Which civilizations players?

[KevinDean]

I'm interested in knowing which civilizations players perceive as the least reliant on specific map conditions. Personally, my go-to choices have traditionally been the Ottomans and the Portuguese, both of which are notably influenced by the particular characteristics of the map. It seems that a significant portion of civilizations tend to be influenced by factors like resource availability on maps with lower resources or their interaction with water on maps featuring water bodies. Additionally, many civilizations seem inclined to establish trading posts across various map layouts.

[callentournies]

This was a more interesting question when not every map had TPs and a million res, before DLC civs,
common answers may have been Dutch, India (do not need TPs, use less hunt), or no TP map control civs less affected by resource imbalances (Aztec, Russia) and the king of RE qs — Japan (literally doesn’t hunt, factory houses can produce any res, ships everything twice). We can add Inca to that list too, not very reliant on needing map, or can easily secure it if they need to. Remember crates starts? Also sometimes maps wouldn’t spawn with a starting mine but that was sufficiently rare to not influence the question. Now that I think about it, defensive civs in the rush meta depended on where their starting mine spawned.

Nowadays safe res will always last until middle game.

Germany prefers maps with two mines in base. China, India, and Africa civs passively benefit from livestock maps. So do civs with multiple/faster heroes/scouts, and they will perform better on maps with good treasures. I honestly feel stagecoaching is falling out of the meta on account of half the civs do unpunishable ffs and just take your tps with tech advantage, but high tp maps will benefit China immigrant play with USA. Some maps are good nat maps, which may favor France, or fill a unit type missing in age 2, or have certain techs some civs can abuse (Akan trade with Otto?). Mine count and layout is important for Sweden. TWC civs like maps with human treasure guardians. Some civs can utilize early treasures better than others to not just expedite but entirely change their builds.

Port water is strong but you can also just 10/10 feitorias 500f 700c ff on every land map in qs and be totally good. Otto no longer need stagecoach.

The answer is probably one of those boring legacy civs or Inca still, but it’s a much less important question, “which civ fares well on all map types,” as opposed to the much more important one, “which civs can best take advantage of this specific map” (like in tournies) which pales in comparison to, “which civ is easy to play and hard to beat.” As (the value in) specificity has gone way up on DE, (the value of) versatility has gone down (imo).

[rukisrecord]

I also like and use Portuguese and Ottoman for the same reason.
And I developed RVOLT and multiple TC BO to reduce dependence on maps

This is a little off topic, but personally I would like all maps to be rebalanced by incorporating elements of trade, native, the water, and sheeps

[alistairpeter]

I play Aztec which is good on small maps, low recourse maps, and maps with good guardians to convert, but bad on long maps or maps with chokes where they can wall their whole base for 20 wood. Spain/French are good on maps with easy wood treasures, or maps with yaks the dog or scout can catch. China is good on maps with yaks, and maps with a big first pass of xp. Germany is good on maps with lots of gold mines (especially 5k ones), and wood treasures; I think it's also a great pick for Florida, the free market is really nice for Germany. There is a desert map that can spawn an 85 food, 90 food, and 100 food all at once which is good for any civ (it's the one with 4 tps in a circle), but best for civs that have a chance at taking at least 2 of them (spain w dog pulling can get all 3 if lucky). French/german/Iro/Spain are great on maps with easy stagecoach. Those are most of my civs, but I feel all the civs have nice little bonuses they like to get, I'm sure nat synergy is probably a thing for lots of my civs but I never really go for them, except for Cree. I play a little Japan, and a little India, and they feel the least map dependent to me out of the civs I play, other than Yaks and wood treasures. Of course Japan likes to have safe shrines, berry maps, and sometimes water for port cons, but overall it feels like a civ that could be played on basically any map (sometimes the berries mean you get gipped and get less than 10k in base food compared to 2 orchard rickshaws).