When people talk about the strongest civiliations they usually mention the Babylonians. And I agree they are good. But I think Greek might be even better, if you play on their strengths. City states can give some really insane bonusses.
In my current game as Greek I have now allied 13 out of 16 city states. The bonusses from that are truly insane. My three military allies make sure I never have to build a military unit at all. All my cities do is build buildings and world wonders. I have 4 cultural allies and 1 friendly, so that's 90 culture. If you don't expand too much that gives you policies quite quickly. And finally 6 maritime allies. That's 30 food in my capital, and 18 food in every other city. Truly insane. Your cities just keep growing and growing with no limit.
This is only my first ever game, so I made plenty of newbie mistakes. But it's already clear that city states are way overpowered.
A strategy to exploit this is quite simple. Use a GL slingshot to get civil service and the medieval era. Save your policies before that and once you have patronage unlocked invest there.
With your first 250 gold buy friendship with a maritime city state, preferably one with a friendly or neutral personality close by you. The next 250 gold buys you an alliance. After that save your gold until you have both Philanthrophy and Aesthetics. Once you have those two buying alliances becomes ridiculously easy. Make sure you do as many city states quests as possible, except quests to destroy other city states. Never ever do that.
A nice trick is that with Philanthrophy and Aesthetics you start at 20 and gain 40 influence for only 250 gold. So you can buy a 1-turn alliance from every city state in the world. Useful for doing resource-related quests.
Expand your empire to a moderate size. Enough cities to get a good cash-flow, but not too many to make social policies very expensive. Keep buying alliances and occasionally fight back the ai. Sit back and enjoy.
I'm breezing through King difficulty so easily it's laughable. And this despite making a lot of errors early on. Such as not realizing you could delay buying policies. Stuck with 3 worthless liberty ones.
For policies get Scholasticism and Educated Elite before unlcoking any other branch. The last patronage policy (Cultural Diplomacy) is only situationally useful.
From there on any win condition lies open.
In my current game as Greek I have now allied 13 out of 16 city states. The bonusses from that are truly insane. My three military allies make sure I never have to build a military unit at all. All my cities do is build buildings and world wonders. I have 4 cultural allies and 1 friendly, so that's 90 culture. If you don't expand too much that gives you policies quite quickly. And finally 6 maritime allies. That's 30 food in my capital, and 18 food in every other city. Truly insane. Your cities just keep growing and growing with no limit.
This is only my first ever game, so I made plenty of newbie mistakes. But it's already clear that city states are way overpowered.
A strategy to exploit this is quite simple. Use a GL slingshot to get civil service and the medieval era. Save your policies before that and once you have patronage unlocked invest there.
With your first 250 gold buy friendship with a maritime city state, preferably one with a friendly or neutral personality close by you. The next 250 gold buys you an alliance. After that save your gold until you have both Philanthrophy and Aesthetics. Once you have those two buying alliances becomes ridiculously easy. Make sure you do as many city states quests as possible, except quests to destroy other city states. Never ever do that.
A nice trick is that with Philanthrophy and Aesthetics you start at 20 and gain 40 influence for only 250 gold. So you can buy a 1-turn alliance from every city state in the world. Useful for doing resource-related quests.
Expand your empire to a moderate size. Enough cities to get a good cash-flow, but not too many to make social policies very expensive. Keep buying alliances and occasionally fight back the ai. Sit back and enjoy.
I'm breezing through King difficulty so easily it's laughable. And this despite making a lot of errors early on. Such as not realizing you could delay buying policies. Stuck with 3 worthless liberty ones.
For policies get Scholasticism and Educated Elite before unlcoking any other branch. The last patronage policy (Cultural Diplomacy) is only situationally useful.
From there on any win condition lies open.
