Hey forum - long time lurker/first time poster,
I'd like to emphasize that this is not a best-civ-poll, as there have been dozens of those, all of which have culminated in people yelling at each other about personal opinions and preferences.
Rather (although admittedly similar), there have been some civs that I've delayed trying for quite some time because they seemed so lackluster on paper. When I finally gave them a shot, I was blown away by how much I underestimated their effectiveness. Here's my experiences and I'm looking forward to hearing what your experiences were:
1.)Kamehameha: Being a player that prefers exploiting concrete numerical per-city advantages such as Napoleon's +2culture/city or Wuzi's +2gold/city +1gold in saved maintenance, I found a lack of strategical advantage in being able to embark earlier, having a warrior UU, and having a tile improvement available only on coastal tiles and giving a meager +1/culture. BOY WAS I WRONG!!! The turn1-enabled embark gives you the pangaea-specific advantage, early access to all 7 trading partners and all city states, without the pangaea-specific disadvantages, constant encroachment during the land-grab phase and swarms of units marching up from all sides. On small landmass maps, you get first dibs on all the best city locations. In melee-on-melee skirmishes, you have a retreat option that the opposition cannot pursue you. Speaking of melee, the maori is like the jag in that while it only possesses a modest advantage to a limited unit, that advantage transitions with the unit as it upgrades from warrior all the way to mech infantry (side note: what does a dancing mechanized armor unit look like?), effectively making it advantageous the entire game. But unlike jags, maori's advantages aren't terrain dependent. And finally maoi statues= incredible. I didn't realize they functioned similar to terrace farms in that they receive an additional +1 culture for each adjacent maoi. On a regular coastline, that means a string of grassland produces 2food/3culture and on irregular coastal areas, you can have 2food/4-6 culture. later on add +1 gold to the already incredible tile and an additional +1gold during golden ages (provided the tile had no previous gold allotment) turning a small patch of resourceless grassland into a patch of 2food/5culture/2gold super-tiles. Altogether, a civ that I feared I'd have to employ strategies for a vanilla civ (no UA, UB, or UU) turned out to have some of the most useful advantages.
2.)Pachacuti: similar doubts as with the polynesians; the Inca seemed to have no real definitive numerical advantage in any area: cheaper tile maintenance, which basically just means roads, movement over hills, a terrain specific improvement that only gets real boost if it happens to be next to mountains, and a UU whose sole advantage is that it's better at losing. Again, I was way off. The movement bonus with hills is like all movement and sight bonuses, don't look that hot on paper but implementation proves their value to far exceed expectations. As long as a unit survives the initial counterattack, it can flee without being pursued, essentially giving every land unit a similar hit-and-run ability of keshiks/CamelArchers in hilly areas. Slingers rule for a similar reason as the maori, they carry their advantage through upgrades, and they just... don't... die... Which means by the time they reach Xbows, they're about to get range promotions, becoming REALLY dangerous - causing all that damage, able to hit melee units from a range that they can't attack the next round, and even if they do catch up and get to attach, the Xbow just retreats. Finally, terrace farms are almost as good as polders but MUCH more applicable. Any hill, mountainside or not, becomes self-feeding (producing 2 food with either civil service or fertilizer), making hilly areas the home to stable growing production powerhouses where other cities wouldn't be able to have a city at all. And when they're by mountains, especially multiple mountains, that's when things get a little ridiculous, cities with multiple 5food/2hammer tiles, and those aren't even the tiles with resources.
I'd like to emphasize that this is not a best-civ-poll, as there have been dozens of those, all of which have culminated in people yelling at each other about personal opinions and preferences.
Rather (although admittedly similar), there have been some civs that I've delayed trying for quite some time because they seemed so lackluster on paper. When I finally gave them a shot, I was blown away by how much I underestimated their effectiveness. Here's my experiences and I'm looking forward to hearing what your experiences were:
1.)Kamehameha: Being a player that prefers exploiting concrete numerical per-city advantages such as Napoleon's +2culture/city or Wuzi's +2gold/city +1gold in saved maintenance, I found a lack of strategical advantage in being able to embark earlier, having a warrior UU, and having a tile improvement available only on coastal tiles and giving a meager +1/culture. BOY WAS I WRONG!!! The turn1-enabled embark gives you the pangaea-specific advantage, early access to all 7 trading partners and all city states, without the pangaea-specific disadvantages, constant encroachment during the land-grab phase and swarms of units marching up from all sides. On small landmass maps, you get first dibs on all the best city locations. In melee-on-melee skirmishes, you have a retreat option that the opposition cannot pursue you. Speaking of melee, the maori is like the jag in that while it only possesses a modest advantage to a limited unit, that advantage transitions with the unit as it upgrades from warrior all the way to mech infantry (side note: what does a dancing mechanized armor unit look like?), effectively making it advantageous the entire game. But unlike jags, maori's advantages aren't terrain dependent. And finally maoi statues= incredible. I didn't realize they functioned similar to terrace farms in that they receive an additional +1 culture for each adjacent maoi. On a regular coastline, that means a string of grassland produces 2food/3culture and on irregular coastal areas, you can have 2food/4-6 culture. later on add +1 gold to the already incredible tile and an additional +1gold during golden ages (provided the tile had no previous gold allotment) turning a small patch of resourceless grassland into a patch of 2food/5culture/2gold super-tiles. Altogether, a civ that I feared I'd have to employ strategies for a vanilla civ (no UA, UB, or UU) turned out to have some of the most useful advantages.
2.)Pachacuti: similar doubts as with the polynesians; the Inca seemed to have no real definitive numerical advantage in any area: cheaper tile maintenance, which basically just means roads, movement over hills, a terrain specific improvement that only gets real boost if it happens to be next to mountains, and a UU whose sole advantage is that it's better at losing. Again, I was way off. The movement bonus with hills is like all movement and sight bonuses, don't look that hot on paper but implementation proves their value to far exceed expectations. As long as a unit survives the initial counterattack, it can flee without being pursued, essentially giving every land unit a similar hit-and-run ability of keshiks/CamelArchers in hilly areas. Slingers rule for a similar reason as the maori, they carry their advantage through upgrades, and they just... don't... die... Which means by the time they reach Xbows, they're about to get range promotions, becoming REALLY dangerous - causing all that damage, able to hit melee units from a range that they can't attack the next round, and even if they do catch up and get to attach, the Xbow just retreats. Finally, terrace farms are almost as good as polders but MUCH more applicable. Any hill, mountainside or not, becomes self-feeding (producing 2 food with either civil service or fertilizer), making hilly areas the home to stable growing production powerhouses where other cities wouldn't be able to have a city at all. And when they're by mountains, especially multiple mountains, that's when things get a little ridiculous, cities with multiple 5food/2hammer tiles, and those aren't even the tiles with resources.