Lets re-energize Civ - post your unique strategies

Ok enough with the 3-4 city National College Tradition I want to hear of some unique and interesting strategies that people have come up with. I guess around Emperor-Immortal difficulty as Diety is too much of a race against the clock to enjoy a less competitive strategy.

Here's one

Byzantium (Emperor or Immortal). Large pangaea map, low sea-level, extra Civs and CS to fill the gaps (optional).

Re-roll until you secure a desert start pick desert folklore.
Ideally build Stonehenge and Great Mosque in Capital.
For religion take Tithe, World Church (bonus belief), no religious buildings (faith must go towards missionaries). Take the 'Holy Order' belief and 'Mandate of Heaven' policy. Start converting nearby cities but avoid converting AI capitals directly until there are no religions left to start.
After Tradition or Liberty work through to Reformation and take Evangelism. I recommend the Oracle to speed this up.

Ideally you want faith generation from desert to sustain producing missionaries every 1-2 turns. As the Great Mosque gives you an extra conversion you will have no difficulty converting virtually every city in the world to your religion.
Throughout the medieval era my culture generation from religion was actually greater than from cities. With a World Fair I had enough culture generation at one point to get a new SP every 3-4 turns. But you do need to keep an eye on things though as other religions will attempt to convert you but they won't be that successful if you keep a steady stream of missionaries covering the map.

From there just play to whatever victory strategy works out.

If your entire strategy is based on having foreign cities produce culture, I'd take Pilgrimage over Tithe. With Pilgrimage, once your religion is spread its so easy to stay on top. FPT of 100+ is easy.

Redaxe said:

Holy Order
Evangelicism

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I have done that in the Immortal Challenge Lineup with India. Didn't even need desert folklore. I picked Oral Tradition to get through Piety and settled 6 cities, rushing Shrines, Temples, and Pagodas. It gave enough faith to buy a missionary every other turn, since you get 50% discount together with Mandate of Heaven. I also built the Great Mosque of Djenne (my only wonder, and I chopped for it profusely), so I was able to outspam the AI's with my religion, and it was fun.

I have also done Charitable Missions with Philanthropy in the Deity Challenge Lineup Indonesia, so these strats are possible even on higher difficulty levels if things go your way.

I have also done ICS SS victories, but not on Deity. I have done Byzantium with IP+RT and Unity of the Prophets for teh lulz, as well.

I despise Rationalism and haven't done Tradition since the nerf.


PS: Also, it's called Evangelism. Evangelicism means something different.

consentient said:

If your entire strategy is based on having foreign cities produce culture, I'd take Pilgrimage over Tithe. With Pilgrimage, once your religion is spread its so easy to stay on top. FPT of 100+ is easy.

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Well if you have enough faith generation I think Pilgramage is overkill - once you get to late game and your religion is established you end up with more faith than you need.
And if you're still low on faith generation than its easy enough to build new cities around deserts. A large map as I suggested usually has enough room for at least 6 cities.

If you have a bit of desert it's easy to get over 100 fpt anyway and you want your religious beliefs to be able to feed your general civ so I tend to think culture and gold is the better option. I only suggested Byzantines because you can get 2 founder beliefs.

adcarrymaokai: Thanks i'll edit that. It's good to see others see the potential value in the Great Mosque. Honestly I think for a real strong religious strategy it clearly is hands down the best of the 3 Theology wonders - it really is like having an extra Enhancer belief.
I'm also starting to think that Tradition is less value, it doesn't have that nice synergy it once did but I still like getting the Great Engineers in the late game.

adcarrymaokai said:

I despise Rationalism...

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Is that because it is OP?

...and haven't done Tradition since the nerf.

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Why is that? The finisher is the best thing from Tradition, and that’s only delayed a handful of turns.

Funny enough, that is close to what I am finishing up doing on my current 6 way FFA, 2 human 4 AI game.
Byzantium, with a desert start. But for the options i went with all 3 buildings. (sorry i don't know the proper names of anything ) the ones that give you hapiness + culture + faith, culture + faith, and culture + faith again.
THEN in later game I got the option that lets your faith bought buildings give tourism.
And somewhere i was able to to buy science buildings with faith, i think an idiology allowed this.
I was aiming for diplo win, but my buddy bought out more city states then me and declared war, so i had to switch over to tourism. I quickly just spammed 5 more cities out, tanked my happiness but that is OK. Then used my 10k faith points and bought another round of 6 buildings with faith, which is 6 * 2 * 5 more tourism.
At that point i rushed internet, we have 80ish turns left in game, and about 55 for my tourist win.

My next game, to try and keep things fun and crazy, will be my first epic speed game, huge man FFA, with just 2 total humans.
I am going to try 100% war my way though anything that moves, with some faith to back me up, hope it goes well

The most fun I've had with the faith aspects of this game have relied upon the use of 'Heathen Conversion' empowered missionaries... otherwise known as the Borg!

The quickest way I've found to acquire these guys is to set the starting era, via the advanced setup, to the Renaissance - then play with the Celts, not forgetting to settle your two starting settlers beside forests. With 300 culture to start, and shrines prebuilt, it doesn't take long to found a Religion.

The Renaissance is also a good time to start if you like exploring maps that include plenty of ocean. I particularly like using Portugal on Continent Plus maps, at Epic speed for this purpose.

Settle a second city quick. Establish a city connection. Get a granary and send an internal trade route to the second city. Perhaps even expand a bit and settle third, fourth, even fifth~seventh cities while keeping the capital's population low.

Alternate strategy is to get as wide as possible (at least 8 cities), have them all connected, avoid growth in all of them except the capital, then grow the capital extremely tall.

Machu Picchu is recommended but not required.

The idea is to get the most of city connections. Gold output from city connections can be obtained far higher by growing your satellite cities when you have 7 or less (each population to a city apart from the capital adds 1.1 gpt). In contrast, a wide empire benefits more gold if you grow the capital city (each population in the capital adds 0.15 gpt for every city connection). Of course, this also means you have crappy happiness.

American land purchase: Build cities in such locations that you can purchase tiles to either enclose a hugh plot of land for later expansion or block other civs completely from expanding themself.
If used well this strategy can guarantee a win on any difficulty.

Here's an alternative strategy for a culture win....

Rules:
1.) player can pick any warmongering civ (Huns, Zulu, Mongols, Assyrians, etc.)
2.) AI civs will include France, Polynesia, Brazil, and the rest are random
3.) player can build culture buildings but is not allowed to build any wonder that contains a great works slot, nor any of the three guilds and can never build an archeologist. Rather...
4.) players tourism is generated solely by captured great works, captured cities with culture UIs and building hotels/airports, captured cities with wonders with slots, etc.)

beetle said:

Is that because it is OP?

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Because it's too mainstream (hipster alert!).

adcarrymaokai said:

Because it's too mainstream (hipster alert!).

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I despised Rationalism before I knew other despised it as well. Now I guess I'm neutral.

Etheopian city spam with pyramids and +2 science from city connections then +2 gold for each city following that religion. It's an awesome strat because city spam is usually not viable in BNW.

Denkt said:

American land purchase: Build cities in such locations that you can purchase tiles to either enclose a hugh plot of land for later expansion or block other civs completely from expanding themself.
If used well this strategy can guarantee a win on any difficulty.

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Wouldn't that just guarantee that they get angry and attack you?

I had a lot of fun doing a challenge I picked up watching some streams of NQ players. It goes like this:

Settler difficulty, quick speed, any other settings you want - win Science victory as fast as you can.

Turn 104 is my fastest so far, using Shoshone (who have the insane advantage of being able to pick Settlers from ruins)

It's a lot of fun, and a nice break from the standard play.

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/46497714486810523/E02659BED2EFE0BCA9BF2A3BE12ED53F20A96E2E/

this isnt particularly a strategy so much a playing to a new goal. i invented a couple of my own new victory conditions but mostly out of boredom.

#1 - Economic Victory : there are two methods - one for GPT and one for flatout cash on hand. for GPT see how quickly you can get to 250gpt. or for Cash on hand, see how quickly you can get to 10,000 gold in the bank. choose your own settings, difficulties, etc. but i always go with standard speed and 8/16 civs/CSs. of course, change the totals based on how long you expect/want to play. only want a 150 turn game? a 250 turn game? adjust accordingly. of course you could try for both as they will probably be pretty close to each other in each of those games. i didnt try this at deity, but i think it would be most interesting at one lower because the AI has lots of gold on Deity. one huge peace deal could account for a lot of it there. or sell a huge city.

#2 - Religious Victory - convert EVERY city and city-state to your religion. this is one i only half-tried but I intend to get around to it another time. the caps of course are harder to convert. and a conquest oriented game will make it easier to convert your puppets because you dont deal with unit obstruction and the consequential attrition.

any, these are all based around getting there the quickest. i think it adds a new way of approaching game goals. you can disable all other victories or keep them in play as its own kind of timer.

i dont really have many 'new' strategies other than domination games that explicitly dont cater to ranged units. siege is allowed but no archery of any kind. it still becomes a siege game but early comp bow rushes are no longer an option and it takes a lot of units to have a few of these survive to big promotion BEFORE you get to artillery. it's fun sometimes. i particularly like it with Japan and Assyria.