Civ 5 Korea Strategy

Asking for a Korea strategy...they're one of the strongest civs in the game, you don't have to ask for a Korea strategy.

Although if I had to name a downside, their land UU is penalized offensively against cities, and they have to start exploring the oceans later than everyone else.

But, speaking of Turtle Ships...their combat strength is absurdly high for the time period. Has anyone ever tried warmongering with Korea, using Turtle Ships to capture coastal cities? Korea could be one of those civs that seem to be geared only for peaceful defensive play at first, but upon closer inspection, can be used for a conquest route too.

Yeah, the turtles need to be combined with something else, like frigates. It's a lot like attacking on land: meat shields, divert their attention from your ranged. There's just not enough coastal hexes for turtles to take them on solo. They can also protect your embarked units, which gives them a way of retreat should the ciy choose to bombard your land unit.

just finished a deity continents game with korea. I have to say they're one of the top civs in terms of going 4 city tradition tall. go freedom and statue of liberty, then your specialists are absolutely insane.
they are quite science oriented but that doesn't prevent you from dom or culture. It would be nice to roll a map with the capital beside a mountain, but that's usually not necessary.

This is one of my favorites in this game. Korea has a great science focus and has a good gameplay transition to late game. As for me, I usually go for wonders and opt for tradition, liberty and rationalism for sustenance and harnessing the trait's potential further. Add also that the Tradition and Liberty branch has some stuffs for self-sustenance especially if growth is robust. Military is not much of a worry, especially on coast since the Turtle Ship is a hardy one and the H'wacha can go well against a larger army, although I still add some front-line units to guard the H'wachas against other units.

For me, I always go for Order in terms of ideologies. Order's tenets are not just about happiness but also has some flavors for science and production boost - which I will defo need for one-upping the game quickly and also to hasten spaceship parts production more. Although I mostly win by Cultural means wehnever I play Korea on Prince-King tier.

Here

Korea specialists + freedom + secularism = GG

I think the crazy specialists is basically the only reason that Korea is so high up in the deity tier list, imagine getting 7 beakers out of science specialists, and 4 out of every other one...you could put out about the same bpt as 8 city civs with 4 city tradition.

Ok, so I tried Korea again and managed to push the science focus a bit more and won on turn 282, last time it was 320. Both on emperor.
This time I again had to keep a rather large army so neighbors didnt get any funny ideas but I built cargo ships much earlier so the economy was really good through out the game, stayed away from buildings I did not really need and only aimed for the wonders I thought would help me win and that I thought that I could get. Broodway and the Eiffel tower is nice and all but does not really generate any science.
Spent a lot of cash on CS to help with food and culture (and some units) and perhaps most importantly, happiness. Towards the end I had 8 cargo ships but 6 of them went between my 3 cities (size 24, 32 and 49 at turn 282).
Planted 3 GS around Seul, bulbed a couple in the mid game to get to Plastics quicker, also built Oxford during that beeline. Then I saved all the GS (4-5) until I reached Satellites and faith bought a GE to get the Hubble then bulbed all my GS.

There is of course a lot of things I could have done to get a quicker win but with Russia as closest neighbor and Germany not far away I had to spend cash to upgrade units, cash that could perhaps have been used to buy buildings (did manage to buy all the science buildings in Seul) instead of building them or RA´s (and spent the hammers on science instead). Could have scaled off some turns perhaps.

Managed to time Statue of liberty in time for the Worlds fair and then spent a lot of cash to ally as many culture CS as possible when I won it. That gave me a lot of social polices that helped a lot (finished patronage and got some extra from the freedom tree). Burnt 2 great artists for the extra production as well and saved a great writer until the 20 turns of double culture was over then burnt him as well.

Infact, only had 2 tourism, used every person for golden ages and extra culture and just deleted the musicians since I did not have any place to place the great work of arts.

And I was really aiming for a turn 280 win and could have gotten it but messed up the last 2 turns.

Don't use the beaker overflow thing, not intentionally anyway. I want to get the tech lead asap then just push forward toward a SV.

Edit: Managed to get a religion before I even spent a single hammer on a shrine. Was the first to meet two religious CS and also meet a 3rd that gave me 4 faith. But those 20 faith was just enough to get a pantheon and since I had 5 salt (two in capital, three in 3rd city) I went with the Earth mommy thing, then when I founded a religion I got Tithe (1 gold for every 4 followers) and food and happiness from temples and shrines) and first then I started building the religious buildings). Managed to get Hagia Sophia to enhance my religion.

Wonders I built was Oracle, Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sophia, Machu Picchu (late in the game, think I was the only one who had a mountain nearby), Notre Dame, Forbidden palace, Porcelain Tower (was the only one who had opened Rationalism), Statue of liberty, Hubble and then least but not last Sydney Opera house very late. Used a GE to build it to get a free SP to close Rationalism for a free tech.

I generally go Korea tall on emperor and immortal ive won 4 games like that on turn 270 being able to go culture victory or xcom/nuke rush if i feel like it but I'm playing a game going wide with trad/lib mix and about 8 cities decent pop on emperor at industrial era with loads of internal trade routes and trading luxuries for other luxuries their UUs are great at defending against massive combined invasions. Commerce and rationalism are the best policy trees along with freedom

If you mix up policy trees right you can get representation as finisher while finishing civil service getting a great engineer and increasing your golden age and being able to rush out colosseums and other happiness buildings or increase that faith and save for the engineers or scientists

^Yeah, once you get to the liberty finishers, liberty becomes way too happy. I tried it out with meritocracy and was reaching up to 20 happiness. You probably don't even need that many resources by the time you have a lot of cities connected to your capital.