Comprehensive Guides to Playing Wide/Cultural/Domination?

Preface: I've had the game three months, played 250+ hours, and followed this guide exclusively on 4-city tradition. .
I was basically brand new to CIV (hadn't played in 16 years!), so this was a godsend.
I have gotten it to where on emperor with Babylon I won on turn 358.

I'm SOOOO bored though now. I am dying to play another way, going wide, being a land grabber, trying domination or cultural, wonder hogging. Problem is, I have no clue how to play the game any other way. I don't know how to war before the modern era since I am used to following this tall/wall guide exclusively.

I wanted to know if any of you could suggest any guides similar to the one I linked. That guide is awesome, very thorough, but concise.
I'd like to have a blueprint on other victory conditions; as well as early game war.

There are tons of guides out there; overload! Any you can suggest? Thanks.

I know this is not really what you're after, but I can really recommend a learning method called trial and error.

Seriously though, your post sort of makes the exact point that if you follow a specific guide game ends up being boring because you do the same thing over and over again. Instead try to take a risk and do something new and see where it brings you and then accomodate to situation. Level down a level if necessary to get some learning step. A couple of good points when you want to go wide however:

• Liberty will help you, although you'll find things more tough early game than with Tradition.
• Opening Piety may be worth it (see next post). Opening Patronage is almost always worth it because Forbidden Palace is top prioty, the city state bonuses doesn't hurt either. Exploration is your friend if you're coastal, production in coastal cities is king, and if you're going cultural, the hidden antiquity sites can be nice, although lower tree is trash, so this is general low priortity.
• Order is your go-to ideology. +2 happiness from monuments is ace, and the 25 % science from factories is downright imbalanced. 5 year plan for the extra production per city and mines are number two priority, level up with happiness or great person bonus from first tier as required.
• Religion is your friend. Pagodas is top priority for belief, depending on circumstances another religious building (if you have high faith output) or Religious Centers are great beliefs also.
• Focus on a civ that's aimed for wide gameplay. Maya is a really safe pick because they have the best unique building for wide gameplay and the free Great Persons really help you with religion and early wonders.

I got into the Civ system way back in Feb. of '14, with Civ V, played the tutorials, moved to Chieftan, and started reading a LOT of guides and mods; to begin to get the 'feel' of how any one flavor should go ...
I realized that I'm a real estate agent, playing wide and loose, it took me a long time to 'go with the flow' and start winning; then moving up the ladder .

Methinks that a better way to learn 'wide' would be to use a huge map, dial down to, say, 5 AI's, on an Islands map; and use what I call the 'Utterly Insane Raging Barbarian Pack'; with Raging Barbarians (ON) in the advanced settings, and 3 Workshop mods :
1) Ryika's Caravansary mod,
2) Unlimited Barbarian Experence mod,
3) Increased Barbarian Spawn mod .
This 'package' will keep you AND the AI's busy, while you go carving out a defensable Empire, dropping cities on useful islands to create a Barb-free swath, before you can get to an AI's territories .
Also DISABLE the Time- and Diplo- VC's, to get really down-and-dirty action !
I have read a couple of mods for "smarter", more aggressive AI behavior, I haven't tried them yet ...
Experiment, Enjoy, Excelsior !; HAVE FUN !!!

I think there was a shoshone map somewhere on GOTM or something....if you want to experiment with land grabbing and playing wide, Shoshone or Rome are really good bets.
With liberty wide play, there are far more things to manage in terms of happiness and buildings, but it's quite rewarding because your production and science are almost always better past T200.

I am used to doing this:

-Tradition-Open patronage and take 20 resting point-Rationalism-Order or Freedom
-Standard map with 8 Civs/16 CS using continents/small continents/small continents plus
-Standard barbarians

Never paid any attention to culture/theming bonus.

Just wish there was some template to loosely follow because I feel totally lost without rationalism/bee-lining science buildings.


Wondering if I should go down to Prince to try out a new game style. Usually I am at emperor.

rover6695 said:

Wondering if I should go down to Prince to try out a new game style. Usually I am at emperor.

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Go down to King. If you are used to playing Emperor, stepping down to King will give you a bit more space for errors while still make you not own the AI completely from beginning of game.

If you want to play wide, I'd recommend Pangaea map because that generally gives you considerable more breathing space than continents map (ratio of landcean is higher on Pangaea than on Continents). Also consider going for a large map instead of standard map, because large maps tend to have much more space between players even if player number is increased, which naturally encourages you to go wide without the hassle of contested borders very early.

Thanks for the tips. At turn 125 on large map, small continets plus. Perhaps this is best for another thread but I think Tradition is MUCH MUCH better than liberity.

I've never been so poor money wise; having to spend to get a monument, aqueduct, no free garrisson really hurts.

I've go cities right now; I normally don't sprawl to 6-10 until later int he game so I'm thinking tradition is better even if eventually going wide.

I recommend trying small maps. They move really quickly. And when you don't have as many civs, it's a different game.

rover6695 said:

Thanks for the tips. At turn 125 on large map, small continets plus. Perhaps this is best for another thread but I think Tradition is MUCH MUCH better than liberity.

I've never been so poor money wise; having to spend to get a monument, aqueduct, no free garrisson really hurts.

I've go cities right now; I normally don't sprawl to 6-10 until later int he game so I'm thinking tradition is better even if eventually going wide.

Click to expand...

Well yes, unmodded Liberty stinks pretty badly.

It sucks, especially because I can't see sprawling past four cities until the late 100s.

rover6695 said:

It sucks, especially because I can't see sprawling past four cities until the late 100s.

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Yes, I agree. Supposedly, Liberty is about benefits in the long run - i.e. late game when you have many cities, Liberty will benefit you a lot - whereas Tradition offers more immediate benefits, but I think many players find that the cumulative effect of those immediate benefits of Tradition are better, even in the long run. I'm myself playing with a mod that makes a number of changes to the policy trees and game in general which makes Liberty more viable, I don't know if you play with mods, however.

Not with those mods.

kaspergm said:

I'm myself playing with a mod that makes a number of changes to the policy trees and game in general which makes Liberty more viable

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what a mod?

there's a liberty-piety strategy, you adopt opener, +1 hammers policy, settler policy, then piety policies for better shrines/temples, then finish liberty, then finish piety. so you get your religion fast and can generate lots of faith to purchase stuff.

killmeplease said:

what a mod?

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It's a personal mod project, it affects many parts of game, but you can download it here if you want to check it out (unzip the content into Mods folder).

(It's stable but there's one bug, for some reason the Commerce policy background is currently not showing up like it should, used to work but after I cleaned my hard disc and re-installed game and mod for some reason it doesn't show properly up anymore.)

rover6695 said:

I've go cities right now; I normally don't sprawl to 6-10 until later int he game so I'm thinking tradition is better even if eventually going wide.

Click to expand...

I am still with struggling with Liberty but I like it when there are 6+ great spots, and I want to claim them before the AI. Maybe a scout spots a Natural Wonder remote from any civ. Then I pick best spots between the NW and territory near my cap. For me, Liberty is all about the early land grab.

rover6695 said:

It sucks, especially because I can't see sprawling past four cities until the late 100s.

Click to expand...

How are you handling your National Wonders? I rarely found new cities that late, even when going Liberty.

EDIT: Well, not quite that late. When I go wide, I found well into the mid 100s.