Race To Navigation

Hello Fellow Die Hard Civ 5 Fans:

I love playing on Continents thus having bodies of water around you. Yet for those of you who play these types of maps too ... do you feel that to win or have the upper hand in the game that it's all about researching Navigation. If not what strategies do you use or social policies you choose to help get around Navigation.

Any thoughts would be great.

Brew God

In Civ 5 the first one o circumvent the world doesn't get a +1 movement bonus anymore.

Ever since they did that, I found myself not racing to circle the world once but instead, just taking my time and exploring the world slowly.

Also, unless playing Korea, Astronomy is the only tech you need to cross oceans.

I think he does mean that it'll become a race to Frigates/Privateers, which is partially a truth. However, on normal Continents, there'll still be enough cities inland, making it hard to just capture it all with those two. Heck, on bigger mapsizes, you might not even be able to meet all civs just by sailing around, so...

If I'm playing for domination on a water map (islands, archipelago), I'll do a tradition start, with a 3 or 4 city NC. Food ships only to get my cities up quick, at least 1 round per city. I'll probably tech engineering before civil service to get another ship out. I'll usually go straight to optics, so as to settle cities off island. Education, then astronomy, then navigation. I don't use oxford on navigation, because I find it's more efficient to build galleases and upgrade them. By turn 135 you can have 8 frigates and 2 caravels, which is unstoppable.

Loucypher said:

I think he does mean that it'll become a race to Frigates/Privateers, which is partially a truth. However, on normal Continents, there'll still be enough cities inland, making it hard to just capture it all with those two. Heck, on bigger mapsizes, you might not even be able to meet all civs just by sailing around, so...

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Science is King, getting Public Schools very early is more important than very early Frigates / Privateers on standard size map and larger. Also the ships your intending on becoming Frigates are best built before Navigation and upgraded.

Sometimes I race to Astronomy then Printing Press. I only race for Navigation if I want a DomV, which is probably too often...

brewgod said:

Hello Fellow Die Hard Civ 5 Fans:

I love playing on Continents thus having bodies of water around you. Yet for those of you who play these types of maps too ... do you feel that to win or have the upper hand in the game that it's all about researching Navigation. If not what strategies do you use or social policies you choose to help get around Navigation.

Any thoughts would be great.

Brew God

Click to expand...

Firstly, play Polynesia. They can Embark into Ocean on Turn One. Polynesia frees you from the need to get Embarkation and allows you to pursue other Technologies.

However, if you do not want to play Polynesia, then I recommend playing England (Ship of the Line is a great UU) and getting into Exploration after Tradition and maybe a little Commerce.