Calling all power-gamers: Share your game-breaking G&K Strategies!

[Mark the Bold]

This thread is for people who don't play Civ for fun. This is for people who scour the game for exploits to win easily. This allows them to come here and post threads "OMG!! Civ 5 is so easy! I'm smarter than 2kgames!! Tweet, tweet, like, like."

Here's mine:

Aztecs + Growth Beliefs: Take Floating Gardens wherever possible, Tradition Tree Finisher, +3 Pantheon / religious beliefs that give +growth, +food. Win. Seriously folks: ANY city you put on a river ends up like Siam's capital in no time whether happy or not.

Siam: King of Cheese: As another thread already deftly explained, you can insta-friend EVERY CS on the map simply by taking the Patronage SP's and Papal Primacy and having your religion in those CS. Requires a little bit of effort to spread the religion, but with Siam's bonuses these insta-friends are giving you "allied-CS" amounts of food and culture just for having a pulse and you don't have to do anything. This strategy alone has outlawed Siam from MP games.

Freedom: Uber Alles!!!!: Step (1): Pick Any Civ, Step (2) Survive to Renaissance Age, Step (3): Take Freedom SP Tree, Step (4) Win. The Freedom Tree allows the purchase of Great Artists for 1000 FAITH!?!??! So let me get this straight, I can get 2.3 Great Artists, ahem, I mean Golden Ages, for Every Great Prophet I'm supposed to take?!? And once I've finished my religion, I can have 2.3 golden ages for EVERY useless great prophet at this point? Why would I want to take any other GP or faith purchase at this point? No I don't want 16 turns of Golden Age, I want +40 influence with a CS across the globe. And don't even get me started about the compound interest effect of taking Persia or Egypt+Chechen Itza for this.

I haven't even taken Austria yet, so I'm sure there are plenty of game-breakers here.

 

[Calouste]

This thread is for people who don't play Civ for fun. This is for people who scour the game for exploits to win easily. This allows them to come here and post threads "OMG!! Civ 5 is so easy! I'm smarter than 2kgames!! Tweet, tweet, like, like."

Here's mine:

Aztecs + Growth Beliefs: Take Floating Gardens wherever possible, Tradition Tree Finisher, +3 Pantheon / religious beliefs that give +growth, +food. Win. Seriously folks: ANY city you put on a river ends up like Siam's capital in no time whether happy or not.

Siam: King of Cheese: As another thread already deftly explained, you can insta-friend EVERY CS on the map simply by taking the Patronage SP's and Papal Primacy and having your religion in those CS. Requires a little bit of effort to spread the religion, but with Siam's bonuses these insta-friends are giving you "allied-CS" amounts of food and culture just for having a pulse and you don't have to do anything. This strategy alone has outlawed Siam from MP games.

Freedom: Uber Alles!!!!: Step (1): Pick Any Civ, Step (2) Survive to Renaissance Age, Step (3): Take Freedom SP Tree, Step (4) Win. The Freedom Tree allows the purchase of Great Artists for 1000 FAITH!?!??! So let me get this straight, I can get 2.3 Great Artists, ahem, I mean Golden Ages, for Every Great Prophet I'm supposed to take?!? And once I've finished my religion, I can have 2.3 golden ages for EVERY useless great prophet at this point? Why would I want to take any other GP or faith purchase at this point? No I don't want 16 turns of Golden Age, I want +40 influence with a CS across the globe. And don't even get me started about the compound interest effect of taking Persia or Egypt+Chechen Itza for this.

I haven't even taken Austria yet, so I'm sure there are plenty of game-breakers here.

Aztecs is really nothing new. I had a size 40 captital at 1600AD in Vanilla as well.

Greece is also city state cheese. If you open up Patronage, your influence with a city state with your religion won't degrade at all until someone else completes the Patronage treee.

The Faith cost goes up for each additional Great Person of the same type ypu purchase with Faith. The first one is 1000, then 1500, 2500, 4000, 6000 etc.
Still, it's pretty useful to get another 3 Great Artists if you're going for a culture victory now that a Golden Age from them is 8 turns and provides 20% extra culture.

 

[Setis]

Still, it's pretty useful to get another 3 Great Artists if you're going for a culture victory now that a Golden Age from them is 8 turns and provides 20% extra culture.

Hmm, is Golden Age duration affected by speed setting and/or difficulty? Because I was getting 12 turns from mine on Prince/Standard.

 

[Nyanko]

This thread is for people who don't play Civ for fun. This is for people who scour the game for exploits to win easily. This allows them to come here and post threads "OMG!! Civ 5 is so easy! I'm smarter than 2kgames!! Tweet, tweet, like, like."

Freedom: Uber Alles!!!!: Step (1): Pick Any Civ, Step (2) Survive to Renaissance Age, Step (3): Take Freedom SP Tree, Step (4) Win. The Freedom Tree allows the purchase of Great Artists for 1000 FAITH!?!??! So let me get this straight, I can get 2.3 Great Artists, ahem, I mean Golden Ages, for Every Great Prophet I'm supposed to take?!? And once I've finished my religion, I can have 2.3 golden ages for EVERY useless great prophet at this point? Why would I want to take any other GP or faith purchase at this point? No I don't want 16 turns of Golden Age, I want +40 influence with a CS across the globe. And don't even get me started about the compound interest effect of taking Persia or Egypt+Chechen Itza for this.

I haven't even taken Austria yet, so I'm sure there are plenty of game-breakers here.

Freedoms industrial now

 

[Adjuvant]

Beeline Industrialization and win, no matter your win scenario.

edit: yes, it's part sarcasm but also true. so many game-changing significant benefits.

 

[Kabloosh]

Beeline Industrialization and win, no matter your win scenario.

Yeah.. until you find your entire continent lacks coal. Then you cry a little in the inside and look for the closest island with coal since city states maybe a bit unreliable since Siam is in your game. Damn you Siam! Damn you! Hes going to make me beeline to nuclear missiles and end his entire nation in 1 turn.

 

[Nyanko]

Yeah.. until you find your entire continent lacks coal. Then you cry a little in the inside and look for the closest island with coal since city states maybe a bit unreliable since Siam is in your game. Damn you Siam! Damn you! Hes going to make me beeline to nuclear missiles and end his entire nation in 1 turn.

... only to find there is no uranium on your continent.

 

[Kabloosh]

... only to find there is no uranium on your continent.

They can't be "that" mean to me. Its a large map with only 10 civs and I removed about 9 city states in the advanced options.

I stopped playing small continents on a standard sized map for this reason. Strategic resources were scarce. I'm first in tech but I'm soo far behind in military tech its not even funny. Hell, my entire army for 300 turns was 2 swordsmen and a composite bowman since I was all alone. I didn't discover another civ until I got caravels onto the ocean.

Incas don't like me very much cause I kind of sent a great prophet to convert his Christian infidels to Islam.

 

[Gucumatz]

Here is a simple one. Pledge to support a city state then open Patronage up to get the minimum influence of 20 in a city. Add that on the +10 minimum from pledging = Instant friends.

This means you can effectively have every city state in game on a friends status with you - and you get the benefit of having a slower decreasing influence rate for your spies to work with

 

[Calouste]

Here is a simple one. Pledge to support a city state then open Patronage up to get the minimum influence of 20 in a city. Add that on the +10 minimum from pledging = Instant friends.

This means you can effectively have every city state in game on a friends status with you - and you get the benefit of having a slower decreasing influence rate for your spies to work with

It's also a good way to have most of the civilizations in the game at enemy status with you. Whenever a civ does something like bullying a city state (and they do that quite a lot) you will have to either stand up to that civ for the city state and get a diplo hit with the civ, or break your pledge with the city state, lose the +10 and get an additional penalty.

 

[Drawmeus]

Costs on the Great Artist step up RAPIDLY. My next GA will cost I think 3000? faith, give or take. This is after I think 3.

You can get a ridiculously long golden age, but you're going to have to do a combination of holding off until you've COMPLETED the Freedom tree to spend your GAs, plus lots of focused Artist specialists to pull it off. If you're at that stage of the game, cultural victory is imminent anyway.

 

[ShoGuL]

I did a mass faith Byzantium game and went Order.. I ended up with so many Great Engineers, I could Rush every single wonder from industrial until the end of the game..

 

[pspboy7]

Babylon, writing, tradition & rationalism policy, patronage, maritime CS, great library, national college, oracle, porcelain tower, kremlin, brandenburg gate, obsevatory, hubble telescope, science focused religion aspects, mass academies, blah blah blah...
my next project hehe.

 

[ahawk]

Iroquios

(in vanilla) Longhouse, Lumber-mill in every forest tile, Factory, Statue of Liberty.

(in G&K) all of the above and add the belief that gives a bonus % of production for every believer in your religion's city (up to 15%). Massive production!!!

 

[Harthhal]

If I'm trying to found a religion as France I rush a shrine while getting the tradition starter then finish liberty. I use the free great person to Found a religion as a great person by this time you probably have a good 100-140 faith so you're close to getting that enhanced religion already so you have a head start on stamping out peoples religion. Also I've never had another civ finish a religion before me like this.