A26 civilisation analysis - how to choose your civs

[Yekaterina]

This is a guide to help new players to choose which civilisation to play with, before each match. Pro players can ignore this.

 

1. Some general comments

• Civilisations in A26 are quite well balanced, especially with community mod, so there is no absolute best civ.
• The best civ for you is the one that suits your strategy / playstyle.
• Try to explore different strategies with each civ so that you get a good overview of what's available to you in each situation.
• If you haven't beaten the AI yet, try to practice with one civ until you have mastered it, then switch to others.

 

2. What makes a good civ:

• Being flexible in strategies: wide variety of unit types available.
• Can succeed in different terrains, biomes as well as naval battles.
• Strong economy: additional farming upgrades, gathering bonuses, etc.

 

3. Considering specific cases:

Houses: Some civs have houses which increase your population capacity by 5, while other have that by 10. 5-house civs are generally more flexible in early games and gives your a slight advantage in wood if you want to research techs very early on. However, in late game, 10-house civs require much less attention to housebuilders and housing would unlikely be a obstacle to your population development. In addition, the building of 10-houses are more efficient as units have to walk less.

 

Ranged units: in 0ad, the longer the unit's range, the less damage it does and the slower it moves. So javelins do the most damage per second while archers do the least. However, in some obscure landscapes such as gorges or densely built cities, the extra range of archers allows them to snipe the enemy without moving into the treacherous areas. This can minimise your losses and give you an advantage over your enemy if they only have javlin units. In addition, archers' additional range makes them perfect hit and run units; they can deal extra damage to any retreating enemy. However, in a prolonged confrontation on flat, open ground, archer's low damage will result in certain loss against javlins or slingers.

Archers - longest range (60m-66m), walks slowly - not great for early economy but great for mountainous maps and urban fights in city lanes.

Slingers - have extra crush damage, effective against buildings as well as humans. (45m) Can be used as replacements for siege weapons.

Crossbows - Shoots a very high damage projectile every 3 seconds (45m-60m)

Javlineers - high damage but low range (35m) - allows for fast economical development and wins you any close-range firefight behind the melees.

 

Melee units: each type has a different use and no civ offers all of them, so choose wisely depending on your need. Melees are most often used as meatshields by pro players, to protect their ranged units who output the most damage. These values can be looked up in the structure tree.

Swordsman - deal the highest damage per second but cost metal. The main damage type is hack, making them perfect against enemy siege weapons.

Spearman - great againts due to their 3x bonus. However, they are less effective than swordsman at infantry and siege, although still decent.

Pikeman - slow-moving but tanky units with double the armour of spearman and swordsman. Perfect meatshields but do little damage.

Halberdier - Chinese variation of pikeman, stated between a normal pikeman and a spearman.

Clubman / Maceman - deal huge crush damage; they can destroy buildings and siege weapons very quickly but are ineffective against other units.

 

Champions, siege and heroes: if you are looking for a particular hero's bonus or a particular type of champions, e.g. elephants, then obviously choose a civ which has them.

 

4. Some personal recommendations

If you are very new and have no idea what you want or what's ahead of you, Romans and Spartans are 2 good starting points in this alpha. These 2 have quite a simple structure tree so it's easy to get used to; they both have strong melee units and javelineers, allowing you to win any close-range confrontations against an AI. In addition, both have some strong champions for late game. Romans have an extra powerful model of catapult and entrenched camps which will help you in siege attacks, while Spartans have supercharged infantry units, namely the Skiritai Commandos and their heroes Brasidas and Leonidas. Their lack of archers is compensated by having bolt shooters.

Stay away from Han and Ptolemies. Han is bugged in original A26 and has a very unique but complicated structure tree; their lack of javelineers and slingers will make defending against early attacks a bit more difficult. However, they do offer some very overpowered techs, heroes and the additional 10% maximum population in late game. Ptolemies' buildings are constructed very slowly, on top of that, being a 5-house civ, it's very easy for your development to be slowed down by the lack of houses. Also, their heavy reliance on mining also makes the civ difficult to play with. However, their buildings to cost much less than other civilisations, so you can save up wood for earlier techs and early infantry.

Gauls are Britons can also offer very strong armies and rapid rates of economic development. However, they are more effective at killing enemy units than destroying their buildings. If your enemy decides to surround themselves with walls, towers and fortresses with swordsman inside, then it would be a challenge for Britons and Gauls to siege them. They are 5-house civs, which may or may not appeal to you over the 10-house Romans and Spartans.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

18 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Gauls are Britons can also offer very strong armies and rapid rates of economic development. However, they are more effective at killing enemy units than destroying their buildings

Historically they should be good at looting and raiding.

Again my obsession with an army from Britons burning Roman settlements.

[Lion.Kanzen]

19 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Stay away from Han and Ptolemies. Han is bugged in original A26 and has a very unique but complicated structure tree; their lack of javelineers and slingers will make defending against early attacks a bit more difficult

They could work turtling, maybe a related bonus or a tech.

Speaking of which there is now a double line of range units over the top of walls.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

19 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Halberdier - Chinese variation of pikeman, stated between a normal pikeman and a spearman.

It should have more cut damage than the spearman.