Trickster7135
Prince
EMPIRE MANAGEMENT
Empire Management is a huge facet of Civilization 5, and learning how to do so correctly is one of the primary tests of skill that allows you to play at higher difficulties more effectively. Empire Management is a rather broad term though, as it governs not only how you run your empire, but the choices you make in regard to your civilization, social policies, religion, and wonders. Effective empire management allows all your choices to be complementary. There are two main choices to make even before you start your game, and those are: are you planning to win peacefully or by conquest, and do you want to build fewer larger cities or many smaller cities? Winning peacefully doesn't mean playing peacefully, however. If you plan to win peacefully but find an enemy AI settling cities close to your start position, it is usually a good choice to take them out early to give yourself breathing room and space to settle yourself. Large cities have high populations and are typically excellent at building wonders and units, while small cities generate science and gold more effectively. Even when choosing to have many small cities, you will still have a couple of large cities where you focus production, although to a lesser extent than choosing to make all your cities large cities. There are a total of five different empire management strategies, one for each combination of those two choices, as well as a fifth outlier that seems similar but behaves very differently from the rest.
Tall and Wall: a peaceful empire that focuses on a few large cities. Tall and Wall is the easiest type of empire to manage, and is the best for producing wonders and units. It does suffer when producing science and gold, as though it will quickly build buildings that modify those resources, it has the slowest population growth.
Sprawl and Wall: a peaceful empire that focuses on many small cities. Sprawl and Wall will quickly grow its population to meet its happiness, and produces science and gold very effectively. It certainly takes more effort to manage though, and depends on specializing cities to produce wonders and units.
Tall and Maul: an aggressive empire that focuses on building a few large cities before warmongering. Tall and Maul shares many of the advantages of Tall and Wall, with little of the downside, as the initial cities you settle will grow to have high populations and excellent production for wonders and units. Where Tall and Wall suffers from slow population growth, Tall and Maul simple takes the populations along with the cities, meaning it also has excellent science and gold. The main drawback in this strategy is that it can by picky with which cities to keep and which to raze or sell, as it's usually only interested in keeping well placed cities.
Sprawl and Maul: an aggressive empire that focuses on many small cities. Sprawl and Maul starts off similarly to Sprawl and Wall, where you quickly settle territory and then specialize a few for production. It can then start conquering cities, and it does this especially well. It is the most aggressive strategy, and will readily keep nearly any city is conquers, and keep settling where it find room. It suffers in production though, as even with a few specialized cities, unspecialized tall cities will exceed it.
Insane City Sprawl: the outlier of the group, and by far the most reliant on micro-management. Insane City Sprawl (ICS) starts off similarly to Sprawl and Maul, but focuses on maximizing synergies and minimizing waste. It has the potential to far exceed any of the other strategies in generating resources such as science and gold.
After you decide which strategy you are going to employ, then you must get into the nuts and bolts of it. It is very important to make choices that are synergetic to your empire, and those choices will include which civilization to play, which social policies to pick, and which religious beliefs to choose. There are more choices than for these specific strategies, as many civilizations, social policies, and religious beliefs can be good for any strategy. This article doesn't factor in unique units though, as every civ has them and they are all generally useful. Not to say that some aren’t better than others, but that is a decision for military strategy, not empire management.
CIVLIZATIONS
These civilizations provide excellent benefits all strategies can take advantage of, such as benefits to science or gold, or they provide different bonuses that all strategies can take advantage of.
Arabia: Trade Caravans synergizes with all strategies except for Tall and Wall, while Bazaar particularly synergizes with Tall and Wall, and to a lesser extent, Sprawl and Wall.
Babylon: Ingenuity benefits science, which is something every civ needs. You may not run science specialists in every game, but that's a decision that's independent of how you manage your empire. Walls of Babylon might slightly skew Babylon to Tall and Wall, but defensive buildings in general are mediocre for human players.
Denmark: at first glance, Demark seems to be strictly a militant civ. Viking Fury, however, works best when using it for quick strikes and proactive defenses. You can play peacefully and still engage in war, as long as you don't keep cities civs other than the one you're fighting generally won't mind very much, especially once the war is over. If the leading civ is sprawling around the world, using quick strike tactics to pillage and raze remote cities can be a good way to keep them in check without engaging in all out war. Of course, it's still a good militant ability for watery maps.
Egypt: Monument Builders definitely favors the tall strategies, who will be building the most wonders. Burial Tomb is the opposite though, as it benefits sprawling.
England: Sun Never Sets doesn’t synergize with any strategy at all, but can be very nice depending on which map you play on.
Ethiopia: Spirit of Adwa will only be taken advantage of with a Tall and Wall empire, but Stele synergizes with the rest.
Greece: while those going for conquest aren’t trying to win diplomatically, they can still take advantage of city-states, and Hellenic League is excellent in that regard.
Korea: Scholars of the Jade Hall benefits science, in two different ways. The bonus to specialists slightly favor sprawling empires, who can field more total specialists. The bonus from wonders built favors tall empires, who will be able to build more wonders.
Persia: Achaemenid Legacy provides a bonus to golden ages, which peaceful strategies will have to most of since they usually have higher excess happiness, while the minor combat bonus during golden ages and Satrap's Court benefit sprawling empires instead.
Russia: Siberian Riches provides two bonuses: the increase production from strategic resources benefits sprawling empires who want to only work the best tiles with their smaller populations, while the doubled resources benefits tall empires who may only have limited qualities in their territories. Krepost is similar but in a less useful way: sprawling empires won't build barracks in all their cities while tall empires will be able to push their culture borders easily anyways.
Siam: Father Governs Children increases food from maritime city-states, something sprawling empires can take advantage of moreso, while the increase to faith and culture matters more to tall empires who are limited in how many buildings they can build to generate those resources. Wat provides a flat increase that favors sprawling empires, but the fact that it is a midgame building and would take awhile to build in small cities favors tall empires, making it a wash.
SOCIAL POLICIES
Most social policies obviously favor particular strategies over others. There are only a few that don't.
Piety: this social policy tree has an even mix of policies that favor some strategies over others. The opener, organized religion, and the finisher favor sprawling empires. Mandate of heaven, theocracy, and reformation favor tall empires. Reformation provides equal benefits to all strategies.
Patronage: city-states are useful for all strategies, although this obviously favors diplomatic victories. It makes for a good backup plan when warmongering if you come to a stalemate, though.
Rationalism: much like patronage, most policies benefit all strategies equally. Unlike patronage, science is always useful no matter what your plans are, and this policy should always be picked up if piety is not.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
There are a lot of religious beliefs, from pantheon, founder, follower, and enhancer. There are far, far too many to go over them individually, but some general tenants hold. If the belief provides a flat bonus per city or per tile, it usually favors sprawling empires. If it provides a percentage increase or bonus based on population/followers, it generally favors tall empires. A good example of this is to compared Church Property (+2 gold per city following religion) and Tithe (+1 gold for every four followers). In order for those two to be equal, a city would need to have 8 followers (not population, mind you), and would need 12 population for Tithe to exceed Church Property.
The beliefs that don’t favor any specific empire management strategy would be: faith healers, goddess of protection, sacred path, religious settlements, papal primacy, and defender of the faith.
WONDERS
Wonders can be a lot of fun to build, or very frustrating if you're competing with against other civs to see who finishes one first. Tall strategies will generally be able to build more wonders compared to sprawling strategies, but building key wonders can be important no matter how you develop your empire. The following wonders would be considered useful for both tall and sprawl.
Circus Maximus: national wonders are usually difficult for sprawling empires to build, but since this one comes early when there are few cities, requires one of the most important buildings to be built for sprawling empires, and provides happiness, a crucial resource for sprawling empires, makes this an excellent nation wonder to build. Tall empires will of course be able to easily be able to build this, and will enjoy the happiness just the same.
National College: much like Circus Maximus, this is an early national wonder that depends on a very important building to be built. Unlike the Circus though, this one is so powerful is can be worth delaying mass sprawling to get this one built. Tall empires will easily build it, usually right after building the Great Library.
National Epic: tall empires will enjoy the benefit this provides, and sprawling empires won't have much difficulty being able to build it since it requires only monuments. Sprawling empires tend to focus their great person generation in only a few cities, magnifying the benefit of this.
Oxford University: a free tech is always useful, which is good because while universities will be prioritized in sprawling empires, it can still take a lot longer than for tall empires to get them up in every city. The greater beakers gained from late game techs tends to even out the +3 base science this building provides if you build it early.
The Great Library: this powerful wonder is much like Oxford University, but is available very early in the game, and can be worth bee-lining to build. Tall empires that open with tradition should be able to get this wonder regularly even at higher difficulties, although sprawling empires might have to skip it unless they play Egypt or get Monument to the Gods early. Building this to lead into Philosophy and then National College is a common early game strategy, although expansion must be slowed to do that.
Petra: this wonder usually isn't built quickly, and you can factor it while placing cities. An otherwise rubbish desert location with just a few useful resources like iron or copper can definitely enjoy this wonder. For Tall, it just means an otherwise lackluster area can be worth building a city on, while for sprawling, this wonder is only worth building if you want that city to be one of your core production cities. It is quite nice when there are a lot of desert hills as well.
Notre Dame: the faith is great for tall, the happiness is great for sprawl.
Taj Mahal: a free golden age and some extra happiness is very, very useful. Better when combined with Chichen Itza, although sprawling empires probably won't find that worth building since golden ages are harder to come by. They will get more mileage out of the happiness, though.
Statue of Liberty: taking advantage of specialists can be a very important aspect of the game, and the extra production can work wonders for both tall and sprawl empires.
VICTORY CONDITIONS
Before I go into the specifics for each empire strategy, I'd like to speak about how the different victory conditions can change your empire. I'm not including conquest/domination victories here, as they change the strategies so much to require their own section. This section isn't really very in depth as it could be, but really just to attempts to relate how your choices of a victory condition change your other choices to how you run your empire.
CULTURAL
Cultural victories primarily focus on two things: artist specialists and wonders. The basic culture buildings will never generate enough culture quickly enough to win. Tall and Wall has an easier time with culture, although Sprawl and Wall can do it as well, they just have to focus on getting as many artists working as possible. Farms are very important to support the large specialist population, and focusing on building Cathedrals in your cities with faith is very important when sprawling. Piety is very important to fill, which means skipping Rationalism. For tall the final policy should be Freedom of course, while sprawl might still prefer Order. Being able to purchase great engineers with faith allows sprawling empires to quickly finish wonders soon after unlocking them. While nothing else in the tree specifically benefits culture, the general bonuses per city can help you emphasize culture otherwise, as well as support your economy and protect your borders. Because culture in sprawling takes longer to accumulate, you have a higher chance to need to play aggressively near the end of the game to prevent another civ from winning peacefully. Puppet cities are only modestly helpful for a cultural victory, as while they don't increase the culture cap, they don't emphasize culture and won't invest in artist specialists.
DIPLOMATIC
Diplomatic victories really only need one thing: gold. How you generate gold usually would be trade posts, but merchant specialists are another way to go, especially for tall empires. Unlike the other peaceful strategies, diplomatic victories require more presence in world politics. City-states must be defended against large civs trying to attack them, so a non-defensive military presence is important, especially a highly mobile one. Patronage is very important for diplomatic victories, but any of the other ones are fine to compliment it. Commerce does have more synergy than others since gold is so important, but is really only worth filling out on a watery map, especially for tall. Diplomatic is a good fallback for an aggressive empire who comes to a standstill, as long as you left those city-states alone when you went on the warpath.
SCIENTIFIC
Scientific victories require the least investment of all the victories, as science is already very important for all empires. You will need a few production cities to build the parts, but the only empire that might have trouble with that is ICS. It is the fallback victory condition if you go to war with both civs and city-states, and reach a stalemate near the end of the game. The only social policy that really matters is Rationalism, but even that doesn't matter if you can maintain the tech lead. Since Piety will usually be skipped, faith isn't as important, especially for tall empires who will have the weakest faith generation.
TALL AND WALL
Tall and Wall settles only a few cities over the course of the entire game, mostly in the early phases. It takes advantage of the free buildings provided by tradition to the first four cities founded. lt is able to build nearly every building desirable in their cities, and almost all cities will have the production to build wonders. The populations will be very large, and the culture borders will extend very far. It benefits from percentage increases to resources the most, as it has the highest populations per city and thus the highest base resources being generated. Since the empire is small, the army needed to defend it is small as well, so there is little emphasis on building military buildings or units, giving this strategy even more time to build wonders. Tall and Wall is typically the only strategy to actually build defensive buildings such as walls and castled in all its cities. This empire usually maintains the best relations with other civs, and will get the best trading opportunities. It is also the easiest to defend because the power is so centralized. Playing a one city challenge would also fall under this category, and tends to be the most extreme form of Tall and Wall. Since this is a peaceful strategy, the type of victory will be either cultural, science, or diplomatic.
CIVILIZATIONS
The best civilizations for Tall and Wall are those that support small, centralized empires.
India: There is no civ more focused on Tall and Wall than India. Population Growth is fantastic for growing your population, while Mughal Fort would only ever be built in this strategy.
Netherlands: Dutch East India Company makes your already good trade deals even better, when you can trade what few luxuries you have for luxuries you don't have, and come out better for it. Polder is basically a better farm, which you will want a lot of to boost population growth.
Sweden: Nobel Prize requires having declarations of friendship to have any effect, which can be difficult if not impossible with aggressive strategies. The extra influence to city-states really helps diplomatic victories.
SOCIAL POLICIES
For Tall and Wall, the choices for social policies is rather simple. In addition to the general ones listed above, the Tradition and Freedom policy trees are the best choices. Honor and Autocracy usually aren’t worth investing in, as you simply won't get into that much combat with this strategy. Most of the bonuses for Liberty, Commerce, and Order scale per city, which makes them poor choices when you only have so few cities in total.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Faith is something that can be difficult for Tall and Wall to accumulate. Since there's no late game faith buildings, you are forced to build wonders that generate faith to accumulate it quickly. Also due to the mechanics of how faith spreads, you will heavily rely on missionaries and great prophets to spread it.
Dance of the Aurora, Desert Folklore, Goddess of Festivals, One with Nature, Religious Idols, Stone Circles, Divine Inspiration, Monasteries, and Reliquary: Sprawling empires typically only want to work the best tiles, and half of these beliefs boost rather poor tiles. The other half boost rather rare tiles, which can be plentiful in small groups but rare overall. These are all heavily dependent on your start, of course, but you can usually pick up one of them. Boosts to faith are much more useful for tall empires since it is much more difficult to accumulate.
Fertility Rites and Swords into Plowshares: maximizing population growth is very important for Tall and Wall, and you will try to keep on good terms with other civs.
Monument to the Gods: this strategy will build the most wonders of all of them, and this belief helps you pick up some of the less important but still useful ones.
Interfaith Dialogue, Holy Order, Messiah, and Missionary Zeal: since you have so few cities and thus spread religion passively very slowly, bonuses to missionaries and great prophets are extremely useful.
Tithe: since this belief scales per follower, compared to Church Property which scales per city, it is a better means to generate gold for a tall empire.
Peace Loving, Pilgrimage, and World Church: only peaceful strategies can take advantage of beliefs that depend on foreign cities.
WONDERS
Tall and Wall is definitely the best strategy for wonder spamming, especially when going for a cultural victory. Having multiple high-production, high-population cities coupled with bonuses to wonder production results in nearly any wonder being worth building. High difficulties will demand choices though, although still allows wonder spamming in some fashion. All national wonders would be considered good wonders to build in this strategy, and the following world wonders would be considered best of the many choices.
Temple of Artemis: wonders in the early areas tend to be very competitive to complete, as you don't have enough time to solidify a tech lead in order to gain access to them first. Of the wonders recommended here, this would be the lowest priority, but still very valuable to tall and wall. The extra growth is excellent, as is the bonus production for ranged units - the best defending units in the game.
Stonehenge: if you want to found a religion while playing tall, this wonder is how you do it. Since you won't be building very many shrines or temples, generating faith relies primarily on wonders for empires with only a few cities. This is the first and most direct means of doing so, and is well worth bee-lining to as a starting strategy. It does mean giving up the Great Library, but that can be a worthwhile trade.
The Hanging Gardens: the bonus food is amazing this early in the game, and is still greater than what a hospital provides. Definitely an amazing wonder for a one-city challenge, it is still very good for a more typical tall and wall emipre.
The Colossus: when combined with the opener for Commerce social policy and built in the capital, this may be your entire solution to gold when going tall and wall. With a lighthouse built, the only tiles that beat this in food and gold production are riverside farms or trade posts. Sprawling will generally get much less mileage out of this, since they rely on their many trade post cities to generate gold, and prefer to focus the capital on production.
Great Mosque of Djenne: considering the heavy reliance on missionaries for tall empires to spread their religion, this wonder is almost mandatory if you plan to convert the world.
The Hagia Sophia: any wonder which provides a decent amount of faith is usually worth building when going tall and focusing on religion, and this one provides quite a lot. Assuming you've already enhanced your religion, the holy site combined with the base faith results in an amazing +9 faith from just one wonder!
Chichen Itza: Tall and Wall usually has more excess happiness than it knows what to do with, which results in frequent golden ages. Increases the length by 50% makes this an excellent wonder with good timing.
The Porcelain Tower: the free great scientist is good, but the bonus to research agreements is better. Only a peaceful empire will be able to take full advantage of this wonder.
Empire Management is a huge facet of Civilization 5, and learning how to do so correctly is one of the primary tests of skill that allows you to play at higher difficulties more effectively. Empire Management is a rather broad term though, as it governs not only how you run your empire, but the choices you make in regard to your civilization, social policies, religion, and wonders. Effective empire management allows all your choices to be complementary. There are two main choices to make even before you start your game, and those are: are you planning to win peacefully or by conquest, and do you want to build fewer larger cities or many smaller cities? Winning peacefully doesn't mean playing peacefully, however. If you plan to win peacefully but find an enemy AI settling cities close to your start position, it is usually a good choice to take them out early to give yourself breathing room and space to settle yourself. Large cities have high populations and are typically excellent at building wonders and units, while small cities generate science and gold more effectively. Even when choosing to have many small cities, you will still have a couple of large cities where you focus production, although to a lesser extent than choosing to make all your cities large cities. There are a total of five different empire management strategies, one for each combination of those two choices, as well as a fifth outlier that seems similar but behaves very differently from the rest.
Tall and Wall: a peaceful empire that focuses on a few large cities. Tall and Wall is the easiest type of empire to manage, and is the best for producing wonders and units. It does suffer when producing science and gold, as though it will quickly build buildings that modify those resources, it has the slowest population growth.
Sprawl and Wall: a peaceful empire that focuses on many small cities. Sprawl and Wall will quickly grow its population to meet its happiness, and produces science and gold very effectively. It certainly takes more effort to manage though, and depends on specializing cities to produce wonders and units.
Tall and Maul: an aggressive empire that focuses on building a few large cities before warmongering. Tall and Maul shares many of the advantages of Tall and Wall, with little of the downside, as the initial cities you settle will grow to have high populations and excellent production for wonders and units. Where Tall and Wall suffers from slow population growth, Tall and Maul simple takes the populations along with the cities, meaning it also has excellent science and gold. The main drawback in this strategy is that it can by picky with which cities to keep and which to raze or sell, as it's usually only interested in keeping well placed cities.
Sprawl and Maul: an aggressive empire that focuses on many small cities. Sprawl and Maul starts off similarly to Sprawl and Wall, where you quickly settle territory and then specialize a few for production. It can then start conquering cities, and it does this especially well. It is the most aggressive strategy, and will readily keep nearly any city is conquers, and keep settling where it find room. It suffers in production though, as even with a few specialized cities, unspecialized tall cities will exceed it.
Insane City Sprawl: the outlier of the group, and by far the most reliant on micro-management. Insane City Sprawl (ICS) starts off similarly to Sprawl and Maul, but focuses on maximizing synergies and minimizing waste. It has the potential to far exceed any of the other strategies in generating resources such as science and gold.
After you decide which strategy you are going to employ, then you must get into the nuts and bolts of it. It is very important to make choices that are synergetic to your empire, and those choices will include which civilization to play, which social policies to pick, and which religious beliefs to choose. There are more choices than for these specific strategies, as many civilizations, social policies, and religious beliefs can be good for any strategy. This article doesn't factor in unique units though, as every civ has them and they are all generally useful. Not to say that some aren’t better than others, but that is a decision for military strategy, not empire management.
CIVLIZATIONS
These civilizations provide excellent benefits all strategies can take advantage of, such as benefits to science or gold, or they provide different bonuses that all strategies can take advantage of.
Arabia: Trade Caravans synergizes with all strategies except for Tall and Wall, while Bazaar particularly synergizes with Tall and Wall, and to a lesser extent, Sprawl and Wall.
Babylon: Ingenuity benefits science, which is something every civ needs. You may not run science specialists in every game, but that's a decision that's independent of how you manage your empire. Walls of Babylon might slightly skew Babylon to Tall and Wall, but defensive buildings in general are mediocre for human players.
Denmark: at first glance, Demark seems to be strictly a militant civ. Viking Fury, however, works best when using it for quick strikes and proactive defenses. You can play peacefully and still engage in war, as long as you don't keep cities civs other than the one you're fighting generally won't mind very much, especially once the war is over. If the leading civ is sprawling around the world, using quick strike tactics to pillage and raze remote cities can be a good way to keep them in check without engaging in all out war. Of course, it's still a good militant ability for watery maps.
Egypt: Monument Builders definitely favors the tall strategies, who will be building the most wonders. Burial Tomb is the opposite though, as it benefits sprawling.
England: Sun Never Sets doesn’t synergize with any strategy at all, but can be very nice depending on which map you play on.
Ethiopia: Spirit of Adwa will only be taken advantage of with a Tall and Wall empire, but Stele synergizes with the rest.
Greece: while those going for conquest aren’t trying to win diplomatically, they can still take advantage of city-states, and Hellenic League is excellent in that regard.
Korea: Scholars of the Jade Hall benefits science, in two different ways. The bonus to specialists slightly favor sprawling empires, who can field more total specialists. The bonus from wonders built favors tall empires, who will be able to build more wonders.
Persia: Achaemenid Legacy provides a bonus to golden ages, which peaceful strategies will have to most of since they usually have higher excess happiness, while the minor combat bonus during golden ages and Satrap's Court benefit sprawling empires instead.
Russia: Siberian Riches provides two bonuses: the increase production from strategic resources benefits sprawling empires who want to only work the best tiles with their smaller populations, while the doubled resources benefits tall empires who may only have limited qualities in their territories. Krepost is similar but in a less useful way: sprawling empires won't build barracks in all their cities while tall empires will be able to push their culture borders easily anyways.
Siam: Father Governs Children increases food from maritime city-states, something sprawling empires can take advantage of moreso, while the increase to faith and culture matters more to tall empires who are limited in how many buildings they can build to generate those resources. Wat provides a flat increase that favors sprawling empires, but the fact that it is a midgame building and would take awhile to build in small cities favors tall empires, making it a wash.
SOCIAL POLICIES
Most social policies obviously favor particular strategies over others. There are only a few that don't.
Piety: this social policy tree has an even mix of policies that favor some strategies over others. The opener, organized religion, and the finisher favor sprawling empires. Mandate of heaven, theocracy, and reformation favor tall empires. Reformation provides equal benefits to all strategies.
Patronage: city-states are useful for all strategies, although this obviously favors diplomatic victories. It makes for a good backup plan when warmongering if you come to a stalemate, though.
Rationalism: much like patronage, most policies benefit all strategies equally. Unlike patronage, science is always useful no matter what your plans are, and this policy should always be picked up if piety is not.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
There are a lot of religious beliefs, from pantheon, founder, follower, and enhancer. There are far, far too many to go over them individually, but some general tenants hold. If the belief provides a flat bonus per city or per tile, it usually favors sprawling empires. If it provides a percentage increase or bonus based on population/followers, it generally favors tall empires. A good example of this is to compared Church Property (+2 gold per city following religion) and Tithe (+1 gold for every four followers). In order for those two to be equal, a city would need to have 8 followers (not population, mind you), and would need 12 population for Tithe to exceed Church Property.
The beliefs that don’t favor any specific empire management strategy would be: faith healers, goddess of protection, sacred path, religious settlements, papal primacy, and defender of the faith.
WONDERS
Wonders can be a lot of fun to build, or very frustrating if you're competing with against other civs to see who finishes one first. Tall strategies will generally be able to build more wonders compared to sprawling strategies, but building key wonders can be important no matter how you develop your empire. The following wonders would be considered useful for both tall and sprawl.
Circus Maximus: national wonders are usually difficult for sprawling empires to build, but since this one comes early when there are few cities, requires one of the most important buildings to be built for sprawling empires, and provides happiness, a crucial resource for sprawling empires, makes this an excellent nation wonder to build. Tall empires will of course be able to easily be able to build this, and will enjoy the happiness just the same.
National College: much like Circus Maximus, this is an early national wonder that depends on a very important building to be built. Unlike the Circus though, this one is so powerful is can be worth delaying mass sprawling to get this one built. Tall empires will easily build it, usually right after building the Great Library.
National Epic: tall empires will enjoy the benefit this provides, and sprawling empires won't have much difficulty being able to build it since it requires only monuments. Sprawling empires tend to focus their great person generation in only a few cities, magnifying the benefit of this.
Oxford University: a free tech is always useful, which is good because while universities will be prioritized in sprawling empires, it can still take a lot longer than for tall empires to get them up in every city. The greater beakers gained from late game techs tends to even out the +3 base science this building provides if you build it early.
The Great Library: this powerful wonder is much like Oxford University, but is available very early in the game, and can be worth bee-lining to build. Tall empires that open with tradition should be able to get this wonder regularly even at higher difficulties, although sprawling empires might have to skip it unless they play Egypt or get Monument to the Gods early. Building this to lead into Philosophy and then National College is a common early game strategy, although expansion must be slowed to do that.
Petra: this wonder usually isn't built quickly, and you can factor it while placing cities. An otherwise rubbish desert location with just a few useful resources like iron or copper can definitely enjoy this wonder. For Tall, it just means an otherwise lackluster area can be worth building a city on, while for sprawling, this wonder is only worth building if you want that city to be one of your core production cities. It is quite nice when there are a lot of desert hills as well.
Notre Dame: the faith is great for tall, the happiness is great for sprawl.
Taj Mahal: a free golden age and some extra happiness is very, very useful. Better when combined with Chichen Itza, although sprawling empires probably won't find that worth building since golden ages are harder to come by. They will get more mileage out of the happiness, though.
Statue of Liberty: taking advantage of specialists can be a very important aspect of the game, and the extra production can work wonders for both tall and sprawl empires.
VICTORY CONDITIONS
Before I go into the specifics for each empire strategy, I'd like to speak about how the different victory conditions can change your empire. I'm not including conquest/domination victories here, as they change the strategies so much to require their own section. This section isn't really very in depth as it could be, but really just to attempts to relate how your choices of a victory condition change your other choices to how you run your empire.
CULTURAL
Cultural victories primarily focus on two things: artist specialists and wonders. The basic culture buildings will never generate enough culture quickly enough to win. Tall and Wall has an easier time with culture, although Sprawl and Wall can do it as well, they just have to focus on getting as many artists working as possible. Farms are very important to support the large specialist population, and focusing on building Cathedrals in your cities with faith is very important when sprawling. Piety is very important to fill, which means skipping Rationalism. For tall the final policy should be Freedom of course, while sprawl might still prefer Order. Being able to purchase great engineers with faith allows sprawling empires to quickly finish wonders soon after unlocking them. While nothing else in the tree specifically benefits culture, the general bonuses per city can help you emphasize culture otherwise, as well as support your economy and protect your borders. Because culture in sprawling takes longer to accumulate, you have a higher chance to need to play aggressively near the end of the game to prevent another civ from winning peacefully. Puppet cities are only modestly helpful for a cultural victory, as while they don't increase the culture cap, they don't emphasize culture and won't invest in artist specialists.
DIPLOMATIC
Diplomatic victories really only need one thing: gold. How you generate gold usually would be trade posts, but merchant specialists are another way to go, especially for tall empires. Unlike the other peaceful strategies, diplomatic victories require more presence in world politics. City-states must be defended against large civs trying to attack them, so a non-defensive military presence is important, especially a highly mobile one. Patronage is very important for diplomatic victories, but any of the other ones are fine to compliment it. Commerce does have more synergy than others since gold is so important, but is really only worth filling out on a watery map, especially for tall. Diplomatic is a good fallback for an aggressive empire who comes to a standstill, as long as you left those city-states alone when you went on the warpath.
SCIENTIFIC
Scientific victories require the least investment of all the victories, as science is already very important for all empires. You will need a few production cities to build the parts, but the only empire that might have trouble with that is ICS. It is the fallback victory condition if you go to war with both civs and city-states, and reach a stalemate near the end of the game. The only social policy that really matters is Rationalism, but even that doesn't matter if you can maintain the tech lead. Since Piety will usually be skipped, faith isn't as important, especially for tall empires who will have the weakest faith generation.
TALL AND WALL
Tall and Wall settles only a few cities over the course of the entire game, mostly in the early phases. It takes advantage of the free buildings provided by tradition to the first four cities founded. lt is able to build nearly every building desirable in their cities, and almost all cities will have the production to build wonders. The populations will be very large, and the culture borders will extend very far. It benefits from percentage increases to resources the most, as it has the highest populations per city and thus the highest base resources being generated. Since the empire is small, the army needed to defend it is small as well, so there is little emphasis on building military buildings or units, giving this strategy even more time to build wonders. Tall and Wall is typically the only strategy to actually build defensive buildings such as walls and castled in all its cities. This empire usually maintains the best relations with other civs, and will get the best trading opportunities. It is also the easiest to defend because the power is so centralized. Playing a one city challenge would also fall under this category, and tends to be the most extreme form of Tall and Wall. Since this is a peaceful strategy, the type of victory will be either cultural, science, or diplomatic.
CIVILIZATIONS
The best civilizations for Tall and Wall are those that support small, centralized empires.
India: There is no civ more focused on Tall and Wall than India. Population Growth is fantastic for growing your population, while Mughal Fort would only ever be built in this strategy.
Netherlands: Dutch East India Company makes your already good trade deals even better, when you can trade what few luxuries you have for luxuries you don't have, and come out better for it. Polder is basically a better farm, which you will want a lot of to boost population growth.
Sweden: Nobel Prize requires having declarations of friendship to have any effect, which can be difficult if not impossible with aggressive strategies. The extra influence to city-states really helps diplomatic victories.
SOCIAL POLICIES
For Tall and Wall, the choices for social policies is rather simple. In addition to the general ones listed above, the Tradition and Freedom policy trees are the best choices. Honor and Autocracy usually aren’t worth investing in, as you simply won't get into that much combat with this strategy. Most of the bonuses for Liberty, Commerce, and Order scale per city, which makes them poor choices when you only have so few cities in total.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Faith is something that can be difficult for Tall and Wall to accumulate. Since there's no late game faith buildings, you are forced to build wonders that generate faith to accumulate it quickly. Also due to the mechanics of how faith spreads, you will heavily rely on missionaries and great prophets to spread it.
Dance of the Aurora, Desert Folklore, Goddess of Festivals, One with Nature, Religious Idols, Stone Circles, Divine Inspiration, Monasteries, and Reliquary: Sprawling empires typically only want to work the best tiles, and half of these beliefs boost rather poor tiles. The other half boost rather rare tiles, which can be plentiful in small groups but rare overall. These are all heavily dependent on your start, of course, but you can usually pick up one of them. Boosts to faith are much more useful for tall empires since it is much more difficult to accumulate.
Fertility Rites and Swords into Plowshares: maximizing population growth is very important for Tall and Wall, and you will try to keep on good terms with other civs.
Monument to the Gods: this strategy will build the most wonders of all of them, and this belief helps you pick up some of the less important but still useful ones.
Interfaith Dialogue, Holy Order, Messiah, and Missionary Zeal: since you have so few cities and thus spread religion passively very slowly, bonuses to missionaries and great prophets are extremely useful.
Tithe: since this belief scales per follower, compared to Church Property which scales per city, it is a better means to generate gold for a tall empire.
Peace Loving, Pilgrimage, and World Church: only peaceful strategies can take advantage of beliefs that depend on foreign cities.
WONDERS
Tall and Wall is definitely the best strategy for wonder spamming, especially when going for a cultural victory. Having multiple high-production, high-population cities coupled with bonuses to wonder production results in nearly any wonder being worth building. High difficulties will demand choices though, although still allows wonder spamming in some fashion. All national wonders would be considered good wonders to build in this strategy, and the following world wonders would be considered best of the many choices.
Temple of Artemis: wonders in the early areas tend to be very competitive to complete, as you don't have enough time to solidify a tech lead in order to gain access to them first. Of the wonders recommended here, this would be the lowest priority, but still very valuable to tall and wall. The extra growth is excellent, as is the bonus production for ranged units - the best defending units in the game.
Stonehenge: if you want to found a religion while playing tall, this wonder is how you do it. Since you won't be building very many shrines or temples, generating faith relies primarily on wonders for empires with only a few cities. This is the first and most direct means of doing so, and is well worth bee-lining to as a starting strategy. It does mean giving up the Great Library, but that can be a worthwhile trade.
The Hanging Gardens: the bonus food is amazing this early in the game, and is still greater than what a hospital provides. Definitely an amazing wonder for a one-city challenge, it is still very good for a more typical tall and wall emipre.
The Colossus: when combined with the opener for Commerce social policy and built in the capital, this may be your entire solution to gold when going tall and wall. With a lighthouse built, the only tiles that beat this in food and gold production are riverside farms or trade posts. Sprawling will generally get much less mileage out of this, since they rely on their many trade post cities to generate gold, and prefer to focus the capital on production.
Great Mosque of Djenne: considering the heavy reliance on missionaries for tall empires to spread their religion, this wonder is almost mandatory if you plan to convert the world.
The Hagia Sophia: any wonder which provides a decent amount of faith is usually worth building when going tall and focusing on religion, and this one provides quite a lot. Assuming you've already enhanced your religion, the holy site combined with the base faith results in an amazing +9 faith from just one wonder!
Chichen Itza: Tall and Wall usually has more excess happiness than it knows what to do with, which results in frequent golden ages. Increases the length by 50% makes this an excellent wonder with good timing.
The Porcelain Tower: the free great scientist is good, but the bonus to research agreements is better. Only a peaceful empire will be able to take full advantage of this wonder.
on unimproved tiles, the minute you put a plantation on that jungle silk tile you lose the bonus. Wouldn't Oral Tradition be a uniformly better choice?
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if riverside and 1 
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I didn't elaborate on all it's uses though, since this is an empire management article and not an analysis of all religious beliefs article (that will come later).
