Trouble with Tall

Hey all! So since G&K has come out I've found myself spreading a lot more wide because not only does religion allow it, but encourages it. I feel like I've gotten a lot better (I used to play on Prince but now I easily play on King and have been playing some Emperor games).

That being said, I can't seem to play tall anymore. I can get it up and running pretty well, but have trouble maintaining a lead with rapidly expanding AIs. Plus, unless I'm playing as a religious focused Civ or go Piety ASAP, getting a decent religion is tough in Emperor.

Usually I focus on food and try to rush settlers to keep the pop growing, but beyond that I'm not sure what I could be doing differently. I think one of my problems may be that I try to get Wonders, but I've even backed off a bit on those and still have some issues. Thanks for any help!

I think the strengthening of Tradition made tall vs wide more balanced in GnK. The score system is biased towards wide, so you might not top the list like you did before, but it's really not that important tbh. Tall can generally get away with building more wonders than wide, but good play usually has fewer wonders than bad play, so it's a big of a tightrope to walk. Religion aquisition and religious spread are both biased towards wide, so I wouldn' t worry too much that you're finding it tougher.

What Tall can do well is:
Wonder (World but especially National) building
Better hapiness and more golden ages
More specialists per population
Better great person generation
Fewer shared borders so better diplomatic relations in general
It can usually do science quite well, by running scientists and using NC/Oxford to get to key techs earlier, as well as having all their population in cities with good building modifiers.

Try to craft a victory out of focusing on these areas, as oppose to straight out producing or out 'gold'ing enemies. For a start, i think lots of people find that the thread on '4 cities Tradition opening' can be useful.

swishizzle said:

Hey all! So since G&K has come out I've found myself spreading a lot more wide because not only does religion allow it, but encourages it. I feel like I've gotten a lot better (I used to play on Prince but now I easily play on King and have been playing some Emperor games).

That being said, I can't seem to play tall anymore. I can get it up and running pretty well, but have trouble maintaining a lead with rapidly expanding AIs. Plus, unless I'm playing as a religious focused Civ or go Piety ASAP, getting a decent religion is tough in Emperor.

Usually I focus on food and try to rush settlers to keep the pop growing, but beyond that I'm not sure what I could be doing differently. I think one of my problems may be that I try to get Wonders, but I've even backed off a bit on those and still have some issues. Thanks for any help!

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IMO, if you're an experienced (good) player, tall really can't compete with wide in CIV V: G+K's against the AI, (and just because you go wide doesn't mean you still can't have numerous monster cities to compete with tall cities).

As long as you have science tied to population, trade routes tied to just your own cities (based on their population), and no war weariness mechanic or monetary penalty for settling additional cities, when combined with the additional happiness resources and religion happiness bonuses in G+K's, more cities, aka ICS, will always be the dominant strategy, as essentially your science and gold will go up from having the additional cities, regardless of the quality of the terrain involved. The happiness penalty just doesn't hurt enough to limit expansion in this regard if you efficiently place cities by luxuries/natural wonders.

Sure you can still play tall, but only because the AI expands at a glacial pace - (especially if they attempt a culture victory), which basically means you can do whatever you want and succeed as they'll limit themselves to like 3 cities. The only time you'll struggle with a wide empire is if the majority of AI's attempt a domination victory, and this is only if you're on the same continent as them in the first place.

Like others have said, tall does generally not compete very well with wide in the game, to a point where I even find that my SP rate when going wide will match the one I have when I'm going tall simply because the increase SP cost is matched by the increased culture output of having many cities.

You say that going for Wonders may be a problem, but quite on the contrary, when you go tall, you HAVE to go for Wonders - the (only) advantage of going tall instead of wide is that you'll spend less time building settlers and military units, and therefore will have time to build wonders.

I play Emperor myself, because I feal it's a good balance between not being too far ahead of the AI and still getting to hoard some Wonders (I'm a Wonder hoarder). I usually build Stonehenge for the early faith boost (and the GE point) and it does help greatly in getting a nice religion - I'll usually found first or second and most of the time enhance first, which gives me a good pick at the nice beliefs. I even sometimes get to build both Stonehenge and Great Library when I get a good start, so I don't think going for Stonehenge is a problem.