A general strategy for Germany (BNW)

Continuing my series of Civ V BNW strategies, I have just published a guide for a legacy civ that received major updates: Germany.
Please check it out at:
http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/12/01/Civ-V-Germany-strategy.aspx

As always, I appreciate any feedback, so please comment, share, or rate the post as you see fit. I also welcome any discussion about the strategy guide or Germany strategies in general in this forum topic.

Additional strategies for the BNW civilizations can be found at:
Assyria the tech thief
Brazil the jungle king
spicy Indonesia
Moroccan gatekeepers
Poland the progressive warhorse
Portual borrows luxuries
Land-snatching Shoshone
Blindly managing Venice
Beware Shaka's loincloth of DOOM!

Additional BNW strategies for updated legacy civs:
French tourist trap
Spreading faith with Arabian Ships of the Desert
India is misunderstood


I have also posted a similar thread on the official 2k forums.

I take it you're planning an early war (which is why after a few Liberty policies it's going into Honor?)

Tradition works better for that with Monarchy's 50% pop unhappiness in the capital mattering a whole lot more than faster settler production when conquering the AI. Of course, post Halloween patch you want the entire Tradition tree first before going into Honor even doing this since you need since all but one of the Tradition policies is blocking the two powerful bottom middle ones.

joncnunn said:

I take it you're planning an early war (which is why after a few Liberty policies it's going into Honor?)

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Not necessarily. The idea is to use Furor Teutonics to acquire your army from barbarians rather than spending production time in your cities building them - regardless of whether you use them right away. That way, your cities can focus on core economic development, expansion, and wonders rather than pumping out Barracks and units.

If you're killing lots of barbs, then opening Honor for the free culture makes killing them faster and gives free culture. You should get enough free culture from barb kills to pay for at least one social policy, thus offsetting the cost of having adopted Honor. And if you plan on playing aggressively, then finishing Honor is a good plan anyway.

Fuhrer Teutonics is really all about running around killing camps and making CS allies to create a 'greater' german state. Its the first reich. Thats how it plays out. The extra troops are incidental. Honor opener is a good choice. You can really control a lot of territory with this. But, getting a larger army isnt really the point.

I would not neglect faith as Germany.

The second reich is the hansiatic league you create with all those UBs and trade routes. Edit: and trade route quests.

The third reich is the panzer attack. Edit: With Autocracy you can finish a cultural, diplomatic or domination win. No need to research the whole tree.

Edit: Tradition & Honor & Patronage (Germany is one of the 'patronage' civs) are strong trees from Germany, but you should be making a lot of CPT and have lots of policies.

Yeah I don't understand the recommendation of liberty either. If you expand too fast, there won't be any room for barb camps to spawn. Otherwise a good strategy article.

As always, thanks for feedback guys!

Good points about the merits of Tradition versus Liberty. I'm not really sure that I agree with budweiser that the free units are "incidental". I've found that not having to build units in your cities frees up a lot of production and time for building important economic buildings and trade units, as well as reach for early game wonders. On smaller maps maybe it's not so great, since there's less territory for barbs to spawn in. But on standard and larger (especially pangea), it can provide a lot of units!

On smaller maps, and maps with less land mass, I can definitely see that Liberty would be counter-productive due to the lack of space for barbs to spawn. But I didn't play such maps on my sample games, as I generally favor standard continents maps. I also didn't have a chance to play Germany in any multiplayer games, so the strategies there may be different. An oversight on my part... :/

I have modified the section that includes the Liberty recommendation to include some of these points.

But Honor and Patronage are definite good options for post-fall-patch Germany!

I was thinking about the policies a little bit and I think you can make a case that Germany would benefit from opening a few trees but not finishing them.

Think about the Commerce tree and 6 trade rotes going from one city. Wouldnt it be good to have 2 or 3 policies in commerce when you get that going in early renaissance? Of course you still might want Patronage open and maybe Honor.

A stratgey that would pay off in the late game is saving up tons of gold and use the poilicies in Autocracy to quickly buy a large Panzer attack force.

I used to *always* open honor first thing with Germany. Since the BnW updates, I must admit I have not used them much.

It used to be very possible to get 6+ free units early on from barb camps, but this number drastically declines with higher difficulties. The trick is to keep some open turf for barb farming all game long. This is pretty much impossible on deity, due mainly to over-aggressive expansion the AI does, combined with their aggressive barb hunting.

I feel pretty strongly that opening Patronage is a solid move, and placing additional policy points in there is also a good idea sometimes. I just LOVE the forbidden palace. Great for wide empires, even better for domination / wide.

Commerce... I find this to be very situational. Do you really need big ben? how useful are those landschnects (or whatever...). They were one of my favorite units when Germany could just spam them early, but if you have to wait until you have 3 policies into commerce, then I find them less valuable, and you cant hard build them or upgrade to them either. Used to be able to get all kinds of spearmen units from barbs and upgrade for 5 gold. now? its const a small fortune to get a handful of probably outdated schnects.

meh. Commerce has other benefits, but having one whole policy become useless really nerfed that whole tree.

Here's another point about units and I have done this before:

You might amass tons of first tier units like warrior, archer spear, etc. What you wont get is a Catapult. What you might want to do as Germany is research Writing then go to Math> and then Currency so that you can build Cats and leverage a Market in Berlin (Trade Hub & CS Trade Quest), on to HBR on to Civil Service.

Now what you can do is make a few cats and take out your neighbor which will effectively double the land you have available to settle. A La, Holy Roman Empire, a combined France & Germany. You will have all the land and maybe some additional barb farming.

So, I kinda take back what I said about barb units if you feel in a war monger mood.

budweiser said:

So, I kinda take back what I said about barb units if you feel in a war monger mood.

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HA! Vindication!

budweiser said:

Now what you can do is make a few cats and take out your neighbor which will effectively double the land you have available to settle. A La, Holy Roman Empire, a combined France & Germany. You will have all the land and maybe some additional barb farming.

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You can, however, possibly get free catapults from one of the militaristic city states that you became friends or allies with after clearing barb camps.

In your section about how to play against Germany, maybe you want to pass a resolution banning all CS trade?

How do you transition from a Honor opener as Germany? Do you go Tradition? Finish Honor? Go Liberty? I am really at loss as how to transition that.

And furthermore, if I want to do a CB rush, Military Tradition would help immensely, however I don't know how I can fit Settlers into build order when I do that? (Only possible with Poland I think, since you can also go Liberty)

budweiser said:

In your section about how to play against Germany, maybe you want to pass a resolution banning all CS trade?

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Against a human, you would, but I'm doubting the AI knows how to use its UB bonus.

InDubioProReo said:

How do you transition from a Honor opener as Germany? Do you go Tradition? Finish Honor? Go Liberty? I am really at loss as how to transition that.

And furthermore, if I want to do a CB rush, Military Tradition would help immensely, however I don't know how I can fit Settlers into build order when I do that? (Only possible with Poland I think, since you can also go Liberty)

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You have to build your settlers from scratch.. once your capital is larger and is able to make settlers quicker then you could start building settlers and expanding..

budweiser said:

Fuhrer Teutonics

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It's called Furor Teutonicus.

I am actually intrigued by your strategy layout. Now I want to try out Germany. Have there been Deity/Immortal challenge lineups with Germany?

adcarrymaokai said:

It's called Furor Teutonicus.

I am actually intrigued by your strategy layout. Now I want to try out Germany. Have there been Deity/Immortal challenge lineups with Germany?

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I just rolled a Petra map. I can post it for the next ICL. It wont be a 'challenge', but it will be fun. Actually I wont post that one. There are two off shore island that you have exclusive access to. One is the size of Africa. No kind of conflict here at all.

Edit: I have found a second map which I think showcases Germany's abilities quite nicely. I will be posting that map for the next ICL #11.

budweiser said:

I just rolled a Petra map. I can post it for the next ICL. It wont be a 'challenge', but it will be fun. Actually I wont post that one. There are two off shore island that you have exclusive access to. One is the size of Africa. No kind of conflict here at all.

Edit: I have found a second map which I think showcases Germany's abilities quite nicely. I will be posting that map for the next ICL #11.

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You can still post the easy Petra map here. I have only been playing the "challenge" maps, so I want to have some fun, too!

@MegaBearsFan, I very much apprecitate your guide series. Thanks for all of them, but I spun up a Deity German game because of your article.

I read the bit below wrong, and was going to write saying you had it mixed up. Instead, I have a couple editorial suggestions.

The description of Furor Teutonicus is a bit misleading, since you don't always have to kill the Barbarian unit inside an encampment to activate the trait. According to the game source code, the unit type that Germany receives is set each the first time that Germany kills a barbarian in an encampment. After that, clearing an encampment triggers the chance of receiving a copy of that unit that was set. If Germany kills another unit inside of an encampment, then the saved unit type is reset to the new unit.

If you want a specific unit type (i.e. a Handaxe), then you can find an encampment with that unit inside and kill it. After that, do not capture occupied camps. If you find another camp with a different unit (i.e. a Brute), you can lure that unit out with an un-escorted settler or worker, then capture the empty encampment to get another Handaxe. Alternatively, use ranged units to kill the unit in the camp, and a second unit to move onto the (now empty) camp. If you don’t clear the camp on the same turn the occupying is killed, a new barb unit is likely to spawn.

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InDubioProReo said:

How do you transition from a Honor opener as Germany? Do you go Tradition? Finish Honor? Go Liberty? I am really at loss as how to transition that.

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I agree that opening Honor makes transitioning to Tradition or Liberty very much sub-optimal. Actually, the better way to say this is that: (1) Tradition looses much of its value if you delay the closer. (2) Liberty looses much of its value if you delay the half-cost settlers.

reddishrecue said:

You have to build your settlers from scratch... once your capital is larger and is able to make settlers quicker then you could start building settlers and expanding.

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So, I think you are saying that, if you want to open Honor, then you will want to drop down a difficulty level. Or maybe you are already wining most of your games, and you are eager to experiment with ways to make things more challenging? In either case, stick with the Honor tree, and just hard-build settlers for any really sweet spots the AIs have missed. Conquer the rest!

In my current Germany game, I opened Honor between closing out Tradition and opening Rationalism. Late barb radar is still useful, especially for Germany.

beetle said:

Alternatively, use ranged units to kill the unit in the camp, and a second unit to move onto the (now empty) camp. If you don’t clear the camp on the same turn the occupying is killed, a new barb unit is likely to spawn.

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As I understand it, this is also incorrect. I believe the way that it works (in the source code) is that when a barbarian dies, the code fires an event that checks if the barbarian was in an encampment, and if the attacking unit was German. If both conditions are met, then it updates the saved unit type. This happens regardless of whether the attack is melee or ranged, and regardless of whether the encampment is captured by Germany.

So if you kill a unit in an encampment with ranged attacks, I believe you will still reset the saved unit type. You'll have to lure it out with an unescorted civilian if you want a chance at getting a previously-killed unit type.

I have updated the strategy post with clarifications on this point, as well as some of the clarifications that you had suggested. I hope it makes more sense now.