I can see this turning into a GRUDGEMATCH.

I think HL is forgetting the important role the commerce cap plays in limiting your income, regardless of bonus. After the first 2 minutes of play, British will have +17 and then +25 extra of resources coming in. This never goes down and the bonus gets bigger as the game progresses. It's +37 when both players are at COM2. Sure you have to pay extra for the initial villagers, but a villager pays for itself in 2 minutes! And to reach British cap on the three major resources, I only need about 6 extra villagers, and a couple farms. Minor stuff. For the cost of 6 extra villagers, the British player is bringing in +150 more resources per minute.

On a purely economic basis, I can sell some of my extra resources for wealth and still have more stuff than a Roman player.

There's more. British economic power forces the opponent to be aggressive. Meanwhile, the British player can play for defense, knowing that the longer the game goes the better his position. And the defender has advantages. It takes more units to reduce and capture a town than it does to defend one. Are the couple extra units an early offensive civ might have be enough to completely take a well defended city? Remember that the extra resources can go toward towers, light cav, or archers, or any other defensive units.

And when you talk about matchups, particularly Maya, things get even more interesting. Brits are a good match against Maya. Maya is a primarily defensive civ and Mayan players play primarily a defensive boom game. So against a Britsh player, a Mayan is forced to attack. This pretty much eliminates all the Mayan defensive bonuses, which are what people complain about. And the Mayan wood bonus (which doesn't compare to British bonuses in the long term) does not accrue to military buildings, so they are out of their element at this point.

The civs that give British the most trouble are the early raiding civs such as Spanish and Mongols. Since villagers are key to British power, defending villagers against HA raiding is their Achilles Heel. But this is only against nations that are going to be Classical earlier AND come with raiding units.

BOTTOM LINE: The British ain't no "uber civ," but they also ain't the bottom of the barrel civ. Ain't neither!

UPDATE: Polly brings up an insightful point. Player is more important than civ. With that notion, I concur. Also player style is important. I prefer defending. British are a perfect civ for this. This is probably the crux of the issue. British fit my playstyle better while Romans probably fit HL's. I perfer to let my opponent dash his waves upon the sharp rocks of my defense while I power through the ages. HL likes to attack early. For my playstyle, British are far better. For his, maybe Romans are better.

posted by Tim at 9:00 AM