Compilation of build orders?

[Melvinski]

Hi all! I've been lurking for a while and finally decided to register. I'm by no means a high level player, I play on King but I want to improve systematically. I've seen a few build orders thrown around, but no thread or post where the popular ones would be compiled. "NC start", for example, is mentioned frequently - but I haven't seen any guide to pulling off the necessary tall start with adequate speed and protection. In general, I think my early game is not very good, as it is probably the least intuitive part of Civ V - managing a mature empire is far easier than surviving and getting off to a decent start.

I'm thinking this thread could become useful to me and others as a way to aggregate the various opening moves used by the successful players and categorize them. Scouring LP's is a good way to get this, but extremely time consuming. I'll start with a couple reposted by Scarpa in another thread:

4 city sword rush
Credit: Tabarnak
Type: REX, early aggression
+ Fast expansion, very strong early game military
- Has to catch up on happiness, slow to early wonders

Capital build : scout-monument-warrior-settler-settler

Research : Animal husbandry-Iron working

Don't bother with luxuries yet. Pick Liberty and free settler. Get 4th city to reach iron or another good spot. Put cities with a hill ready to be worked(settling on a hill + working hill is best). You will be at -9 . Upgrade warriors to swordmen, research luxuries techs.

Buy worker as soon as you can. Get free one from Liberty as well. Steal one from cs. Build one from capital after 4th city.

You can get 4 cities and 4 worker before turn 45. From there, you can do what you want. You can destroy 1 or 2 neighbors before Steel. Your production will skyrocket. This easy and wonderless strat can let you beat Deity most of the time. King should be a breeze.

4-city archers
Credit: bhavv
Type: REX, defensive/builder
+ Fast expansion, good early infrastructure and rush defense
- Has to catch up on happiness, no offensive military, slow to early wonders

For social policies, I always open with Tradition > Liberty > Citizenship > Collective Rule for the culture and free worker + settler.

During this time my capital works food tiles and builds a Monument > Granary > Archer > Archer > Archer.

Usually Collective rule is taken just a few turns after the second archer, and when the capital has grown to size 4-5 at which point I swap over to train two settlers before completing the third archer. This gives me a fast 4 city rex by 2000 BC with an archer garrison for the 2nd-4th cities, which makes them more than capable of defending themselves against early AI rushes (just move another archer to any city that is under attack, use them well and defensively and you should be immune to AI attacks on king difficulty).

After thats all done my capital starts wonder spamming while cities 2-4 build Monument > Granary > Library > Colosseum > Market > Temple (or university) > Workshop.

For workers I steal one from a city state, and make sure that I leave a barb encampment alive somewhere near a city state to capture me a third. If I dont find more than those three then I steal one from any AI (hopefully a warmonger that will get over it very quickly like monty or alexander). 4 workers + 4 cities as quickly as possible makes the rest of the game easy peasy on King difficulty.

You can decide after this point if you want to stick to your 4 cities and grow a tall empire, or go wide instead, but the initial 4 city rex with Collective Rule is very powerful.

I hope this becomes a useful thread and thanks in advance for your contributions