Best Civs for wide

[Chum]

Unfortunately you have to give up persias ua to go wide. You're not getting many golden ages if you sit at plus one happiness most of the game.

Artists can keep you perma GA'd past a certain point in the late game, you're not really giving things up.

 

[Lord Alexander]

No one mentioned Arabia? They get lots of extra resources from their UB and can make lots of extra gold selling those resources

 

[Acken]

Thank you for all the advice.


"You need a good religion for wide in my opinion. Without it, you're just way behind on happiness/culture and certainly slower than a tall game 200-250 range. As said above, after turn 300, wide has more than enough time to catch up and will be a much stronger game. "

This is why I modded the game to make liberty more usefull:
Republic gives bigger bonus to building construction, Representation got additionally 1 gold per city, Meritocracy causes libraries and unis to give 1 Science, Finisher increases GP generation.

I need few games to test that (15% on GP looks too much).

Honestly why devs made tradition so powerfull is beyond me :/

Tradition is not that much powerful than liberty and the reasons why tradition is better has more to do with how punishing overexpansion is than what the tree gives. Tradition is good because 4 city is easy and efficient. It's this synergy that make tradition seems so good.

What makes wide difficult is the happiness factor (which is why getting a strong religion or a happiness UB) and the diplomatic hit.

With the modded changes you play with I'd bury tradition any day of the week

 

[Redaxe]

Tradition is not that much powerful than liberty and the reasons why tradition is better has more to do with how punishing overexpansion is than what the tree gives. Tradition is good because 4 city is easy and efficient. It's this synergy that make tradition seems so good.

What makes wide difficult is the happiness factor (which is why getting a strong religion or a happiness UB) and the diplomatic hit.

With the modded changes you play with I'd bury tradition any day of the week

I'm always in the habit of double-dipping.

If i'm going to play really wide I always open with Tradition (from an early culture ruin). I find the border expansion bonus invaluable and stacked with the +3 culture in the capital means that your capital will quite quickly get access to those 3rd ring tiles which often have extra resources to sell.

Later on I night add in Oligarchy to save on gold or alternatively Aristocracy if I need happiness. Free unit maintenance and a small city defense bonus in every city is very desirable especially once unit costs start increasing.

 

[noonex]

Going wide is more about map - with good map any civ can make it, with bad map none will succeed going wide. The key point here is to invest available happiness into new cities (rather than growing existing ones). 4-6 pop city working to 3-4 resource tiles and 1-2 mines will have decent production. Once Universities are up - it will do decent contribution into Science as well.
This is wide Huge/Immortal as India on very wide-friendly map location :

http://imgur.com/MiuOxCa

 

[tide15]

Thank you for all the advice.


"You need a good religion for wide in my opinion. Without it, you're just way behind on happiness/culture and certainly slower than a tall game 200-250 range. As said above, after turn 300, wide has more than enough time to catch up and will be a much stronger game. "

This is why I modded the game to make liberty more usefull:
Republic gives bigger bonus to building construction, Representation got additionally 1 gold per city, Meritocracy causes libraries and unis to give 1 Science, Finisher increases GP generation.

I need few games to test that (15% on GP looks too much).

Honestly why devs made tradition so powerfull is beyond me:/

Absolutely. I will go with Catholicism or Protestantism for the most part unless I'm playing as Germany then I go with Judaism.....I get a kick out of doing that.
Also there is a mod that will give a four hundred gold bonus for cities that convert to your chosen religion. That comes in handy for the early game.
I think Tradition is just right as it is to get you started in the game. I play at Warlord and it just manages to keep a little gold comming in and happiness just above the red line until you can get over the four to six city hump.
I think Honor could use some work rather than Tradition.

 

[Gustavus Rex]

I have tried to fool around with wide games lately and for me Maya has been outstanding for the task. Getting culture for shrine pantheon let you skip monument and get the amazing 2 science 2 faith and 1 culture asap in each city.

Also you can skip archery and still build early defense. Not to mention the early GP giving you a free religion, or wonder just like that!

Maya is awesome for wide!

 

[joncnunn]

Korea is good wide though because you can build a university, public school, research lab, factory, workshop, bank, stock exchange, and possibly even a windmill in 4-5 more cities. Working all those extra specialist slots banks you 20 extra science on top of the extra science you already get from universities, public schools, and research labs. That's what I mean by more specialists, you can max out the capital to have the 6 guild buildings but not the other 10 specialist slots possible per city. You can get windmills too, making it even better.

This gets overwhelmed by the Capital bonus for building science buildings as Korea, which acts similar to a Research Agreement. This typically results in Korea when playing 4 city tradition winning the game at least 20 turns before other civs, which means Korea (along with Babylon whose science bonus works differently but gives a similar result) has that many fewer turns for the costs of self built city to pay for itself.

 

[joncnunn]

Actually wide is almost always stronger than tall - but because most people finish their games between turns 250-300 wide is often still a bit behind where a tall civ would be. If games went for 400 or 500 turns at standard speed than I have no doubt that wide would be stronger.

You need a good religion for wide in my opinion. Without it, you're just way behind on happiness/culture and certainly slower than a tall game 200-250 range. As said above, after turn 300, wide has more than enough time to catch up and will be a much stronger game.

It looked to me at exactly 300 turns, 4 city Tradition + conquering any additional cities still had a slight edge over Liberty self founding wide.
But by turn 350, Liberty self founding wide would have the edge.

On the topic of religion: For a 4 city tradition empire, the Great Temple great wonder provides sufficient influence to keep your core cities follow your religion. In addition only having 4 core cities makes it easier to station Inquisitors to prevent AI Great Prophets from converting them.
In addition, 4 city tradition can in some situations easily use a Goddess of the Hunt or Sun God to even further boost. By the time they lose the food bonuses, they've already done their job. (Especially if unit blocking used)

 

[lindsay40k]

Ethiopia, Maya, Egypt - strong faith game that gets stronger with every city

Persia - happiness UB enables it and when you start to chain golden ages it will also multiply the enhanced gold yields of your many tiles

Brazil, Polynesia and France - get loads of UIs, improve them with tech and supercharge them with chained GAs

Celts - decent faith game, especially if you settle triple forest sites early, and a UB that yields happiness

Poland - easy access to social policies that increase happiness and city tile hammers

Mongolia, Arabia, Huns - get your UU and you don't even need to found your cities yourself

Shoshone - get new city luxuries online super quick

Indonesia - your spices can provide enough for four additional cities and when you get into Exploration you'll have enough for another. Plus, your UB likes to soak up religious pressure

 

[joncnunn]

Poland - easy access to social policies that increase happiness and city tile hammers

This is another civ that playing 4 city tradition tends to win earlier than most civs with 4 city tradition. It's not in Babylon/Korea territory, but that's still very roughly 12 fewer turns for a 5+ self built city to pay for itself.

 

[Redaxe]

It looked to me at exactly 300 turns, 4 city Tradition + conquering any additional cities still had a slight edge over Liberty self founding wide.
But by turn 350, Liberty self founding wide would have the edge.

Yes I'd agree that about turn 300 is when the differences between a Tradition and Liberty start tend to fade. It's heavily dependent on the type of map though and what civ you're playing and how your neighbors react to your early city spamming.

A 4 city Tradition tends to peak out at about 1200 beakers I think?

With a wide game there is no practical limit to how many beakers you can earn. It just takes longer to get there. I suspect if you play with a mod like the Enlightenment era than a wide game would be much stronger, as you have a whole extra era to get through first.

 

[Heathcliff]

Spain is also good for liberty. If you find a natural wonder and get those extra free 500 gold you can snowball and build up a large empire quickly maybe securing even more natural wonders.