New Germany tips

The fall patch changed two existing civs; but Germany's was by far more extensive.

1. Germany now has a higher percent chance of converting a barb in a camp

2. Germany no longer has the earlier UU.

3. Germany now gets a new UB, which replaces the Bank, but gives cities with this UB hammer bonuses for each trade route you have with a city state.

Germany was and still is largely a standard civ (they can go after any victory condition and all standard tactics work), so I'm just going to cover what's unique to Germany:

#1 For this; when fighting the barbs; be sure you don't accidentally kill a barb unit inside a camp with a ranged unit. Even if you aren't interested in a Brute / promoting him to most advanced foot solider, you can still some use by moving it into friendly territory and then disbanding for gold.
Also note that ragging barbs does not actually increase number of barb camps; all it does is greatly increase the rate at which barb units spawn from camps, so if you are interested in farming barb camps ragging barbs would actually slow you down.

#2/#3 For this; your UB only really works if you have trade routes with city states (but the route can come from another city) so if all your trade routes are with major AIs and internal, it's not providing anything extra.
However, even if you have Patronage policy, city states provide less income than the best routes with major AIs and also never provide science bonuses; so you will have to decide weather or not the 5% hammer bonus is worth it. (This will depend on how fast you get these up; 5% to a single city isn't much; but if your entire empire has this it will be better)

The other major comparison is against hammer cargo ships. Hammer cargo ships will win hands down to a single city. However, you aren't allowed to duplicate a food cargo ship route with a hammer cargo ship route anyway. And when you get multiple copies of your UB built, using a city state trade route to get hammers will look better.

This gives Germany a minor incentive to go after most of Patronage (to reduce the difference in gold between major civs & city states)

Whichever victory condition you go; the extra hammers will be helpful:

Going Cultural victory that's faster wonders with theming bonuses.

Going Science victory that's faster hand building of science buildings. (Somewhat offset by less income meaning less cash buying of the same)

Going domination victory that's faster hand building of units. (Somewhat offset by less income meaning slower unit upgrades & less cash buying of the same)

Going diplomatic victory: Well, your UB doesn't really help you directly there; but if you did establish all those trade routes with City states then Freedom has a tenet made for you.

Starting location: Germany's UB is somewhat more powerful if they start in the interior of a land mass instead of on the coast. (If the capital can't run cargo ships anyway then the bonus compares favorably to a hammer carvan run to Berlin even if only that city has the UB built. In addition, the Patronage policy bonus to city state trade routes means more from the smaller base of a caravan.)

Edit: This could use a short fighting New Germany section:
1. Embargo city states! If this resolution passes, watch Germany cry when their production falls as their UBs get demoted to the regular bank.

2. If playing Venice or Austria: Concentrate more on buying out / marrying city states near Germany; prior to late game this will make it more difficult for Germany to get the production bonuses.

I think once the Hanse is available you would have 5 or 6 trade units available which would be a 25 or 30% production bonus in the core cities. You might consider Tradition and some Commerce and then some Patronage or maybe vice-versa. There should be plenty of opportunities for you to do CS quests and manage alliances. You should be pretty well off financially and able to afford all the nice things.

Yes, you'll have at least 5 routes available by Hanse.
But you might also want to have a route or two sending Food to your capital.

Also the Hansa building is essentially a bank, which mean puppets will build it quickly.

joncnunn said:

Yes, you'll have at least 5 routes available by Hanse.
But you might also want to have a route or two sending Food to your capital.

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I guess that depends on whether your capital has access to the sea or not. At that point in time a food trade route only gives 4 food, and running that trade route for gold gives you enough cash (if you go Patronage) to keep ally status with a Maritime city state which gives 3 food in your capital, plus quite a few other benefits.

I don't fret too much about losing science from trade routes to other civs because you are running them to city states instead, because you only have to do that when you have the Hanse up and at that point the science from trade routes should be a relatively minor amount compared to science from your cities,

In general I think Tradition (because the Hanse gives a percentage bonus, so you want bigger cities), Patronage and Commerce are the policy trees to go for Germany, because they have synergies with the Hanse. Probably open Honor if there is a lot of empty space around where barb camps can spawn.

I've really been using the Trad/Pat/Comm strategy lately and spending tons of gold on alliances. Once you get 6-10 CS allies, the science boost from the Patronage tree is significant. And its pretty easy to just buy them all out from that point on.

Its interesting because Honor is the go-to policy for Germany - but it can be quite tempting to miss now because you want both Patronage AND Commerce.

tat501 said:

Its interesting because Honor is the go-to policy for Germany - but it can be quite tempting to miss now because you want both Patronage AND Commerce.

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I wouldn't say Patronage pays for itself in culture costs, but allying Cultural city states as your first priority certainly makes it that you can afford quite a few more policies than you otherwise would.

My personal favorite is Hanse with Treaty Organization netting me everything I need to win without even paying a single gold. Hanse's bonus is really best utilized in the later half of the game anyways so really the only trade off is the production bonus versus extra gold from AI trade routes.

S.O.T MAHak said:

Also the Hansa building is essentially a bank, which mean puppets will build it quickly.

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Erneiz Hyde said:

My personal favorite is Hanse with Treaty Organization netting me everything I need to win without even paying a single gold.

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Holy Roman Empire anyone?

tat501 said:

Its interesting because Honor is the go-to policy for Germany - but it can be quite tempting to miss now because you want both Patronage AND Commerce.

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I would say they are a very Social Policy spread Civ
but I don't see exactly why Commerce would be very mandatory

commerce opener synergies well with monarchy, but it's not limited to germany though. If you want a good diplo win as germany, it's either treaty organization or even gunboat diplomacy after building a lot of panzers (with the hanse 30% production bonus of course).

To me it seems more of a bonus for domination, where you will be at war with so many other civs that sending trade routes to other civs is either not an option or unsafe due to interception by your neighbours you are at war with. Or if you've already conquered them, then their remaining cities aren't that great and you get a higher GPT from trading with city states anyway. In such a scenario, it becomes a better option for you to send all your trade routes to city states especially with the Hanse bonus. Late game with the +30-40% production boost that's a lot of Panzers to help you finish off your remaining enemies.

joncnunn said:

when fighting the barbs; be sure you don't accidentally kill a barb unit inside a camp with a ranged unit.

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Did this change with BNW? With GnK, moving into an empty barb camp has the same chance to spawn a unit as using a melee unit to kill the bard inside the camp. Either way, the spawned unit does not always match the killed unit.

You still have the chance when entering an empty barb camp after killing the unit with an archer.

Monthar said:

You still have the chance when entering an empty barb camp after killing the unit with an archer.

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Thanks; I've edited the original post and struck out that line.

Thanks for the nice guide. I was disappointed that raging barbs does not help exploit the German UA.

I played some three hundred turns as Germany on a huge Pangea map. Here are some thoughts.

1. The hans is overpowered, right up until your enemy allies with every single one of the surrounding city states. Ouch. On the other hand, imagine a fantastic desert start where you actually get petra, with the bonus trade route early on. Nice.

2. Whereas raging barbs synergy is with honor and not the german bonus, I found the opening 100 turns absolutely hilarious, running around getting tons of culture and units and civ state friends. Ive been playing raging barbs as standard for a while, and found that they tend to capture more civies, and thus net you more allies. In addition, it tends to slow ai players down a bit.

3. Don't bother taking worthless units back to your territory to disband. The gold spent in the 15 turns that they take to slog through that forest is far more than that brute will gain you. Of course if it is just a turn or two knock yourself out. Ive found a better use for them is civ state donations.

4. If you are like me and take autocracy because of the awesome panzer/lightning warfare combo, prepare with happiness. Everyone else takes order >.< . This gives you a paradox with tier 2 ideologies. You can only take 4, but they are all really good and there is a nice happiness bonus in there. In addition, I might take all of commerce next time instead of part of commerce and part of rationalism (heresy I know, but that finisher is a lot of happiness). The other option is to get the defense/exp building/nat wonder happiness trio. I don't know which is the better option, ill have to go do some figuring.

Germany is so fun now. Getting all the hammers from hanses then going on a Panzer rampage is pretty awesome.

While converting the world to Judaism, of course.

EriktheRead said:

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3. Don't bother taking worthless units back to your territory to disband. The gold spent in the 15 turns that they take to slog through that forest is far more than that brute will gain you. Of course if it is just a turn or two knock yourself out. Ive found a better use for them is civ state donations.

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I didn't even consider that someone would bother attacking a barb camp 15+ tiles away from own territory when I wrote this.

jon mentioned something that I've been perplexed by, not just with Germany but in general as well: trade routes with city-states. As jon alludes to, the benefit is not there compared to AI and internal routes. That kind of negates some things, including the high level Freedom tenet. Perhaps in the later game trade routes with city-states become beneficial but do you have that many routes with city-states before that?