Ancient Era Culture Tier List

[Staber13857]

I know I'm wrong on some of these, but here are my thoughts:

S: Always Best

Mycenaeans:
+25xp=+1 combat strength, -20% unit cost is synergy with this and their unit
Unit is unique warrior that starts at +2, gets +1 from the vet production, and gets +4 in the first round of combat (26 total)
Building is a production center you can place anywhere in the region and gives +15 stability
Militarist trait can be used to increase army size or shuffle pop

Egyptians
+1 Industry, -10% industry cost district cost is good bonus the whole game
Unit is strong, but it requires wheel and ends up seeing more use in the classical era
Building does exactly what it's supposed, give more production
Builder trait gives significant flexibility in an early city

A: Always Good

Zhou
+2 stability on every district is a long term bonus, but it means an extra region per city or holding off on your stability buildings until their 1 turn builds
Their unique building is only meant to be built once or twice, but it should be a +20 science boost
Unique Unit is strong, and because of the tech bonus, is often available to build in the ancient era

Nubians:
+5 money per resource is strong if you prioritize regions with them
Unique building is a production-market, the 2 things you want with this culture
Unit is a better archer, so still very weak to chariots and cav. Only strong in a city defense
Merchant ability saves you some production in your regions that are already attached and gives you that +5 gold bonus instantly

B: You can make them Good

Assyrians:
+1 movement speed is decent, +5 combat strength when ransacking means you can punish the AI for settling regions close to you
Unique building is okay if you commit to it because you can build it in your regions and get the initial cost repaid in 20 turns.
Unit is a much better horse scout that has weak synergy with all of the culture's bonuses.
If you aren't killing another empire with this culture, you're wasting them.

Phoenicians
+2 money per trader is okay, but every specialist in gold is one not in the other 3 in the early game.
Unique port is a free port that generates money instead of food. Great when you combine it with the religious tenant that gives food to coastal tiles anyway.
Unique unit will help you find other cultures and start up trade with them in the ancient era. If you have the money, you should always get the lux and strat resources.

C: Okay

Harappans:
This culture probably looks the best to new players, so I'm going to spend a bit of time explaining why it's not
+1 food on a food tile and +1 food on river sounds great, until you realize you should always have your cities on rivers because you can get +4 food and +2 production on those tiles already from buildings. In that case, +2 on top of that is still good, especially early, but it's going to become unimportant later on. Furthermore, because farmers quarters aren't in great spot right now (we'll talk about that in a second), you don't end up with that many tiles exploiting food. At most it's a plus 2 population difference, so think of it like a +12 production, science, or gold. It's a good bonus, but it has about a tenth of the long term impact the Egyptian one does.
Their unique building is the real trap of this culture. The yield looks great. It gives you more raw numbers than any other tile you can build. There are alot of problems with it's current implementation though. We'll start at the cost: its a 80/70 or 14% production cost increase to build it, and you're losing 1-2 turns of food benefit from having the district built on top of that. On top of that, to gain the full benefit of the building, you have to build another farmer's quarter. By that point, your third district is going to cost more than the first 2, and you haven't put anything into increasing the production or money needed to build it. This only gets worse as you try to build more of these unique buildings in other territories attached to the cities. Then when it comes time to build those super important irrigation buildings I was talking about earlier, it takes you 4 turns to build them instead of 2 or 3 and you lose even more food generation. To add insult to injury, because its a food exploitation building, even though its a river, it still produces 0 production after you build the river production building.
Their unique unit is okay. You get free movement through forest and +1 movement overall, but at this point you have to look at the opportunity cost. Every other culture higher on this list except the Phoenicians have a better combat unit. You don't and you don't have any bonus to building the generic units.
The agrarian ability is good late game when you don't have anything to spend influence on and your burning through pop to build armies. Neither of those cases is true here and I tend to be very hesitant spending influence on the ability when I need it for building/attaching outposts or developing resources in my territories.

Babylonians
+2 science per researched tech is just okay. It starts off slow and requires you to do the leg work to get the ball rolling. Even then, it's a small bonus that makes things easier.
Unique building is on the same level of bad as the canal network. The base output just isn't there. You end up with worse yields than the Zhou
Unique Unit is possibly the best of the era. 22 combat strength is no joke and it goes up +5 when fighting cav.

F: I don't know how to use this culture

Olmecs
+1 influence on territory is barely noticeable, especially with the first building you build already giving +4
The building is a farmers quarter (not ideal) that provides influence adj bonus instead of food and gives less influence than the Assyrian building. Doesn't seem worth it to build.
Unit is an archer that's better than the regular one, but worse than the Nubian unique.

Hittites
+1 combat strength, yay? It's the worse half of the Mycenaean bonus
Their unique building is a land unit spawn outpost. I feel like I'm missing something.
Unique unit is a better chariot. They have no science bonus to get the tech, no production bonus to build the unit, and no merchant or influence bonus to get the resources.

[ImBlackMagic]

hittites are truly weak

[Bedoune]

Zhou is top tier tbh, that sweet sweet stability bonus until the end of the game does it for me.
EQ is situational, but really gives a science headstart when used right.
Also as an aesthete culture, you gain the ability to make alliances right at the start, truly godtier for early trade routes when you're missing that one horse or copper for the unique unit.

[jonnin]

Harappans
top tier, its been shown that the population growth from the first era on goes ballistic later when you get all the multipliers per population.
zhou is iffy on the top tier, I agree tier 2 because you don't always have enough mountains to get 20+ sci on the building and nothing else they offer is significant long term.
Phonecians are not that bad, harbors are good to have but what is weird with them is you can't embark yet, so a harbor is really an investment for the future.

[Lonesomepoet]

Olmecs are better than a lot of people think its just that their bonus really makes a difference in later eras with the Influence per territory . That said the Olmec Head is a nice kick start to influence production so you can expand faster while at the same time giving you decent

[Literally Me]

Harappans are S tier

Imo Mycenaeans are B (too linear)
I would drop Egyptians down to A
I would drop Zhou down to B (depends on your start)

[Astasia]

I would mostly agree with the list, except I would kick Phoenicians up to S tier (situationally), and bump Babylonians up to A.

Harbors in this game are really, really, good. If you can build one in most regions of a city that can be a lot of food and money. A Haven provides far more food than the Harappan bonuses are likely to give on top of the money and can be built with influence in outposts before merging them into your cities. Cultural harbors stack, so you can build a Haven, a Cothon, a Naust, and a Harbor all in the same region, in every region of every city potentially. On a map with a lot of coast/islands this is an absolutely massive bonus. On maps with very little ocean though then Phoenicians are obviously pretty crap.

The Babylonian Astronomy House has an easy to overlook effect, +1 food and science per researcher. If you can get like 9-12 of these up, 3-4 per city for 3 cities, that is a lot of extra science (and food) long term. The effect isn't as immediate as the Zhou, but will surpass them by the next era and is eventually one of the strongest districts in the game.

[jLloyd]

I agree with what others have said. Harappan is not S tier because of its dominance in the ancient era. It's because of its dominance in later eras. That foundational population spike pays off in major ways later in the game.

[The Void Boy]

I wouldn’t know how powerful the Harappans are. The AI always picks that one first for some reason.

[Matthew]

This is about how I'd rank them as well.

I'd put an asterisk next to Nubians. If they start with a lot of luxuries, they become the best. Without a lot of luxuries, they are fine where they are at.

I'd maybe move Assyrians down one.

Originally posted by Astasia:

If you can get like 9-12 of these up, 3-4 per city for 3 cities, that is a lot of extra science (and food) long term.

My guy, how long exactly do you plan on staying in ancient? Influence is a roughly static number and there is no way you are getting that many cities, regions, and unique districts built without being one of the last into the next era.

Which is fine, I guess. Babylon can tech into the next era so it doesn't fall behind in tech. But you now need to weigh the benefit of a few extra districts to giving up the choice of a classical culture.

[Faray]

I agree with most of what you said. I can see an argument for Harappans being S tier, but I think people overvalue them too much.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Matthew:

Influence is a roughly static number and there is no way you are getting that many cities, regions, and unique districts built without being one of the last into the next era.

Build a few units and attack an independent city for your third city, no influence required there. Three regions for 3 cities is super easy to get in the ancient era and still rank up pretty quickly. Hitting 4 regions for each city definitely takes a bit more effort, depending on how many players you are up against this is usually optimal anyway. The ancient era is the best era to rack up stars to give you a strong lead for the rest of the game.

Influence isn't really static at all though, you get 2 per pop, so if you grab a third city and grow your population in all three, and also grab the early influence civics, you can be up to 100+ influence per turn in the ancient era.

[SohCahToa]

Originally posted by The Void Boy:

I wouldn’t know how powerful the Harappans are. The AI always picks that one first for some reason.

I came here to see if anyone mentioned this. Harappans, then Myceneans and Nubians are always the first three picked by the AI in every game I've played so far. I'd love to know what the Harappans are like, shame the AI always beats me to it.

[Matthew]

It is static in the sense that you are going to have a predictable amount of food. It is pretty difficult to swing heavy influence early on, even with Olmecs.

I'm not saying it doesn't work, just saying you are obviously delaying classical to do it. And Babylon is probably the only one who can pull it off with having access to the next era tech tree. Not for me personally. I would much rather get to classical quickly and get something like Huns, and then rack up stars.

Trying to milk every era for fame stars is overkill anyway. In my experience, you only need 1 or 2 strong eras to cement a game-winning lead. You could do it in ancient. You can also do it in classical just as easily.

[mrpmg]

Everyone keeps saying the Harappans are OP. I'm glad I'm not the only one scratching my head at that one. My games as them always seem to end up way more difficult. I'm wondering if I'm just using them wrong.

I will however suggest that you're undervaluing their EU. Runners are strong because you can get curiosities and scout natural wonders faster. I think of it as a ~25% bonus to curiosities, a small fame bonus, and slightly earlier access to trade. They synergize well with the food focus too: if you get a lot of scouts in neolithic, you can send runners all over the map and not feel too bad about not disbanding all of them because your pop growth will be high anyway.

[Professor Hardknocks]

Originally posted by Bedoune:

Zhou is top tier tbh, that sweet sweet stability bonus until the end of the game does it for me.
EQ is situational, but really gives a science headstart when used right.
Also as an aesthete culture, you gain the ability to make alliances right at the start, truly godtier for early trade routes when you're missing that one horse or copper for the unique unit.

Do you take new cultures or transcend?