The HISTORY:
1.00
None, but British and Spanish were strongest in the first few weeks from the demo. Ottoman abus gun rushes then took over (not to mention janissaries).
1.03
French, but Ottoman was actually up to par with france at this time (I remember my glory days: I was otto and my allies were french - 14 wins in a row).
1.04
Ottoman and German. At this time many players still insisted that the ottoman janissaries could still economically beat war wagons. I was one of those players. It was not until I suffered a defeat in a 2-hour game that I realized that war wagons could outgun janissaries (the battle went back and forth for a full hour of imperial war wagons and imperial janissaries - no raiding, no ships, no abus guns, no uhlans, no doppelsoldners, just a gun battle with me being outranged a bit).
1.05-1.06
Clearly German. Actually German had been this powerful since the beginning but from vanilla to 1.04 people did not use resource cards like gold shipments to boost their armies. Now, with the resource boost, German economies were able to support their powerful armies.
1.06
With the demise of Germany came Portugal. They were actually the best civ for a month, around June 2006. It took Spanish players until July to figure out how to FF fast enough to beat dragoons and organ guns, but a new power was coming, a power that even converted me from ottoman to the new nation...
1.07
The Glory of the British Empire
In my opinion the British were the strongest civ at one single point, ever. Britain in August was stronger than Ottoman in January 2006. The brits actually hadn't been changed much since vanilla, but with the war wagon threat gone, longbowmen were free to shoot! They took down everything from falconets to abus guns to massive janissary assaults (someone with 50 guard longbowmen held off 100 imperial janissries through skilful micromanagement). In that battle we both put more and more men into the engagement so that by the end, 300 janissaries, 50 abus guns, 10 great bombards, and 10 spahis lay dead. Only 100 longbowmen and 80 musketeers died on the British side (though they were defending and had towers).
1.08
RUSSIA
Russia was always average but now they got powerful with the demise of Britain! No more longbowmen! No more op abus guns! AND to top it off, we know how to shoot up hussars! I hated this time period, as ottoman was extremely easy to defeat with russian.
TWC
British and Dutch agents, but only for a few weeks
1.09
Dutch, but they deserve it. I don't know the details because I don't play dutch.
1.10
Iroquois, just because players are getting better at rushing.
1.11
Sioux because ESO will want to make them the "wild horse gunners of the west again"! jk...
ESO Nickname: Eisenhower
Favorite Age 3 character: Sahin the Falcon
Unban James Lock!