95% winrate here in 6-8 player games with random players in free-for-all, in at least 50 matches. I am going to assume you play on Online game speed, which is what my turn numbers correspond to.
Here are my tips:
1) Military
Horsemen and Cavalry are your primary units. Only build swordsmen if you REALLY have no horses. Do not build archers, ever. Crossbowmen are good on defense, but if you're on defense, you've lost the game already. So don't plan on building them either. Knights are ok, but the civic policy to boost their production speed tends to come later than when knights are unlocked. Never, ever build a unit without the policy to improve their production speed. I think you probably have a good grasp of military strategy already.
2) City Placement
Cities need food and production at a minimum. All plains? Not enough food. All grassland? Not enough production. The ideal location is jungle with grassland hills. Mines on hills + grassland for food should get you going smoothly. The single most common mistake is poor city placement; even the majority of players that I've seen who claim that they can "beat deity" do not put enough thought into this. Also, jungles and mountains are good for Campuses. For all of these reasons, avoid building cities next to water unless the land there is especially good.
3) Districts
In the current meta, the focus is on science. Science buys you better units and buildings, which you will need other districts to help support. But first and foremost is science. Below is my basic build for when I am resource-starved (i.e., bad start location). In better starts I can build far more districts.
- Capital: Campus -> Encampment -> Commercial Hub -> Theater Square
- 2nd City: Campus -> Encampment -> Commercial Hub
- 3rd City: Campus -> Commercial Hub -> Encampment
- 4th City and beyond: Commercial Hub -> Campus - Encampment
The reasoning for this is that you need at least three GOOD cities to be able to make expensive campus buildings like the university right away. Your later cities will need to prioritize gold from commercial hubs.
4) Opening Build Order
Capital: Scout/Warrior -> Scout/Warrior -> Settler -> Worker -> Settler -> Monument -> Worker -> Campus
Other Cities: Monument -> District
5) Miscellaneous Tips
- ALWAYS have your first city up by turn 25 (ideally turn 15-20), and by turn 50 you should have 5 cities up. By turn 80 you should have 7 cities and filled up all of the available good land.
- A general rule of thumb, on Online game speed, is that your science should at least equal (if not exceed) the turn counter. So by turn 50, you should be making at least 50 science per turn. Experienced players can make double this.
- Make a max of 1 worker per city until you get the Serfdom policy (the one that increases worker builds by +2)
- Once you get Serfdom, spam workers to build lumber mills on your forests. This is an important reason NOT to chop your forests early on (see below).
- At the highest level of multiplayer play, it is actually not beneficial to chop all of the resources in your land. Briefly, the reason is that it does not translate into long-term science gains. You get a lot of production early on to build units or buildings, but your science and production will be slowed later on due to weaker cities. If you're chopping your resources and forests, you had better be conquering the guy next to you within 30 turns and taking over his cities. This is not the ticket to victory as many people claim. People will engage in endless discussions over this, but that's my perspective.
- Always have scouts on the edge of your borders to watch for sneak attacks. Humans are nasty.
- Ally with science, economic, and military city-states.
- 80% of techs up until the industrial age should be researched only after getting the Eureka. You should almost never pay full cost for a tech.
- Culture is important but less important than science. If your science is bad, I don't care what your culture is. You will lose. Everything in your empire needs to be thrown at science, and then you can think about getting your culture up. Monuments and maybe one or two Theater Squares are enough for the first 70 turns. Just try to get Divine Right (for the civic policy that increases knight/cavalry production speed) by about turn 60.
- Religion: Don't go for it unless you are a very experienced player. Practice getting science first.
6) Finally, do not build something just because it's cheap. Besides poor city placement, this is the most common error I've noticed among all players. They go through their cities making the cheapest building first, thinking that it will start to benefit them sooner than building an expensive building. In what kind of world did the best build order just magically happen to go from cheapest to most expensive in perfect order? If you find yourself just making the cheapest buildings first, 99% of the time it means you have no strategy. Think in terms of goals.
- For example, think about what you need to be able to get Cavalry by turn 75. You need at least 5 cities with campuses, libraries, and universities. You will need the commercial hubs to get enough gold to afford their upkeep. You will need the Encampments with barracks to build them quickly. Let me tell you, 75 turns is NOT a lot of time. You do NOT have time to make random unrelated stuff like industrial zones. You don't have time to make enough workers to improve every tile. You definitely do not have time to build more than 1 or 2 theater squares. But guess what, your strategy didn't call for that stuff. Your friend who made everything in the order that it was unlocked won't even have Knights by turn 75. But this is how you win games.
Add me on Steam: sahinthefalcon
I am happy to help and talk some more because it really seems like you want to learn.
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