I've finally settled on a warmongering strategy that I really enjoy. Not claiming it is original, just that it is fun. It allows for a lot of social policies (vs. ICS) and will still be doable after the patch. I played out a game as China and am working on one right now with Japan--two civs that work well for this strat (due to their UAs).

Basic strategy (works for me on immortal):

1) Warrior or horse rush a close neighbour. Puppet all cities (no razing). Build 0-1 cities. Focus on the honor policies early.

2) Sword or horse rush next closest neighbour. Puppet all cities. Build 0-1 cities depending on need for strategic/luxury resources. Continue focus on honor policies until tree complete.

3) Do what you have to do to keep above 0 :) Coliseums, luxuries, etc.

4) Once military and :) techs are ok, prioritize culture techs (temples, monasteries, etc.). Also, culture CSs (maritime not as much a focus here).

5) Try and get a GS to bulb Steel or Chivalry in order to upgrade units to pursue next opponent. Puppet all cities. Avoid building your own cities to keep culture requirements low in order to keep getting SPs at a good rate.

6) Once honor is complete, move on to commerce. It finally clicked to me that commerce has good synergy with warmongering. The left side of the tree helps with navy (I only play continents) and adds production to coastal cities (good synergy with order coming later). Right side provides more :commerce: which you can always put to good use (and good synergy with autocracy coming later).

7) Once you have your continent cleared, don't worry about ICSing it. Just annex a ***couple*** high production cities to help with wonders (e.g., Forbidden Palace) and troop production. Beeline rifling-->artillery (no need to rush to renaissance or industrial because you are focusing on honor then commerce early).

8) Your many puppets combined with culture CSs should be cranking out a lot of culture, so you should be getting SPs in a timely manner.

9) Get a caravel and start exploring for your next opponents. Get navigation so you can get a navy going (if you don't have a coastal city under your control then annex one that has good production). Upgrade to rifles, build rifles in order to attack next opponent.

10) Find a beachhead and start invading overseas. Don't worry about renaissance SPs (I know they are powerful and perhaps even more optimal, but freedom is bypassed due to autocracy and rationalism is avoided in order to focus on autocracy and order).

11) You should finish out commerce SPs around the time you hit industrial. Start in on autocracy and order policies (choose them in the order that you need them).

12) Win via domination. (If you are in a drawn out game and SPs permit, after order/autocracy, I would go for oligarchy.)

Again, nothing new or earthshattering here, but I've found this to be a fun, effective strategy that will still be very viable after the patch when SPs are nerfed.

I usually do the conquest and puppet strategy, too. Usually at war with one civ or another, so I guess I'm a warmongerer too.

I usually skip the honor SP and don't take anything until rationalism. I usually do the 4 in rationalism to get the free techs, then the 4 in order to get communism. After that, I jump around usually starting in liberty.

The honor policies are good, but I find I can usually do all the conquest I need without those policies.

I usually do the conquest and puppet strategy, too. Usually at war with one civ or another, so I guess I'm a warmongerer too.

I usually skip the honor SP and don't take anything until rationalism. I usually do the 4 in rationalism to get the free techs, then the 4 in order to get communism. After that, I jump around usually starting in liberty.

The honor policies are good, but I find I can usually do all the conquest I need without those policies.

Better get ready to change your strategy. Rumor has it they're going to force you to take SPs as soon as you earn them in the next patch.

The Japan game is going quite well. I have all 6 honor policies, the right hand 3 (+ entry) from commerce, and am eyeing up the order ones right now (hit industrial recently via dynamite). One thing I learned from this game: Try and ensure to consolidate happiness between conquests. I fell behind for centuries in extreme unhappiness and that really slowed me down a lot (hit to growth and production).

But, overall, with that caveat, the strategy is going really well. Quick synopsis:

-I was on a large continent with Egypt to my East, Arabia East of them, Rome to my NE, and Siam to my NW. I warrior rushed Egypt, annexing their capital and building no cities. Then I had to fend off an attack from Siam--no problems. Arabia was growing large, so I paid for peace with Siam and went after Arabia with a mix of swords and warriors, upgrading to swords with the spoils of war. I was eventually able to push through enough that Arabia offered me two cities and a whack load of other goodies for peace. I needed to regroup my military, so I took it. That left Arabia with their capital and 1 city. With the peace treaty, I decided to put a hurt on Siam before they grew into a juggernaut. This war took quite awhile, but along the way I bulbed Steel and started upgrading to samurai--love the free promotion in combination with the honor tree's 2x xp--sweet!

Once Siam was finally eliminated, I was drowning in unhappiness. But Arabia had built a couple more cities and I was able to bribe the large-empire Rome to DOW on Arabia. Rome took 1 city and I came in the backdoor to take their capital then mopped up the last two cities, just leaving me and Rome on the continent. I was friendly enough with Rome that I was able to hold off from war until I hit Rifles--Rome hit them shortly after, but my troops were HIGHLY promoted (during my war with Rome I ended up with rifles that had shock 3, blitz, siege, march, and amphibious [not to mention the bonuses from honor]. Fun times.).

After a bit of a slog, I wiped out Rome. It's now around turn 225-250 or so and I've finally got a caraval out resulting in finding Persia (next toughest opponent), China (2nd toughest), and Songhai (weakest). I made some trades for luxuries with Persia and China (unfortunately, China built the FP--I struggled under unhappiness hit to production). I also found a bunch of CSs and I worked my way up to 14/15 luxuries (trying to find furs). Eventually, I was able to squirm my way back into positive happiness and now I am running off 4-5 GGs on golden ages.

As a result of commerce and tp spam empire wide with puppets, I'm swimming in :commerce: especially with the golden ages. This is allowing me to buy up CSs at a rapid rate and will eventually allow me to outfit my production cities with what I need to build a late-game army. I've only been able to find 2 culture CSs, unfortunately, but I'm still bringing in about 100 culture/turn, allowing me to nab SPs at a great rate. I've got 6 from honor and 4 from commerce so far, and am now planning to go down the order tree to planned economy for the :) and then into autocracy for my intercontinental wars.

China hates Songhai and I'm huge friends with China. Songhai has nothing of value, so I joined in the war against Songhai. They'll be my first target if they're still alive by the time I get over there. Then it's just a matter of taking out Persia and China for the domination victory.

With some of my supremely promoted units, which I'll upgrade to infantry soon, Japan's UA, the honor tree, and the autocracy tree, the wars should go well. I'm hoping to nab big ben and then with that + commerce + autocracy SPs, I should be able to buy a late-game army to win handily.

Probably not optimal in comparison to some other beelines and rationalism/freedom combo, but very fun, good synergy, and some powerful warmongering. Good way to deal with AI unit spam at high levels too... :)

War is diplomacy by other means. Can the human use diplomacy in Civ V at higher levels to avoid hours and hours of endless slaughter? Is Civ V that good of a game?

That is the burning question that interests me.

I just played about 3 full games over the weekend at emperor and I only won the game where I conquered the world.

The other 2, I tried to sit and build and just missed winning. I admit that I was almost completley reactionary on th ediplomacy front. Sure, i was well liked by enough people, but overall I let the AI play 'their' game, not manipulating the greater diplomacy picture hardly at all.

Better get ready to change your strategy. Rumor has it they're going to force you to take SPs as soon as you earn them in the next patch.

Yeah, I know. Bummer. :sad:

I played a recent 'puppetmaster' game on epic speed as Persia and had a blast. My original intention was to grow vertically and had 6 initial cities setup for rapid growth. Then my neighbors (catherine and sulemain) got uppity and I had to fight them and ended up puppeting everything.

With meritocracy+FP (and eventually planned econ) I had little trouble with happiness and due to all the GAs had tons of money the whole time. Best part was partway through I realized with puppets my SPs were still cheap so switched to full on culture buildings in my 'core' cities, by the end I was getting an SP every 12 turns, on epic!

After brief peace after taking out Arabia and knocking down Russia I went wild, eliminating Civs and liberating City-States until getting into a stalemate with England due to difficult terrain and artillery vs artillery. By then I had 16k in the bank so I beelined to globalization, bought off all the remaining CSes and won by 6 votes. :)

Future, your set up sounds a lot like my favorite. Continents for both ancient and more modern warfare.

I like using CS for my beachheads. 1-2 allied and fill up there lands with my troops. I may even have a few offshore, just in case it gets nasty.

hey future i like your style,i also always max out honor then commerce it seems it helps feed the war machine with cash!!!

Thanks for the positive feedback. I really think the key here is just keep your :) in the positive and, otherwise, the strategy should continue to work well. I'm really enjoying Japan with this strat. Once the military juggernaut gets rolling, it's really hard to stop. I think it will be effective at deity as well, once I make the jump.

I'd suggest avoiding the right-hand side of Honor, after the 15% military bonus. The +happy with garrisons isn't spectacular, and although Professional Army sounds really appealing, the fact that you don't have as many units as you did in Civ4 makes it a little less appealing. Get the first four in Honor, then switch to Commerce. If you get extra policies before unlocking the Industrial trees, then backfill the Honor slots, but otherwise I'd skip them.

That does sound like a fun playstyle. I'll have to check it out.

Yeah, thanks. I'm thinking of trimming down which policies I take in honor, commerce, autocracy, and order so that I can nab oligarchy from the tradition tree. I agree that the :) and upgrading policies are perhaps not all that amazing and can be skippable. The left hand side of commerce could potentially be skipped as well, depending on the situation (i.e., few coastal cities).

I'm also looking to add the heroic epic in the capital or a high production city for this strat as well. Might be overkill, but the extra military promo is appealing imo.

Started another game as Japan tonight (I start way more than I finish while I'm mastering the game). The other one was pretty much in a winnable position. Here is how it went (much better imo):

-Smaller continent. USA to my S and Russia to the E of the USA. Warrior rushed USA and sword rushed Russia. Ended up with 2 of my own cities (built one beyond my capital for 8 iron + gold), 1 USA puppet city, and 4 Russian puppets. Had generated a GS for steel, but didn't need it, so I used him on Education instead. Prioritized :) and culture techs as planned and I also focused on :) consolidation at each step. Led to much better happiness and empire management overall. Even produced enough :) early that I got a golden age!

Adding 1 city in between me and USA and then two within Russian territory would allow me to connect all cities via culture and roads. Trying to decide if it's worth the hit to culture. Haven't built any settlers yet, focused on culture.

I'm now beelining astronomy to find the other civs. I have 2 cultural CSs, 2-3 maritime and 2-3 militaristic on my continent, so I'm fine that way (though a couple more cultural ones would be nice). Hoping to strike with a navy and samurai soon. So far, so good in this game. Feels much stronger than the last game and solid overall.

Not sure about immortal, but on emperor 3 DD, 2-3BB, and a carrier with 1-3 fighters can soften up a coastal city so that a marine can take it. If you have 1-3 marines in the water, you can pretty much advance non stop. Use DD for anti-ship and BB for shore bombard.

The left hand side of commerce could potentially be skipped as well, depending on the situation (i.e., few coastal cities).

And the last on the right hand side, unless you really need the happiness. In fact, when the time comes to make that decision, you could compare Protectionism to Military Caste in terms of + happiness.

Yeah, thanks for the tip--I'm looking to trim the policies to make for the best combination. I am struggling with :) right now with no meritocracy early, so I'll likely have to nab something in the way of :) before planned economy.

For more lulz, play as Songhai. Their ability to buy their way to victory with their triple loot money is insane, and you will have an easier time getting culture with the mud pyramid.

Yeah, I wrote a thread a few weeks back about the synergy Songhai have with the honor tree. They would definitely be a good civ for this strat.

Just wanted to update based on a game I have been playing as Songhai. With a production capital and limited roads early-to-midgame, I saw no reason to go up the commerce tree. So, I went up the patronage tree instead, as there were lots of CSs on my continent. I was impressed with the :science: increase and I'm sure the first couple SPs saved me more $$$ than commerce would have for the large mid-game portion of the game. So, patronage is definitely an option for the 2nd tree.

Another issue I ran into was not getting to industrial fast enough in order to start in on the order/autocracy SPs. So, I ended up taking more than I wanted to in the patronage and honor trees. It was ok, because I did really need the :) so it worked out ok. However, I was a bit slower getting the industrial SPs than I wanted for this reason. So, getting out more GSs would've helped and I'm thinking that, if :) is ok, investing in 2-3 rationalism SPs might be a good way to go while waiting on the industrial SPs (freedom is incompatible with autocracy, but rationalism is not). Getting +1 :science: from all the tps I had across my conquered continent would've been a boon to my teching that's for sure.

So: Honor --> Patronage/Commerce --> Rationalism --> Order/Autocracy (and focusing in on the specific SPs that you really want).

Specifically, I'm thinking that Honor/Patronage/Rationalism/Order/Autocracy could be a nice plan and that you could fall back on trying to finish off these trees and go culture or, with patronage in there, buy up the CSs and fall back on diplo. Heck, with rationalism in there, falling back on space is possible as well. Kind of keeps your options open (though, admittedly, it is less optimal than going hard after culture or science, which can lead you toward other routes --> freedom, liberty, piety, etc.).

This was key in my recent Songhai game because it came down to me controlling my continent and a runaway Arabian empire on the other. I had a foothold on that continent after helping to eliminate Germany and China (they took care of Monty themselves). However, the Arabs were more technologically and militarily powerful than I was making a conquest victory tricky. He did have a coastal capital, but had it quite well surrounded with powerful troops. I was contemplating trying to find a way to poach his capital when I saved for the day. But in that case, if war wasn't possible, falling back on culture or space might've been a good option (though my best option in that particular game was diplo because I didn't have the culture or science to beat the Arabs in time--he was already in the future era and would be starting in on his own space ship soon enough).

Anyways, the strategy still definitely put me in contention to win the game; however, I think a couple of tweeks (a few rationalism SPs, some more GSs) would help a lot.

The nice thing is that I think this strat will still be very effective after the patch.

This works well with Aztecs & their UA - try it!

Hmmm...yes, Aztecs should fit nicely with this strat. I'll try them next time. Thanks.

War is diplomacy by other means. Can the human use diplomacy in Civ V at higher levels to avoid hours and hours of endless slaughter? Is Civ V that good of a game?
I played my first game at Immortal (highest level) and won it. Pangaea map, located on peninsula with CS blocking land access to all other players. Built 5 cities reasonably quickly, lots of whales and fish, so developed a great financial economy. Slow on science initially, but used Patronage and CS science bonus to catch up to all but Harun who was 2 ages ahead and super powerful. He built UN, I won buying my tenth vote just in time. Never used a unit against anyobe apart from barbarians, so quick peaceful game and was progressing nicely through the culture policies before game ended too with all the CS culture points. I played as Greeks which helps with befriending the CS's cheaply.

Aztecs were born for Autocracy. Admittedly got a big sadistic kick out of watching that purple-ish culture point count float up after every kill, especially in industrial and later. Seemed like a successful "Aztec immersion effect", rather like cutting out the heart of every captive :) Luckily for humanity, it is just a game.

Remember the Aztec UA scales with unit-era, so you can get 12-16 points / unit in the industrial/modern eras, note less for ranged units, so it seems proportional to unit defense strength.

Aztec take-down of a Giant Death Robot - has that ever been done? Like to see the count on that.

There's probably an Aztec UA analysis thread buried somewhere on this site that might explain this in detail...

Hmmm...yes, Aztecs should fit nicely with this strat. I'll try them next time. Thanks.

Hmmm...yes, Aztecs should fit nicely with this strat. I'll try them next time. Thanks.

I just played a game last night using your strat with the Aztecs. It worked great. I won domination on 2011. I think I had more than 20 social policies. I never built one city. Annexed 3 others to help with the empire growth.

I did do a slight deviation from your build. I built the stone henge wonder (started with sugar and marble, could not resist) then started to attack with jaguar/horses. It still worked like a charm and I had a blast with this game.

Paris, Persepolis, Kyoto and Tenochtitlan all had 27+ population cities BTW. Those were the highest pop cities I have ever had playing this game yet. Annexing the capitols then farming/mining all it tiles just exploded those cites. Made them into real powerhouses. All other puppets got the trading post carpet.

Quick note on Japan vs Aztec units. I played a game to the renaissance era using japan the other day. Japan eventually gets very highly promoted units which is awesome. I found it much more difficult to keep the Aztec units alive so I went with quantity over quality with them.

Glad to hear you had success :) I agree that Japan gets rockin' promoted units--love that about them. China can too if you abuse their UU--the double attacks are awesome. Looking forward to playing as Aztecs next game though--I'll keep in mind quantity > quality as a possibility.

On the Aztecs, note that I did a rifle-rush based bulb to open up Autocracy, saving 4 GSes and SPs (after doing the left hand of Honor to get flanking) to do so. Then dumped all at once into Autocracy, except the last policy of course.

After that beelined to destroyers.

Autocracy/Honor flanking rifles/artillery won't lose often. 3xShore bombard/Logistics destroyers are cool too, especially if you can sail it into an inland lake adjacent to a coastal city to use as floating land artillery.

Not sure about immortal, but on emperor 3 DD, 2-3BB, and a carrier with 1-3 fighters can soften up a coastal city so that a marine can take it. If you have 1-3 marines in the water, you can pretty much advance non stop. Use DD for anti-ship and BB for shore bombard.

I've been playing as England on Duel/Archipelago maps (going for my 357 sunken ships) and I find that with 2 Ships of the Line and a couple Longbowmen all I need is ONE longswordsman with the marine promotion. The movement bonus for embarked units helps a LOT :D