Choson a bad civ? i beg to differ.. obviously those of you who say they suck basically never tried them before. The +2 tower range does matter, especially against civs that don't get any good siege, or have to use hand to hand units as their main force. True, it may not matter much early on, but it has great defensive implications.
For instance, try taking out a choson in bronze who has walled in, built sts to defend his area, churned out some 85 gold priests, and has a decent fleet to ward off naval attacks. Then add the +2 range towers and you can see how well they can defend themselves during bronze. They won't be on the offensive, but they will have a nicely secured area, and make attackers have such a tough time breaking through the defense that they will give up.
Then, once they get to iron, they can churn out longswordsmen, HA, ballistas and hcav (as auxillary units) to go on the offensive. They get those 15 gold legions, which is by far the greatest value for any gold-requiring hand to hand unit. They can churn out around 20-30 of them, and queue up to 20 more, so once one force is defeated, another is already being rolled out. I've defeated hittites with a choson fortress and skillful use of their legions and HA's. and since they save up so much gold, they can still fight once the scythes roll in, with heles, and priests to heal legions.
As for griping about playing defensively, whats so bad about that? as long as you keep tabs on the gold on stone on the map, via scouts, you can tower them up, which will slow down the enemy enough for u to get to iron and start exploting the map yourself. CA's don't stand half a chance vs towers, camels are extrmely weak vs towers as well, and you can always use cav to wipe out sts. Chances are your opponent doesn't think you're gonna bother building an army at all, so he will completely overlook any chance of you building cavs.
Worst civ? persian. I think they're worse than greece, since the greeks get a good economy. Has anybody noticed how finely balanced the greeks are against a persian enemy?