[GS] General strategies for mid-game.

[implodingchickens]

Hi. New to the forums so apologies in advance. I've got a few hundred hours under my belt but am only now trying to really improve on immortal and above. I'm alright at early expansion and warfare but around late medieval/ renaissance I always seem to stagnate. Has anyone got any general tips to keep the snowball rolling?

Thanks in advance

 

[Vargas1]

Assuming mid-game means you have a core of 6-12 cities relatively close together, a decent military base, and your initial basic districts (holy sites if you want religion, trade districts, government plaza and Tier 1 building, couple of campuses, encampment maybe), here are some general thoughts:

• Figure out how much growth you're looking for, and what type. Do you want to play a tall-ish game with around 10 cities (or fewer)? If so, your growth may be mostly done by the time you hit mid-game, save for a few additions for strategics later on. On the other hand if you want to go wide and spam for your victory condition (25 campuses, 20 cities with theatre squares, etc.), then you'll need to figure out a plan for continued growth while building your existing cities
• Start having specialized cities - pick a central city with high production to spam out builders; have a city or two on your borders with encampments who are producing troops (if you need them); if you're going wide use your ancestral hall city for settlers. If you're going for a science victory, look at which cities are likeliest to end up with the best production to situate spaceports down the road (I usually aim for three spaceports, and typically one ends up in a Petra city if I managed to find one with a bunch of hills)
• Start to aim towards your victory condition. If you're going domination or religion, it's pretty straightforward - make a plan for conquest and build the units to do it. For science, get campuses and their buildings up in nearly all cities, and get industrial zones in your key production cities (and you probably want to keep expanding as much as you can for a while). For culture, meeting all other civs is crucial, and as much as possible being on good terms with them (including open borders).
• Target your key wonders - Kilwa is big for any game, but you can also look at the policy card wonders, Oxford, Ruhr, Broadway, etc.
• Also target important tech/civic milestones and be ready for them - if you're continuing to fight, have fresh troops sitting next to experienced ones when you hit Nationalism to form immediate corps; have settlers ready when you unlock new key strategics (coal/oil for anyone, aluminum for science) in case you need to go settle to gather them; if you want to buy spaceports, save up gold./faith for when you unlock them
• For cultural, and to a somewhat lesser degree science, at some point you will want to switch at least some of your cities to more or less just running projects (theatre square or campus typically) rather than continuing to build infrastructure or grow new cities. Projects dramatically speed up how fast you can get great works, particularly as you move into trying to theme and start getting tourism modifiers.
• Finally, don't let yourself fall behind in any major area - I find there's a tendency sometimes to focus on expansion early, then play catchup for a bit, then forget about whatever I was catching up on while I build commercial hubs, wonders, etc. Then next thing I know I'm back behind in science and find an advanced army mustering next door.

 

[implodingchickens]

Thanks for all the great advice and I will definitely take it to heart. By the sounds of it I really need to start specialising my cities and tailoring to a victory condition so that helps a lot. Will start a game and see how it goes. Thanks again.

 

[Vargas1]

Thanks for all the great advice and I will definitely take it to heart. By the sounds of it I really need to start specialising my cities and tailoring to a victory condition so that helps a lot. Will start a game and see how it goes. Thanks again.

It really depends what type of game you're playing and what you're looking for. Some of my most fun games have been ones where I really didn't aim for a specific condition until late in the game - if you're using a strong generalist civ (Cree, Australia, Germany, others) and are expanding and building up infrastructure, you can wait until well past turn 100 to decide what kind of victory you want to go after - you'll have enough production to build districts, gold to buy buildings, faith to keep expanding/buy units, etc. The key there, on higher levels, is to make sure that you have plenty of time to ultimately get to your desired victory before someone else.

For other civs/games with a clear focus towards one path, you probably want to start specializing much sooner. You still want to expand and build infrastructure, but if you know you're going for a science victory, you want to make sure you have campuses in (nearly) every city and you want to target your 1-3 high production cities for spaceports.

 

[Victoria]

It really depends what type of game you're playing and what you're looking for.

For example SV is certainly early planning, even pre T80. While for most games I get to T80 then set myself some goal like 500 gold in trade or 3 size 20 cities. I find some of the victories drag and you can make your own call on how well you are doing in the world by T150. You do not need a victory conditions unless you want an electronic marker of how old you are going or if you are ticking civs off a list.

 

[tiamats4esgares]

You won't get far in deity if you aren't already planning a certain victory type since turn 1.

You also won't accomplish much going for wonders, unless your civ has a specific advantage on building if or if you super beeline for it (which is usually a terrible idea).

Since nobody has mentioned diplomacy, I'll touch on that...

You want to build the Mahabodhi Temple (meaning you need to found a religion), and rush the Statue of Liberty. I've had games where I won as soon as it was built. It's also super important to meet all civs ASAP and have a solid group of at least 8 cities with decent production.