Couple of Strategy Questions

[meteo63]

Hey everyone, I made an account here couple years ago but never posted before. Just got Civ V in the Steam sale this summer, and I got a few questions. Now, I can win on Warlord and Prince pretty easily, but still have some kinks to work out before moving on to King. I've been able to do a cultural victories and military victories, but I haven't tried out diplomacy or science on this level yet.

1) How many social policy trees should I use when I am not doing a cultural game? I find that the number of cities needed for domination games or science games tends to make it take forever before I can get new policies. Is two major trees a reasonable expectation?

2) Along with that, can someone please give me estimates of how many cities to do for each type of victory? Culture is somewhere between two and four, but how about military or science? Four is supposed to be a decent value for culture, but I find even with two that I'm winning later than I expected. The culture takes awhile to build up already, so I'm always a bit afraid of expanding and slowing my culture growth, even on other victory paths.

3) I already know the typical Great Library, Hagia Sophia, and Porcelain Tower Rush, which works great for almost anything. I can grab machinery or steel to do a big attack or even try to jump to acoustics for the Sistine Chapel or Hermitage. I also hear it works great for science by getting astronomy and then taking rationalism. What other typical build orders are there? Is there much use in focusing on the lower parts of the tree before the upper parts of the tech tree?

4) Can you guys try posting our main strategies or build orders? I've seen cultural ones and domination ones and the occasional science one, but I haven't seen a diplomatic strategy very often.

5) Specific civ questions. Iroquois: if you are surrounded by forest at the beginning and cannot build stuff without cutting it down, what do you do? Keep the forest advantage, or cut it down for mines and farms? Persia: How do you best utilize the golden age ability? Also, what other civs are good for science victories besides Korea and Babylon?

6) Finally, can you guys explain in what situation you would take which social policies? Honor for military victories, right? Piety for culture, Rationalism for science? Commerce only on water maps? Tradition... not so sure, I hear it is for small empires, but I'm not sure why. Liberty is supposed to be for expansion and large empires, but the great person makes it so strong. Autocracy is obvious, but what about order?

Edit: 7) Sorry, but also, why would you ever build a lumber mill? Isn't it better to cut it down to build mines or farms?

8) I've heard of giant 30 people cities, but I can only get to 15 or 16 at the highest. Maybe 20. What size of city can you reasonably expect to reach in a game? With large empires? Small empires?

Edit2: 9) Sorry again, but can someone please explain how forest removal works? Sometimes, I'm not so clear on what tile I will be getting afterwards. It depends on if you are on a hill, plains, or grassland, right? Also, if I get a great person improvement, where should I place it normally? Does it matter which improvement it is? As for improvements and resources, the civilopedia says resource yields X. Does that yield only apply if you have an improvement?

 

[Treso]

1- I usually complete two branches before the game ends. For a military game: Tradition/Honor and Piety. Science and builder games I go for Liberty + Rationalism.

2- Up to emperor, the level I play, with just few units and one or two cities you will be ok for most attacks, but you need to manage the AI. Selling stuff and trying keep everyone busy warring each other.

3- If you build this combo I suggest go to astronomy and get rationalism and start to sign RAs with everyone.

4- Military game: Warrior/Scout -> Worker -> warrior -> Monument -> Settler. The settler should be done when you are about to finish Iron Working and you should settler to grab it.
For science games I do Scout -> Monument -> Warrior -> grab the free worker -> free GA and free settler building some archers and warrior for defense. I just settle the 2nd city after the NC.

5- I just chop trees for plantations or riverside hills. Playing with Iroquois I dont chop riverside hills.

6- Honor is for military. Liberty for wide empires (low pop per city but many cities) and Tradition is for tall empires (high pop and few cities). Piety is for hapiness, usefull while conquering and rationalism is for science. Patronage is for CS based games. Order was very usefull for any empires, but today I dont use it anymore, even autocracy and comerce.

 

[joncnunn]

Forest removal as Irqouis: Just say no unless there's a resource. Your UB & UA are both designed around keeping forest intact.

Max city size: Depends upon weather your going wide or tall. My current record (this is a OCC) is 41. Might get slightly bigger, but since I've filled out most of the specialists it's not going to reach max possible population before the game ends. This is with Hanging Gardens. Also includes the Hospital and the Maritime allies. No Medical Center yet, and I'm not expecting to reach that tech before winning.

Forest removal when NOT playing the Irqouis
Forested flat plains along a river begs to be chopped and farmed.
Any forested hill along a river also wants to be chopped and farmed.
For flat grassland tiles I generally prefer lumber mills.

Commerce: 5th policy if going cultural victory in a OCC.

Tradition: For tall empires. And most of the polices can be delayed and still be just as useful. So I often start by opening Tradition but then shifting to several Liberty policies, then returning to tradition, but finishing both of these trees before opening anything else. ( I want my empire tall & wide)
The free worker & settler isn't as useful if delayed too much. Liberty is more geared towards peaceful expansion. Honor is for the warmongling.

Order is for wide empires; with per city bonuses as opposed to Freedom which revolves around wonders, great people, and a cultural victory.

Tech policies:
If not going for a cultural win: Depends upon how much you expand and how peaceful you are.
My preferred victory is UN, and the June patch results in me coming really close to finishing a 4th tree before the UN vote was called; and that was with using a Great Engineer to rush the UN when I finally reached that tech. I'm a peaceful player so I built a lot of the cultural buildings when there was nothing else to build.

 

[Gehennas]

1) Usually 1-2 full trees and some separate policies.
2) Cultural: 1-4 cities.
Science: depends on your strategy: 2-4 if your economy is specialist-based, as many as you can otherwise.
Diplomacy: same as science.
Domination: Start with building 2-3 production cities, puppet captured, annex the most productive of them.
3) Use in the lowest part of the tree is in useless of rationalism against knights and logswordsmen. Also, if you are the warmonger, the lowest part is preferrable.
4) I just can say that keys to diplomatic victory are gold and army.
6) Tradition is for tall empires.
Liberty is for wide empires and cultural victory sometimes.
Honor is useful if you are planning warmongering in ancient-medieval eras.
Piety for cultural victory or having a lot of place to expand.
Patronage is for diplomatic victory, but some separate policies are also useful in any era.
Commerce is useless at all.
Rationalism is for scientific victory for the wide empires mostly.
Freedom - for any GP-based economy (small empires).
Autocracy - for domination victory.
Order - for wide empires.
8) With wide empires - not very large - just to work on most useful tiles. With tall empires - spamming farms like mad and trying to get as large as I can. Had 35-pop city in a cultural game.

 

[Kbo]

Rationalism is hardly ever a bad choice, as you'll find yourself becoming increasingly dependent on RAs to keep up in tech as you move up on level difficulty. The rationalism opener itself is fantastic especially when you snag PT, and the happiness outputs are nice aswell. If you find yourself close to a civ early, honor is great to start out with for an arch rush or otherwise given the GG policy, youll find a lot of SPs arent staples per-se, but more dependent on the map/civs/etc that you come across.

You can go up to 4 cities for culture is because after you grab acoustics you can use your next policy to get free opera houses in your cities, and grab an early hermitage.

Domination vics.....well you're goin to end up with a big empire anyways, its normally best to start small and expand via conquest, else you'll run into major unhappiness issues early. As for science I'd say 4-6 to be able to build parts, but its not crucial. Diplo vics don't have a strat really, just buy CS to being allies before the UN countdown hits 0, you just need gold.

The lower parts of the tree are military, its up to you whether or not you want to bulb a timely chemistry to go on a cannon/knight/musket rush, or bulb astronomy or scientific theory to skyrocket your science, its all situational but you'll find your military becomes increasingly crucial as you go up to higher levels.

Order and Autocracy are nice for sure, the last three all have their ups and downs, personally I prefer freedom for GS since I normally play for a space race win. All depends what your next move is.