Food Stacking: the dominant strategy?

[Uncle Reeno]

So I had an Arabia game where I got temple of artemis, fertility rights, and swords into plow shears. This allowed me to expand a pretty preposterous rate with the growth bonus coupled with the massive gold inflow from trade (courtesy of bazaars) letting me purchase graineries/aqueducts in all new cities. This was on King but it doesn't seem too beyond the realm of imagination that you could amass at least two of these three bonuses on higher settings. After trying this in a couple different game types I began to wonder if this was in fact the dominant strategy in civ5, more effective with a relatively wide civ but not significantly less on tallish ones. Thoughts?

 

[Teleon22]

So I had an Arabia game where I got temple of artemis, fertility rights, and swords into plow shears. This allowed me to expand a pretty preposterous rate with the growth bonus coupled with the massive gold inflow from trade (courtesy of bazaars) letting me purchase graineries/aqueducts in all new cities. This was on King but it doesn't seem too beyond the realm of imagination that you could amass at least two of these three bonuses on higher settings. After trying this in a couple different game types I began to wonder if this was in fact the dominant strategy in civ5, more effective with a relatively wide civ but not significantly less on tallish ones. Thoughts?

This has been my dominate strategy of late in multiplayer with some friends. Don’t tell them that thought because they have not yet caught on.

-First, I go tradition tree.
-I search for ruins to get pantheon first in order to get fertility rights.
-I attempt to get Stonehenge first because the extra culture will help me quickly complete the tradition tree. From there, I try and get religion founded in order to get further growth bonuses.

So far, I’ve enjoyed size 30+ cities in all of my games with a healthy lead on the scoreboard. The only thing that has even remotely been difficult is an early war. However, with a large city and walls, early wars are not all that effective.

BTW, I never actually build workers or settlers. With religion bonus and large Wealth income, I can typically just buy them or I’ll quickly steal some from a nearby city state.

 

[Magil]

-I attempt to get Stonehenge first because the extra culture will help me quickly complete the tradition tree. From there, I try and get religion founded in order to get further growth bonuses.

??? Extra culture from Stonehenge? If religion is present (aka you're playing GnK), doesn't Stonehenge give extra faith, not culture?

Personally I find that the culture provided by the opener + legalism is often enough to complete Tradition in short enough time without any other bonuses. Though completing quests for cultural city-states never hurts (unless you actually want to delay policies until you can jump into Rationalism after Tradition).

 

[Tabarnak]

BTW, I never actually build workers or settlers. With religion bonus and large Wealth income, I can typically just buy them or I’ll quickly steal some from a nearby city state.

What is fun in multiplayer is you can steal more than 1 worker from cs without diplo penalties. The only true penalty is the possibility to not be able to ally some of them if you repeatively DoW.

That said i often not make peace with the first cs to let me another chance of stealing a 2nd worker without penalty. This can anyway give you a penalty(perma DoW) but sometimes it doesn't.

 

[alpaca]

On Immortal or Deity you have no chance to ever get Temple of Artemis. Being at peace is also not always possible there as the AI will often attack you and then refuse to peace out for a long time. Apart from that, +25% surplus food is not what I would call dominant. Useful in tall games, sure, but you first need the happiness and then a large enough food surplus for it to actually matter.

I do like Fertility Rites for tall games, though.

 

[Teleon22]

??? Extra culture from Stonehenge? If religion is present (aka you're playing GnK), doesn't Stonehenge give extra faith, not culture?

Personally I find that the culture provided by the opener + legalism is often enough to complete Tradition in short enough time without any other bonuses. Though completing quests for cultural city-states never hurts (unless you actually want to delay policies until you can jump into Rationalism after Tradition).

Oh right! It provides extra faith points now. Well, I still go for it. First dibs on what bonuses your civilization recieves from religion is nice. Especially if you want to max your food.

 

[Rittmeyer]

On Immortal or Deity you have no chance to ever get Temple of Artemis.

Not true. I have been getting it on Deity a lot recently, using the OCC strategy posted on that other thread. I haven't failed to get it yet, to be more precise.