I've been skirmishing a bit with the Greeks recently. I'm starting to think the Greeks can be a tough civ to play against. In my skirmish games against the Toughest AI, I have been much further along than the AI in the resouce graph and I've been able to keep up with and surpass the AI in terms of age development and military size. This is pretty impressive since, as you know, the Toughest AI gets a whopping 50% resource gathering bonus. The Achilles heel, as I am sure everyone is aware is the early start, where the Greeks can be vulnerable to a rush if they spend too much wealth on scholars and cannot counter with archers. But if played correctly, Greeks may not be any more vulnerable than other civs. Also, the non-knowledge research cost reduction means that Greeks can afford critical library techs earlier than many other civs. So you can get MIL1 slightly earlier and have more wood available to build a barracks.

But booming is where the Greeks really shine. As we have demonstrated, an early CLASSICAL is a better build because it gets you knowledge earlier allowing you to upgrade to COM2 quickly without spending a lot of food. Greeks can get COM2 before CLASSICAL without spending any food at all. So other than metal and Making a stable, there's little reason to rush to CLASSICAL age. So the Greeks can get a good economy going without sacrificing knowledge production at the start. This can end up turning into a long-lasting advantage. Faster techs means faster aging which means better univeristy techs which means more knowledge which means bigger economy!

So in team games, where the threat of rushing is somewhat diminished, Greeks can play a very strong role, even against soem of the "powerhouse" civs. While I think the key to playing Greeks successfully in 1on1 is dealing with the early rushes and raids.
posted by Tim at 9:10 AM