I have an idea for a tactic at winning at Rhyes and Fall.
If the idea is to create a balance between the powers by congress giving away the most powerful players cities and making it difficult for the leading civilizations - then - how about carefully managing your empire so that you are always about 4th, but also always having the possibility of jumping up in power at any minute?

Eg, keeping population in your cities to 3 or 4 below maximum, keeping great people aside ready for a golden age, have several units part built with only 1 turn left etc.

therefore you wouldnt get picked on for being the most powerful but could within a few turns be the greatest civ.

Any ideas?

May work on Viceroy, maybe nto Monarch, because barbs are to some countries very evil, and AI often has a stack near your borders when they want to attack, so you can build only 1-2 units before they launch their attack. And I think three is limit for units/buildings in building queue.

Hello,

your ideas are simply too much micromanagement, but yes your basic intention is right :

RFC is benefitting a balance of power strategy and therefore it is much more efficient to play most time in the middlefield rather then in the top league.

But we can achieve this targets more easy, when we follow a few basic rules, rather then micromanaging every detail.

The Basic Rules are following :

1)No Tech Racing based on deficit spending
(we all know this situation, you want to keep your research on 100% and your treasury goes -100 every turn, we need to avoid this by all means)

2) Balanced economy
(typically we prefer libraries over markets. That is wrong ! In RFC we have a little trick for the latecoming civiliations as all their new cities gets founded with an already existing market and so on. This is to help the AI , but we need to help ourselves. So 50 - 50 economy is the best strategy in RFC.)

3) Balanced expansion
(as we all know rapid expansion is fun in the night and hangover in the morning as our budget runs into the red numbers. This is somehow even more true in RFC. So we say less is more and we also say .. balance your neighbours -> next point )

4) Balance your neighbours

(Persia is a great neighbour, whenever I play Egypt. They like me, I like them we are trading lots and having a tea together ... until the day when Persia is getting big and strong and suddenly ask me to pay for the tea instead of sharing the costs .... so we need to avoid this. How can we do this ? Difficult but possible. I am still on the search for the best strategy how to make sure that no civilization is growing too strong - ideas welcome :) )

How about getting them to declare war on another civ, that would end in stalmate and loses on both sides?
*Kai screems RUSSIA!!!!*

p.s. if you are worried that they would win the give both sides lots of defencive units :)

I've found in my current game as Germany that when you are on top it's extremely sustainable to play powermonger.
Plan way, way ahead: decide who you intend to make an enemy out of, and who will be a long-term friend. Be extremely generous to your friends and to whomsoever your future enemies hate at any given point. Make it the rule that your friends prosper and your enemies crumble to dust. Do not worry too much about the "you traded with our worst enemy" diplo hit. Do not worry about bottom-feeders catching up to you because of your generosity. Setting up a loving relationship with them and the rest of the world will help to keep you on top no matter what, and you can always pull the plug on your generosity when someone gets too strong. The "traded with our worst enemy thing" only really matters in the close diplo games - when you've made someone adore you and depend on you, trading with their enemy won't make much of a difference. So just make them adore you and depend on you and then feel free to play with them. Always make sure to buy wars between your enemies and everybody else. Let your friends in so they can help you and get a piece of the pie, let your enemies in so they're too busy with your wars to fend you off when the time comes.
I'm still kind of surprised about how well this is working for me. I'm used to just sucking up to the top 5 and trying to maintain whatever relationships the top 5 will let me have with the rest of the world. But if you're strong enough and careful enough, being on top isn't quite as dangerous as it may seem.