Guys, I did something. I wrote about Civ-Design before and about Map-Design too. This time I want to talk about the #1 topic of the game: How good are the civs? But not only "overall", as that depends. It depends on the state of the game. That's why I will take a look into how good the Civs do in the different Ages of the game.

I think that I will do that as a series where I go through the different stages step by step. But first, my approach. We are talking 1v1 Arabia by the way. (Actual Arabia, not 2021 weirdo bathtub Arabia.)

I split the game into 8 stages: Dark Age, Early Feudal, Late Feudal, Early Castle, Late Castle, Early Imperial, Post Imperial, Trash War. For each of those I assigned 1-5 out of 5 points for each civ (5 Points = S-Tier, 1 Point = D-Tier).

For the ultimate Strategical Score I made weights that I assigned to the stages of the game to calculate a weighted average. I ended up with Dark Age + Early Feudal being worth 3 points together (1+2) which equals Late Castle Age. Early Castle (4,5 points) and Early Imperial (4 points) are the most important ones as those are the stages where you can do the biggest damage very quickly from exploiting tech advantages. Late Feudal (2,5) is slightly less important than Late Castle as you can't damage buildings, Post Imp (2) is a slight bit less important because very often the game doesn't reach that stage. Even less often the game goes into Trash War on even terms (just 1 point here). Some fine-tuning could be needed but the results look good, I think.

My Results/Assessments

All the numbers, Civs sorted by the score

Here is an interactive visualisation where you can select Civs to compare them.

Stage-by-Stage Explanation

I felt like those 8 stages picture the game pretty well. Obviously, it could be either more detailed or more handy but this felt like a good middle ground. Also, for many Civs this differs depending on the approach you choose. For some like Cumans it is super though to fit them into the pattern. I'll explain my thoughts behind every stage of the game to make some more sense of it.

• Dark Age: Most obvious one, easiest to assess, because it is almost always the same. What early eco bonuses does a civ have? Scouting bonuses? Loom or wall bonuses? And: How viable is a Drush?
• Early Age: How fast do you reach Feudal Age? How good are the M@A and Scout openings? How easy is the Archer-transition? Interfers a lot with Dark Age which is why I gave them a lower weight for the score. Small bonuses for good Tower Rush (and defending Tower Rushes, otherwise Byzantines would be 1/5).
• Late Feudal: How well is your Archer play? How good is a full Feudal play with Archers and Scouts? How good are your Scouts with upgrades? Basically, what are your options to do significant damage during the later stages of Feudal Age. And what's your eco behind it (= how much risk do you take to get later to Castle).
• Early Castle: First of all, how fast do you reach the Castle Age? How dangerous are your early Xbows (Britons, Ethiopians), how dangerous are your early Knights (Franks, Berbers) or Eagles? Generally Xbows more important because you mass them earlier. How well can you transition into a boom (Teutons, Indians, Tatars)? How well can you defend against the early Xbows/Knights or a Siege push? How well can you use Siege (Celts!) and Monks? Can you rush towards your UU to make damage (Spanish!)?
• Late Castle Age: What are your options for dangerous compositions (Goths), how is your eco development to get to big army numbers (Slavs), how is your mobility and what options do you have to make significant damage? Usually Xbows fall off a bit and come back in early Imp, that's why many Arbelest-Civs drop here to 2-3/5 and bounce back after aging up. Strong Knight-Civs can shine here, especially when they have a good complement in Siege, CA or Infantry (Franks, Poles). CA-Civs can get out of control here (5/5). UUs start to become relevant.
• Early Imperial: How quick can you get your techs in, how dangerous are your Arbelests, how well do you do in Treb fights (not only in terms of Trebs but also the ability to snipe Trebs, quality of your Castles, Bombard Cannons)? Also of course, how easy can you get to Imperial? (Huge advantage for Vikings.) How good is your overall eco usually at this point, how well can you afford tech switches and additional imperial technologies.
• Post Imperial: First of all, how strong is your optimal composition, how pop efficient too? I don't have a lot of weak civs here, because every civ has their options at this point of the game, it's more about how you use them. "They have potential", as TheViper likes to say (about pretty much every civ). Civ matchups become a bit more important, some Civs struggle with specific situations. Mobility and raiding becomes important again as woodlines disappear, Hussars start to dominate. Ram-Pushes and big tech switches can win the game.
• Trash War: When the game goes very long and there is no gold there anymore for your strong options, what's left for you? How strong are your Halbs and Hussars, are your Skirms fully upgraded? Do you have some other trash options (Malay, Persians)? Also a bit of a question how quickly you tend to be out of gold (big advantage for Poles over Aztecs for example). Also, how well can you counter full trash comps with just a bit of market- and relic-gold? (How good is your Champion-line?) Do you have a good option to keep one ball of ranged units alive to support the fights without spending more gold?

Would you add anything else? I felt that adding mid-castle-age could have been a thing or maybe just "booming", but it interfers too much with early and late castle age I think.

Some further notes:

Cumans are super hard to deal with here when considering their Feudal-TC-Boom. I basically "mapped" them onto the regular ages rather than their own age, meaning: They suck in early Castle because when other Civs reach Castle, they might be still stuck in Feudal Age. "Late Castle" is then super strong for them but it is actually their early-mid Castle Age.

Malay are a similar but less extreme case; I gave them a good Dark Age without a Dark Age bonus because their aging up makes a Drush more viable, but then they got a bad Early Feudal even though they age up quickly because if you rush Feudal, you usually lack the res to actually produce early army. They're also my worst post-imp civ because I feel that you kinda have to get an advantage with them through their quick age up, I don't see any composition that is more than standard-good (and basically every civ has options that are more-than-standard-good and then a few standard-good options on top of it).

I am also not sure if Saracens 1/5 Late Castle Age is fair. It feels like they fall of in eco every time, because you drive on market abuse earlier, and then they also can't commit on Knights because they can't upgrade, that is just a very bad mixture in my eyes but maybe I play them a bit wrongly. (Do you think they deserve Early Castle Age 5/5 btw?)

I generally would have liked to give more 1-2/5s during the later stages but I guess it's just too well balanced and it wouldn't really draw a fair picture to have Civs that far from the top with all those options everyone is having.

Overall I feel like that explains very well, why Civs are strong and how strong they are. The score depicts their strength pretty well. Like half the civs are in the range of 3,3-3,6 which underlines how balanced the game is and no Civ falls more than 0,5 points out of that range.

Feedback and opinions are very welcome!