hey guys Spirit of the law here last week we looked at the best water and hybrid map civs and
this time we'll be looking at the somewhat related but very unique map Nomad a few people in that
last video brought up Nomad as the basic Nomad map does always have water around the outside but
starting without a town center really rewards very particular types of bonuses currently Nomad is in
the team ranked map Pool though we'll be doing this list with 1v1 games in mind and as usual
I'm going to be basing the rankings on the actual win rate as I think it leads to some interesting
discussion around why since perform better or worse than popular perception to make this
list I wanted to have at least a hundred thousand games worth of data which is possible given Nomad
is fairly popular but it means we need to look at 800 ELO games and up over the last full year
even restricting to 1200 ELO and up though we get basically the same list in a slightly different
order the top civilizations as we'll see are actually quite different than on Arabia or most
land or even hybrid Maps basically because of the unique way that Nomad typically plays out typical
with your starting three villagers you have one villager who makes a dock and a house then
becomes a fisherman and the other two villagers make a Town Center against a Woodline juggling
wood and food income can be a little tricky as you balance constant villager production with
making houses and adding fishing ships as you're able now fighting in feudal age can happen and
for example you'll sometimes see Towers or Scouts but a straight fast Castle is a popular and very
strong play if you can get away with it a straight fast Castle is much stronger than on Arabia for
example as you have a fish boom and often players may not know exactly where you are since no one
has a starting Scout so you can often get away with being greedy as long as you're protecting
your fishing ships a fast Castle into a castle drop and making your unique unit for example is
a very popular strategy altogether that means good Nomad civilizations are ones that can get fish and
chips out fast collect extra wood or food to help cushion a bad starting location or civs who have
a good fast Castle follow-up or unique unit and those will be major themes as we go through the
list with that all in mind let's start the list off at number 10 with the byzantines right away
they don't have an early Eco Advantage though faster attacking fire galleys can give a leg up
in early water fights and keep your fish boom safe they also have stronger docks and building HP on
top of a good Naval Tech Tree variety so on water they're pretty solid they also get free Town watch
and town Patrol to help uncover and monitor the map which can be very important on nomad
they're not the best but would be a completely reasonable pick and just beat out polls for a
spot on the list again going purely by win rates moving on to number nine we have the Portuguese
this is another water civ with a slow build up which like I said actually works better on
Nomad than many open land Maps you have more HP on ships helping you win otherwise equal engagements
a lower gold cost for units and faster research tax which are all flexible bonuses and the organ
gun is also a nice option that can be tricky to deal with you don't see the feitoria that often
so I'm not sure how much to credit it here but if you get stuck in a resource poor corner of the map
then maybe it helps now and then though I think they're good results probably come mostly from an
early advantage on water their team bonus is also fantastic on Nomad giving shared Allied Vision
helping players communicate which can otherwise get pretty confusing with flaring happening all
over the map next up at number eight we have the berbers 10 faster villagers is actually a
really nice bonus for having your early villagers start their Town Center or dock a bit earlier and
is also handy for luring for that are extra far away I suspect though their good performance is
largely coming down to their strong discounted stable units berber's weak point is generally in
feudal age where that discount doesn't apply but given everyone's fish boom and lack of a starting
Scout it's relatively easy to reach Castle age without too much fighting which plays into the
berber's strengths the camel archer is also a really solid unit with great stats and even if
it's not using its attack bonus against Cavalry archers it's really quite well-rounded and gives
you some mobility moving on to number seven we have the lithuanians their extra 150 food at the
start is great for offsetting an unfortunate Town Center location say if you only have one board in
the area you can find alternately you could use the bonus to keep more villagers on wood
and worry less about villagers food income again helping ships come out more reliably yet another
way to handle the bonus would be to basically play like usual and just go up to feudal age faster a
nomad especially that means getting out earlier fire ships disrupting your opponent's fishing
and things can really snowball from there in castle age you can then pick up relics
and lithuanians become a strong night civ as well and if anything they can maybe be a little higher
than number seven but I am trying to stick with the real world results and not my opinions here
either way lithuanians are a great choice and are in fact the fourth most popular pick next up at
number six we have the Celts they're considerably less popular though right away their wood bonus
is an obvious help to keep fish and chips coming out consistently alternately again you can move a
villager off of wood and it's another other flexible Eco bonus for that reason which is
especially nice on a map like Nomad where your available food sources can change from game to
game they also have their bonus letting them steal sheep from under your opponent's nose and line of
sight which actually might be kind of funny on Nomad though I doubt that's contributing much
here I think this is more a matter of a good early Eco bonus with a fast Castle into Siegen infantry
being a solid combination now entering the top 5 here we have the Italians this is probably a few
different things helping out here first you have 15 cheaper fishing ships which is self-explanatory
and useful in a similar way to the Celts bonus they're 15 cheaper advancing can also make up for
a resource crunch or advancing to get your first fire galleys out a bit sooner than anyone else
they end up being one of the better Naval civs with discounted dock upgrades helping throughout
the whole game so you often have the advantage on water I think the main thing holding them back is
just not having the best land unit options as for example the genoese crossbow is really specialized
toward Cavalry and lacks Mobility just making it more situational than a couple of the higher
ranked civilizations that as we'll see have some more overpowering unique units next up at number 4
we have the Persians they have a massive advantage and that after your initial Town Center Dock and
house you'll still have enough starting wood left over to afford a fishing ship right away thanks to
starting with 50 more wood that's an immediate bump to your food income and their dock in town
center HP bonuses are also pretty nice to have of course now you have the treaty window and a safety
zone around your town center so there's no early Town Center fights like the olden days but both of
those buildings are going to benefit from double HP the extra 50 starting food can also help keep
up villager production early and followed with a faster working town center and docks and feudal
gives a consistent population advantage in the mid game previously when that bonus applied to
Dark Age Persians were even better but even now it's still a great economy and can be funneled
toward their powerful Cavalry options making them very strong on this map moving on to number three
we have the Koreans I know some people were sad they didn't make the top 5 water civs list but
here they are getting some Redemption which is something they're probably not used to hearing
right away the extra villager line of sight is massive on Nomad and of course seeing almost twice
as far in every direction means they're more likely to find a good Town Center location as
well as find sheep or other useful resources you'd otherwise have missed in the fog of War take this
example where you have a generic civilization and what can be seen by the villagers as you navigate
the early game compared to Koreans where you get much more information it may seem like a
small advantage but all those little advantages you gain in scouting during the first minute of
a nomad game can have ripple effects by helping you make better decisions later on or in being
able to secure important resources towers with the free upgrades can also be a good idea if you
end up right beside another player and there's typically lots of stone on Nomad which Koreans
can also mine faster they also have cheaper wood cost on units and warships which is very
flexible on top of the powerful war wagon if you go for a fast Castle into a castle drop just note
that there would discount on units excludes the fishing ship or they'd probably be unstoppable
next up at number two we have the malians it's really not too surprising to see them here as
like Persians their building discount means after your town center Dock and first house
you can still immediately pick up an extra fishing ship for a nice early food income
boost in fact their 15 Wood discount on just about every building means it's easier to build up fish
and ship numbers or a Navy in feudal age so they tend to get out to a great head start their gold
mines lasting longer is also particularly nice on a map where you aren't guaranteed safe access
to any specific number of gold mines that doesn't matter as much when you have map control but when
you don't have map control getting every little bit of gold out of your corner of the island can
help stabilize an otherwise difficult position following their very good early game they're also
just a flexible civ with good infantry archers or cavalry plus a very good unique unit the
early game tends to set them up well and once you have an early Advantage there's enough late game
strength to usually keep that momentum going now before we get to number one I want to go over a
few honorable mentions of civs that I thought had something interesting worth pointing out
first dravidians were technically number six by win rate and I wanted to stick to the stats but
with such a low play rate compared to the others I didn't feel confident including them they tend
to be very good on hybrid maps and probably with enough data they would end up looking
good enough for this list but I just didn't have confidence in a little over a thousand games to
draw any conclusions docs giving housing space 200 extra wood when hitting feudal and fishing
ships carrying more are all great bonuses though that will definitely help on nomad
Japanese also feel like they should be a good pick as another solid fish booming civ with early
game wood savings and are a reasonably popular choice but surprising to me have just a 47 win
rate their late game does fall off a bit so it's understandable but I had expected a better showing
you may also expect Sicilians to be quite good with their Town centers built twice as quickly
but that bonus specifically excludes their initial Town Center on Nomad style Maps so their first one
is built in the regular time instead Dungeons and faster built castles are probably their best Nomad
bonuses as it's a map players like to Castle drop on quite often moving on a couple of very popular
picks are Mongols and franks who are the 5th and sixth most picked but have just a 46 and 44 win
rate so both civs are evidently better set up on standard settings than Nomad I will point
out though that the Mongol Tech called Nomads is actually useful on the map Nomad it's easy to get
into a situation where you're running out of space depending on your town center location and how
many players are around you and it's pretty handy in the late game to be able to delete your houses
in favor of more farms and production buildings I should also give a shout out for the Chinese who
used to be the best civ when they had six starting villagers meaning their Town Center always went
up first but now that the three extra villagers come out after the Town Center is built at the
cost of a lot of early resources they drop to now performing well below average though britons are
technically the worst performing Nomad civ also the Vietnamese are interesting and that they can
reveal enemy Town Center locations which does work on Nomad once the opponent's Town Center
is up it's seemingly a really good bonus that opens up some early aggression potential but
surprisingly has led them to just a 43 win rate basically the same as Chinese and finally as the
last one I want to give a dishonorable mention to the Huns despite literally being Nomads they
have a real rough go of it on the aoe2 nomads map while they don't need to build houses they start
with a hundred less Wood meaning they need to make a town center and chop wood before they can make a
dock their performance is roughly in the middle of the pack just highlighting how good that bonus is
in the long run but it's up there as one of the more tedious starts given the extra walking or
the potential mistake of placing a dock without thinking and being 50 wood short for your town
center which is a bit of a disaster they're much better on land Nomad though where you don't have
to worry about making a dock at all but now it's time for the number one best performing Nomad civ
which over the last year has been the Spanish on the face of it that might sound strange as they
don't have an amazing early economy but looks here are deceiving they're 30 faster working Builders
means with two villagers your town center is up 25 seconds faster which is enough time to
produce an extra villager putting you one ahead of just about everyone else your dog and first
house are also built faster as well meaning your fisherman is working earlier on maps like Arabia
their straight fast Castle can be quite risky though like I said that's more viable than usual
on Nomad given the fish boom and their faster working Builders also help put up aggressive
castles that then leads into their Conquistador creating a potent one-two punch of a great early
economy and Castle age follow-up even if things do get Messier their towers are also built faster
than other civs so trying to knock them out in feudal age with Hyper aggression is trickier
than you might think taking their 62% win rate at face value picking Spanish over an average
civ is the equivalent of raising your ELO fight 87 points and this is all from 1v1 data as well so it
doesn't even factor in they're incredibly strong team bonus that's the top 10 Nomad civilizations
and if you're curious how the 1200 ELO list Compares here I have them side by side and
you can see it's mostly the same civilizations in a slightly different order personally I find the
800 ELO and up list a little more reasonable as Persians at eighth doesn't quite sit right with
me that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time