Fun strategies with BNW

[Loucypher]

Thought I'd make a topic here for fun stuff tried out with BNW now a bit older then a month. Im talking the kind of strategy that while fun isn't neccesarily as crazy as, say, Mayan Pyramids or Ethiopian Stele spam. I'm talking stuff that's fun to play with.
Feel free to add strategies to the discussion, but please try to make them either highly original and pull-offable by any civ without mass luck, or to specifically play a Civ's strength (so no Germany Super-Science; if Germany can pull that off, then so can any other civ)

Here's the two I had a lot of fun with in my last 2 games:

Roman Super Shrines
This one can theoratically work with any civ, but Rome works best for this. First off, you'll probably want the Liberty opener, and the +1 Production in all cities policy might not be bad too though that is less important. The meat of this one comes from the Piety Opener. Slicing the time it takes to build Shrines and Temples, combined with Rome's fast building in new cities, means you get a lot of Shrines very fast. Make sure they get 2 faith, and you'll get a reasonably fast Pantheon, too.
Now in my specific game, I had no faith-granting stuff for my Pantheon to pick, so I went with +1 Culture per Shrine. Then there are policies enabling them to give food and happiness. Meaning you get ultra-cheap 2 Faith 1 Food 1 Culture 1 Happiness buildings. Since those beliefs aren't exactly popular with the AI either, you can easily snag this up even on higher levels. On lower levels, you can just go with a Shrine-Spam and ensure you're one of the first to get a religion just by a high amount of shrines, be sure to pick some happiness beliefs though if you do.

Austrian City of Light
For this, you're going to want to play Austria for one reason: The Coffee House. That + Garden + Asthetics tree + National Epic + Order/Freedom + Leaning Tower + Arts Funding = A LOT OF GWAMs. Even if you're not playing as Austria you can get a lot already if you pull those parts together, but there are two reasons Austria works this even better. For one, there's the obvious Coffee House. The second however is less immediately notable: The fact that you can buy City States means that you can easily obtain a good location from which you can send food trade routes to Vienna. You'll have almost all your GP production in Vienna, after all, so in order to keep Vienna at a good size, you're going to NEED some internal trade routes.
A few optional boons are either Petra or the Collossus (Extra trade route is vital) and the resolution Scholars in Residence (usually fortunately the AI seems to quite like this one) since you're not tech focussed.
If you're not starting next to a river, beeline the Hanging Gardens. You'll NEED a Garden, and the +6 is (delicious) gravy. If you do have a river however, you might instead want to try for the Collossus.

Both of these have brought me a lot of fun at least, any you all wish to share?

 

[budweiser]

The Gift of Rocket Artillery -

I've only used it once since I thought of it but it has lots of potential. While trying to win culture, just take a small detour to rocketry after airports and give about 6 of these to the guy who is neighboring your culture monger rivals. Then bribe him to DoW. He will erase the stubborn culture builders while you dominate the weaker culture defenders through normal means.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Spice Thief:

In a game against Indonesia, found 3 island cities, gift then to Indonesia, then declare war and take them back. You now have Indonesia's UA in addition to your own. This only works if Indonesia hasn't founded their Spice Island cities. I haven't seen them actually use their UA voluntarily yet, so it has worked every time I've done it.

 

[Socratatus]

I manage to put through a non nuclear proliferation treaty after I made a few atom bombs. I`ve started a war with Shaka, but this means no nukes messing up (I really don`t like using them and don`t want anyone else). I suspect Shaka would if he could. I much prefer conventional wars.

I have the two atom bombs as my super-emergency backup.

 

[Zigzagzigal]

Golden Kasbah

As Morocco, spam Kasbahs on desert tiles, then use Great Artists/Policies to get a very long Golden Age doubling all that Kasbah gold.

Spanish Culture

Get the One With Nature pantheon and the Sacred Sites reformation belief, as well as passing Natural Heritage Sites in the World Congress. You can now rapidly make faith buildings for tourism and all your Natural Wonders will get you a lot of tourism too. If you choose Holy Warriors as a follower belief, you can tie all Spain's uniques in a neat bow.

Swedish Influence Explosion

As Sweden, generate as many Great People as you can. Hold onto ones like Musicians. Then, 4-5 turns before a World Leader vote, gift them all to City-States. Rival Civs will have trouble responding in time.

Trading Tricks

Exploit the Indonesian UA as Portugal for maximum diversity bonuses. Another way to exploit a UA is with Morocco - sending them multiple routes gives you multiple lots of 1 gold, but will only ever give them 3 gold and 1 culture (in addition to normal Trade Route yields.)

World Congress Game-Changer

As Venice, station Merchants of Venice in cities allied to a prominent diplomatic player. Puppet them all one turn before a World Congress vote.

 

[yuguna]

World Congress Game-Changer

As Venice, station Merchants of Venice in cities allied to a prominent diplomatic player. Puppet them all one turn before a World Congress vote.

evil XD

 

[NukeAJS]

Play Shoshone and spam pathfinders. Upgrade two pathfinders to composites ASAP. Next, go easily cap the nearest capital. Lastly, settle all the land inbetween you and the capped capital.

 

[Montov]

Something I read here recently:
As Austria or Venice, gift all your units to a City State at the other side of the world, wait 4 turns, then buy/MOV the CS and have your complete army at the other side available to fight a far away war.

 

[Polisurgist]

The really warmongery AIs will tend to build enough units to bring themselves down to very low GPT, so if you have a good following in the World Congress and a pretty strong military with GPT to spare, pass Standing Army Tax right before going to war on the biggest warmonger in the game. You'll suffer low GPT for ~30 turns, but they'll be well into the negatives and disbanding units while you roll into their territory. Once you've taken over enough of their empire, repeal the Standing Army Tax and revel in having the world's strongest military, economy and the largest empire.

If you play your cards right, on top of all of this, if the warmonger you took out was ill-liked, the rest of the world might even love you for doing it.

 

[Cromagnus]

Spice Thief:

In a game against Indonesia, found 3 island cities, gift then to Indonesia, then declare war and take them back. You now have Indonesia's UA in addition to your own. This only works if Indonesia hasn't founded their Spice Island cities. I haven't seen them actually use their UA voluntarily yet, so it has worked every time I've done it.

I just did the more simple version of this: Playing as Indonesia, captured a city on a different continent, realized it suddenly had a unique resource. So clearly you don't have to "found" the city.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I just did the more simple version of this: Playing as Indonesia, captured a city on a different continent, realized it suddenly had a unique resource. So clearly you don't have to "found" the city.

Yes. In my strategy, I'm playing a different civ, with Indonesia on the map. I then proceed to hijack Indonesia's UA completely.

If you are playing as Indonesia, the Spice Island cities don't need to be founded. You can get the resources in cities that have been captured or gifted or flipped to you.

 

[Vidszhite]

MAD Scrooge McDuck - Either build or conquer the Macchu Picchu wonder. As Autocracy, get full Commerce and Big Ben, then take the Mobilization tenet. Use your massive wealth to buy an army, then go out warmongering and puppet most of the world, putting trading posts on every tile. Once all the resistance ends, and your city connections get established, you should be making upwards of 700gpt. You can buy an atom bomb every turn!

Bonus points if you also went Rationalism for Trading Posts that give science. At that point, the science penalty is meaningless.

 

[HerrDoktor]

Damn I'm good: play a deity game on a duel map against Venice (or any map against multiple Venices). Works best with the Huns.

 

[troublmaker]

World Congress Game-Changer

As Venice, station Merchants of Venice in cities allied to a prominent diplomatic player. Puppet them all one turn before a World Congress vote.

The backfiring to this is that it lowers the number of city states you need to win World City vote by 2 per missing city state which actually makes it easier for some civs to gain a World Victory.

 

[Xger]

I just did the more simple version of this: Playing as Indonesia, captured a city on a different continent, realized it suddenly had a unique resource. So clearly you don't have to "found" the city.

Annoyingly though it overwrites other resources. I wanted iron and a Russian city sat on a hill with 6. I capture it and the luxury overwrites the iron. I had to build a snow city

 

[superliminal]

Thought for a potentially fun challenge for a science Civ (Korea seems like a fitting choice). I’ll call it the Evil Mastermind Strategy (though there’s probably a better name lurking). Play a tall peaceful science empire, going straight to nuclear missiles and X-com units. Station loaded nuclear subs within reach of all opponent capitals, with a spy in each capital that can’t be seen from the sea. In one turn, nuke every capital, and take them with x-com units the next for a domination victory. No one will see it coming.

 

[compwiz1202]

It's even better for growing Monty's cap superhuge with internal trade routes. I will have to see if you can still get an eternal Persian GA anymore. That is ridiculous for war with siege weaps that can move setup and fire.

 

[Yzman]

The backfiring to this is that it lowers the number of city states you need to win World City vote by 2 per missing city state which actually makes it easier for some civs to gain a World Victory.

Yes I don't think that people realize that buying of CS by Venice or Austria lowers the threshold for victory, so they really aren't stealing the victory from you as people so commonly claim.

I noticed this in my last game when Venice puppeted a few CS and the total votes was only 28 needed as opposed to the 32 I am used to seeing.

 

[OnceAKing]

I love making SUPER Temples as Songhai. I usually open with HONOR. To get the culture from beating barbs and making it easier to beat them. I may even choose a great general and +xp social policy. I then build a very small army to go Barb hunting after I've grabbed the GOD OF WAR pantheon. NOW I get +Culture from killing barbs, +religion if its near my city, and +XP on new units.

After I found a religion I usually choose temple centric beliefs like +2 Happiness from temples. Sometimes I choose the +food belief from shrines and temples and or a +culture belief from shrines. I round it off with a belief 20% victory against a follower of my religion

So Now its worth the cost of building a temple and shrine in EVERY city because of their net effect.

thats +3 religion (shrine+temple), +2 happiness, +2 culture (ub effect), and depending on which other belief you picked +1 culture, or +2 food and this is PER CITY. On top of that if you continue down Piety you get money back from your temples too.

If you go to war with a bordering civ you'll get more religion from your pantheon and you'll win with your extra experienced warriors and their great general. Plus you'll have a bigger army because you get 75 gold from every hut and gold from your piety social policy and plundering each city you take. And you will be overflowing with religion from ALL THOSE SHRINES AND TEMPLES that you have to build now and will have one of the strongest religions in the game

Best of all, even if you tire of being a war monger mid or early game. You can switch to a cultural game from all that barb hunting you've been doing and all the points your shrines and temples give in culture and plus or minus another civs' great works!

 

[Scarpa]

Thought for a potentially fun challenge for a science Civ (Korea seems like a fitting choice). I’ll call it the Evil Mastermind Strategy (though there’s probably a better name lurking). Play a tall peaceful science empire, going straight to nuclear missiles and X-com units. Station loaded nuclear subs within reach of all opponent capitals, with a spy in each capital that can’t be seen from the sea. In one turn, nuke every capital, and take them with x-com units the next for a domination victory. No one will see it coming.

hehe I did this once awhile back. I had three civs left for a domination win, all on the coast. Had a massive navy but decided 3 fully loaded nuclear subs would be more fun. Took all three capitals on the same turn. Of course, had I not taken the time to build 3 subs and 6? nuclear missles I would have won a lot earlier.