take damage again if your unit could dish out enough damage to kill the attacker.
Never saw it again once I installed Gods&Kings, when they increased max health from 10 to 100.
Love that your still putting out content for this game. I would have ranked Spain higher on the list because I usually get a hold of 2 to 3 natural wonders when playing them and not through war which gives me great bonuses and IMHO, they are the best Civ to combat Poland with! Tercio units are great against the Polish special cavalry and using Conquistadors to pillage their lands. The Zulu are good against Poland too but I never have a game as the Zulus where the computer puts Poland close to you.
Conquistador is more expensive Knight with useless bonus. One of the worst special unit in game as knights are important medival units. Only slingers are worst as they will retreat and leave your workers to barbarians.
@@suchamysz I, in no way, agree with you and don’t believe you’ll find anyone that does. Conquistadors are the main unit I use to secure natural wonders and explore during the medieval and renaissance periods.
@@ThatJerseyBloke it is too late then. Not only bonuses from wonders are worth less in comparison to what you can produce in medival, there is also gigantic opportunity cost for placing city in such important phase of a game. Knights and crossbowmens are becoming online and if you need them to defend or to conquer you should produce them. There are universities and you want them asap in every city working specialists. There are important wonders like Chitzen Itza, Notre Dame or Alhembra which is win condition by itself (it's allows you to have blitz X-COM). All that important things compete with that quest for Eldorado. If you have great place to settle then of course you should do it. In classical or ancient era, because cities needs to grow and for that, time is needed. Not to mention that for new city you need happiness so its not always advisable especially that you may use that happiness to conquer. I would also add that I may be biased, because I like to play rather less than more citys but medival era is era of conquest not colonisation. I also understand and like flavour that horse settlers bring. My favourite civ is Polynesia because of maoi which just looks cool. But you cannot make tier list based on flavour
@@suchamysz Your delusional and have never played Spain or your just trolling. 3 natural wonders controlled by me as Spain and I can steamroll the game!
@@ThatJerseyBloke these 3 wonders would be all that's left from your technologically illiterate nation after I unleash unclear hell upon it while you would be occupied by wasting engineers on something trashy like Kremlin.
Sweden is another one that I think you’ve severely underrated. I recently played a game with Sweden and found myself in pure tundra with barely any plains around. Then I discovered there was a spot for my capital with a ton of deer, a river, a hill, and a mountain. Now I certainly got lucky, but there’s definitely a lot of deer in tundra that you could use Goddess of the Hunt pantheon on and get lots of food from. I had a 20 pop capital in 90 turns with that, and even if I had less deer my cap would still have been easy to grow. Beyond that, the best way to combine the UUs of Sweden with the UA is to find an unpopular warmonger and go to war with them, but don’t conquer their cities. Play a very messy war where you kill lots of units to farm XP and get lots of great generals. Meanwhile, the declarations of friendship you get from hating the same leader will give you more of other types of great people. These two put together will net you lots of great people. When I played the game the great people effects were broken. With the leaning tower and national epic and garden and ideology bonus I already had 100% great people bonus, but I was already able to get like 60% from the ancient era alone from declarations of friendship. My capital was just a great person farm by the end. One of the most fun and easy games I’ve ever played, and I could easy play it again with a lot of the same strats.
That’s an awesome strategy that I’ll have to try! A lot of dependencies there though in reality. To mention a few: finding a lucky spot, getting lots of deer, getting the right pantheon, having a suitably unpopular yet weak warmonger neighbour, etc. Let’s hope that neighbour isn’t the Tundra-biased Russia too.
@@JumboPixel Well because your UUs come in the Industrial(?) era, you really can wait until then to attack, and then you'll be a monster attacker because Caroleans come with March. The way to do it is to get your units in formation-four Caroleans in the front, two artillery in the back, and a Hakkapelitta stacked with a Great General in the middle. Then go and farm Russia's units.
As for the rest, unless you get a *really* bad start, you'll likely get at least a few of those; I just happened to get a lot of really good things. But also if you spawn in tundra, typically you get plains nearby as well, so if you don't get all the deer, you'll get some civil service farmland. Tundra also often has a lot of forest or hills which means you can have a lot of production, and camps of course give production if you get them. Basically, while tundra is a subpar start compared to other starts, it's not quite as bad as people think it is, and is certainly better than non-Petra desert.
What difficulty do you play on?? If you play Sweden on immortal or diety, unless your very lucky you won't be getting a religion. And you certainly won't be getting an early pantheon.
Ive been digging polynesia, i make 4/5 scouts in a row and get all the ruins and 30 gold for city state discoverys. Kind of wish scouts scaled with eras. Can never get them to level 3.
I've been playing America lately, and I'm actually starting to appreciate the power to purchase land at a cheaper price. It means early on when you settle cities you get to CHOOSE your borders and be extremely competitive for resources while still having a narrow/tall civilization. If your civ is more expansion-based (ie. more cities) you have no choice but to have a wide civilization, but America can be tall and expansive at the same time. I would give it an A or B.
I heard someone once say America is like shoeshine lite. Easier land expansion (at a cost) and help w/ ruins (spotting and getting more ruins as opposed to choosing ruin). Imo america favors liberty opener (increased sight lets you see if your lands are good enough for liberty before having to choose), and liberty works better w war bc decentralized hammers are better for making units, on top of americas other war bonuses
Inca is overrated. Im close to finish my inca game right now, and I agree, no penalty while crossing hills is a good mobility ability. Terrace farms are nah... average. My best yield terrace farm in this game was 4 food 3 hammers. Isn't the worst, but many things were meaningful - 2 hills = +2 food, +1 food from fertilizer/civil service and +1 food in base. +1 hammer from hydro plant. Out of all ~30 cities I've had... 1 terrace farm like that. ONE.
It is not a rant towards this building. I just claim, that Polder from the Netherlands is way more reliable tile upgrade kicks with almost full potential way earlier than terrace farm, and I personally prefer using hills for mines, because those can give me up to 5 production (+1 base, +1 five year plan, +1 hydro plant). And for the food I prefer just building a farm on grassland river, on top of wheat or even having fishes. And dont forget, that you have to sacrifice tiles for mountains to have decent singular tile. I just don't see myself this building being super good.
Only worth mentioning is tile maintenance being reduced. It's not that much of a gold saved, but definitely is helpful early game (way more useful than German ability in terms of unit maintenance reduced by 25%). In fact this ability later on saves hundreds of gold. And if you synergise that with Machu Picchu, you are a golden powerhouse.
Slinger as a unique unit is bad. Costs same as regular archer, have worse defensive capabilities, but can get out from the risky battle if possible. But yet, not that useful ability against barbarian, maybe sometimes useful against AI, but also relatively rarely, since they are dying from bombardment very quickly either way.
Something you might of missed with Shoshone comanche unit. They are extremely cheap and upgrade Into tanks. You can use them to essentially get tanks discounted.
But your 1 of the few who put them s tier as do i.
The huns are an A tier. They can destroy you so fast they can end of winning on any type of victory because their domination.
I strongly disagree with the Huns, the freetech alone is better than entire other abilities and the extra production is super useful
if i remember right Huns also get to upgrade scouts straight into their battering rams through ruins, they can very easily take out early game cities by themselves and catapult your start. +1from pasture is also insane and they also have plains start bias, easily the best one.
Aside from their very good domination pathway in the early-mid game I don’t think they’re particularly competitive
@@JumboPixel doesnt matter, the snowballing potential is massive: having animal husbandry right off the start the early production and the free science speed up your early city development and national college by a decent amount. furthermore, the battering ram can two-shot cities even on immortal and deity, especially if you support with horse archers. so, if you take another capital, ideally after they build a useful wonder, you get a super strong city in a good location for free
@@gefitrop3496 they're good but not that great.. On immortal or above the upgrade from scout hardly ever happens due to the ai having more units
@@markmorris7123 early animal husbandry and early production are an excellent bonus on high difficulties since they reduce the massive imbalance a bit
Absolutely disagree with the Aztec rating. Their UB isn't locked to lakes but also works on rivers and gives you bonuses depending on the river's length. Their growth boon is HUGE leading to a very strong science based late game and their early culture from kills combined with Honor means they can every quickly get ahead of over civs regarding policies. They're super versatile, their UU scales well into Classical Era and they have the highest pop growth potential in the game. Easily A tier.
I mean if you use modded maps that have a river or something every few tiles sure, but on Vanilla Pangea most your cities will not be on fresh water unless you reset. And if you're resetting for great lands, there's far stronger civs anyways.
@@Seven_Leaf I've never personally had issue when it comes to river spawns in this game. I don't know if I'm just lucky but usually my starting city starts on fresh water.
I don't quite agree with Venice's B-tier, as its overall effectiveness depends on if you are playing against AI or human players. In multiplayer, it's clearly F as everyone would just shut their trade routes down and destroy them early before Venice develops into Bill Gates with the power of just churning out a unit every turn with cash.
But against AI, I would put it on S. Just because the AI is too stupid to destroy Venice's economy and thus utterly helpless once a huge army stands at their gates. With just more to come since Venice can simply afford it. This also them to focus on wonders, since they can buy everything else.
i only have one question: Why is it all the civs and then Montezuma?
Great vid. I should comment that I recently played a game as Hiawatha (Iroquois) and found the extra mobility of my units, especially in early game, to be a game changer. I would definitely rate them higher than you have done.
So happy you placed Iroquois at C tier..Most people have them in F tier..But I always play immortal and I have to say I love playing Iroquois..A very fun civ.. Especially if you get alot of iron so you can pump out and upgrade lots of mohawks
That's because all of their bonusses just don't work and are detrimental in the long run. And who even cares about mohawks when you can have impis, legions or way earlier hoplites or immortals. And their unique building is worse than the standard building 😆 So there is just no reason to pick this civ unless you want to specifically play iroquois for giggles because they have nothing that even is noticable let along stand out hence why everyone ranks it F
That's cause they are. No other civ has a unique building that is straight up worse that the standard building. And not only that, it replaces one of the single most crucial buildings for every city of your empire with hot garbage.
The Iroquois are the worst civ in the game along with the Byzantines.
Iroquois is painful to play as civ. Longhouse is literal downgrade for slower game phase later on, early on this actually kicks in, but you don't have to wait long to see lacking of % production from workshop missing. Mohawk warrior is decent unit - doesnt require iron, have bonus while fighting on forests and jungles... Its okay, not too strong, but not weak either.
Unique ability is... garbage most case scenario. First to begin with - they create cities connections via forests... while those are inside our territory. Not useful at all. Secondly, after finding railroads becomes obsolete. You either way will be forced to build roads/railroads later on. And... thats pretty much it.
I dont like three things about iroquois. First is that you are basically forced to play as liberty civ. Sorry, but I don't see much potential in huge cities in Longhouses. And for this condition you need so much happiness. Which causes the second problem - you dont have any unique salvage of this problem from your abilities and unique buildings. At last, I don't like keeping forests. Im an order lover - Five year plan is my favourite tenet in the game and becomes equalized with longhoused +1 hammer from forests sawmills. But what does that cost? Hammers from chopping forests. I hate keeping this tiles. I know this production is crucial early game for libraries and NC, but I'm forced to save it for later.
Which isn't ideal. Tradition is more solid, but you are basically forced to change your strategy 180 degrees. And on deity it isnt good. NC being more expensive is also a problem. If you play liberty you have to settle your cities early, no matter how trash they are. If you have less than 5 cities with liberty you might as well should restart the game. Because most case scenario your opponents go for piety or tradition which will cause you to start losing even more science towards them. No tradition is necesarry to keep your cities small and have high settler/worker pumpage with decent production.
For me personally... I don't know whether its not my style of the game or its just that bad to be utilized. I've found this civ to be so inmanagable for deity that I had to switch to Immortal. And even then I had to restart my game 2 times, because I was too slow with my expansion. Maybe its also caused by game phase? All I know, Im glad that Ive got achievment of completing the game as Iroquois and hopefully I'll never play as them again. F tier for sure.
Love Arabia and Persia. Going forever gold with Persia is really fun.
I totally disagree with Germany being that high. Hansa has pretty bad ability to be honest. +5% production for each trade route to city state is kinda unreliable. First to begin with - trade routes with city states at deity aren't worth using either with this bonus. You should focus maintaining trade routes with other AIs because they generate additional science, which is way more important than +5% production (which is basically 1-2, maybe 3 hammer per turn at rennaisance-industrial) and 1 gold per turn isn't as viable as sometimes even +4 science per turn. Not to mention, this science is affected by universities and later on with Free Thought that buffs even more science output from university. Also this buff is inconsistant because AI can still embargo city states that blocks you to utilize this ability. This happens in my games like in every 3rd game to pass this resolution. Panzer is fairly strong unit, but as you said earlier - appears super late into the game, which is kinda good but not really. Most of the time my games ends up with dom victory in first techs of information era - where panzers aren't that common yet, I personally used tanks maybe 2-3 times in total?
-25% unit maintenance is allright ability, but considerably better for me is having flat gold from doubled resources such as from bazaar. Defeating barbarians is also kinda meme ability - having access to their unique units with 67% chance isn't terrible, but I don't find this ability to be that useful early game on deity, where there isn't much space to farm barbarian encampments early game. Relatively useable ability for lower dificulty levels than Immortal, maybe usable on emperor, but definitely on king is viable strategy for early dom victory.
For me Germany doesn't deserve being higher than C tier. No starting bias is also a con because they can be spawned in tundras or jungles I just don't prefer to play on.
i agree mostly, my S tier is Korea, Babylon , Shoshone and Venice. I think Venice is a matter of opinion on how strong you think it is it could be anywhere.
I think aztecs are good for science fictories due to the gardens. But let's be serious they are god tier on jungle map with barbarian invasion
Aztecs are one of my favorite civs, but i think he ranked them right, nothing overly broken about them. Just strong all around.
@@tomrotelli1355they can be extremely broken with certain starts, such as Petra starts or with hanging gardens. As it would allowed them to grow quite a bit faster.
@@luisyfonsy711 this is true, however you are unlikely to get Petra because of the start bias and Temple of Artamis is better than HG. HG actually isn't the greatest for aztecs because you should be starting on freshwater anyway.
@@tomrotelli1355 Hanging gardens is great for any civ, because 6 food early on is a ton. Hanging gardens gives faster growth early on which = more science, more production, more gold etc. Which helps you reach universities faster. Sure it is a little bit nicer to build hanging gardens without a freshwater start for free gardens, but it's still incredibly strong without it. It is also nearly impossible to actually get temple of Artemis on immortal difficulty, while hanging gardens is doable, due to ai rarely taking tradition. However I do agree that temple of Artemis do set you up for a greater late game. The Aztecs are however a tier 1 civ, as it is pretty much a science civ and every civ that gets a bonus to science is gonna be tier 1.
@@luisyfonsy711 I reckon you are right for single player immortal, I played alot of multiplayer though and would say tier 1 would be the broken civs like babylon, huns. TBH poland is better multiplayer than Aztec. Aztecs would be tier 2 in multiplay, not broken but super strong. I honestly could dominate more games with Arabia than Aztecs.
I'd say America should be probably exactly in the middle of all civs by rank. Their bonuses are quite useful but very dull. Strictly the middle of the road.
I'm a Venice player, love the challenge
30:00 Am I the only one happy when I win a War Elephant from a City State?
You gotta include happiness because in harder difficulties it really matters
Hey mate, bit off topic but is that a Southland accent you have? I notice you pronounce your R's where most Kiwis wouldn't.
I think you're really underrating Byzantium, while their religion can be hit or miss depending on faith, their Catahphracts feel incredibly powerful with their full advantage of terrain, not to mention early coast harass from Dromons (though i admit, Arabias Camel Archers) are superior. I think that given HOW powerful their religion CAN be it deserves to at least be on par or better than Carthage.
There's a fun cheezy strat called sacred sites where you can win on like turn 150 with byz city spamming (it's a culture victory from tourism and you can generate tourism far longer than anyone else)
I disagree with the Celts economy. They usually have good economy due to faith. If you get early religion you have a chance of getting Tithe perk that holds your economy on fairly good state. Their ability allows you to postpone temples to the later game if even to forget about this building. Also their unique unit if warrior promoted to it from ruins, will guarantee you additional source of faith for early game, which is again, not too bad. Starting bias is also really good due to having high production potential to be chopped for necesarry buildings, such as Library and NC. From the other hand, this bias usually gives you a start with trash luxuries such as Silk, Sugar, Truffles or Dyes, which is kinda bad.
Will you still make civ tier lists? for example for NON DLC tier list?
Venice is very depedent on other civs (not taking out city states) and size of map. On a huge map having one (1) city is very limiting.
On a very small map wity city states not as bad....
I would switch the maya and the Shoshone. In higher difficulties the early advantage of the pathfinder and land grabs just don’t do enough to outscale the AI, whereas the Mayan pyramids basically get you on par with the AI by the medieval era/renaissance era. It’s seriously busted!
I find your take on Denmark really strange. You completely skip over their biggest asset - the way their land units can jump between land and sea as if the sea was just open plains. This is something no one has and it can be potentially super powerful in war. It is, of course, fairly situational. Pillaging, though, is really not. You pillage ALL the time when at war, so your take really surprises me.
Spain is S-Tier clearly. You will find wonders most of the time and you get 500 gold which is a free city early game. And if you can place it on the wonder in many cases you are so overpowered that you win the game easily. Also, the Iroquois are F-Tier. Indonesia is not as bad as you think because they get those free luxury resources which allows them to settle anywhere or get high happiness and good trade.
I was stunned by a few of your ratings, but when I picked out one of the explanations and you talked about Ethiopia with the Stele to then claim you want to go SMALL and TALL? Dude you lost all credit there. Sure a special building that doesn't give extra happiness doesn't scream wide empires, but you should at least go as wide as possible with any amazing special building civ like Ethiopia, Mayans, China and Egypt. From other video's I already got the impression that you don't half understand how powerfull a strong religion is to any of the victory types.
America has no advantages untill the renaissance? Dude what? When do you think the +1 line of sight bonus comes most to play? From the fucking start finding ruins more succesfully. When do you think half prize tile purchasing comes to play the most? Right from the fucking start especially when you decide to go Liberty to work you best tiles as soon as possible. You SHOULD know how important a solid start is to the outcome of your total game, and both these bonusses give America great tools to be more consisntent with those starts. Sure those bonusses won't win you games by theirselves, but the way you look at their bonusses and state that they only got advantages in the renaissanse would almost make me believe you don't actually play the game if the proof wasn't there that you do.
Byzantine in the F. Funny thing that my first ever victory against deity AI was with Byzantine. Cataphacts are actually insane, you can easily fight medeval armies with them. Exstra belief in religion is very unreliable bonus though
Huns are easy A tier to low S tier civ, ez. Horse archers don't require horses and don't have rough terrain penalty. Battering rams are super strong and you can get one from a ruin. The Huns are rlly rlly good at domination.
When it came to England, I felt that Civi5 had done them dirty. Considering the country's rich history, and the numerous great people who helped shape the modern world, I always thought they should either have a great person generator (like 15% or something) or generate extra culture when they expend a great person.
A lot of Civ V's civs feel very ecclectic, especially the vanilla ones. Later ones tend to have themes matching their leaders, units and bonuses together around a particular era.
Imo, Spain out of this tier list. But they are mostly good.
Chance of not finding a natural wonder around you is low, but never zero. But if that happens, you have nothing else. (Around 5 percent)
More often then not, you can find 1 natural wonder 1st, and settle near it instantly. With "one with nature" it is a guaranteed 1st relgion and a huge bonus depending on the wonder. It is A or high B tier this time (12 prod Solomon mines is insane.) (Around 45% chance)
If you find two first (or at least 1 first and settle near 2) you have an S tier civ. (Around 40% chance)
If you are lucky to have 3 or more early on, then game over, you won. You will have more cities with sky-high religion and other big-big bonuses. (Around 10%)
In multiplayer I would definitely put arabia at S tier, I like playing America alot, so I would move them up to C, heroic epic, double cover minute man is an extremely powerful sneak attack in an era when most people are trying to sim city. Huns are S tier, I have no idea why you put that OP civ so low. Spain should definitly move up, but it's just horrible if you don't find a wonder so perhaps you are right.
The madman placed Greece and Persia at C tier, they are A or low A for sure
I'd like to see a game where you have to all play crap F tier Civ against other crap Civ or A or S tier Civ and try win
People need to keep in mind a F tier civilization can still do really well with a good player and good strategy. I always wished Denmark would be better than they are since the Vikings took over all of Europe pretty much.