How do I construct a peaceful 'wide' empire in BNW?

[yung.carl.jung]

honestly, we all know that due to tradition being very strong and happiness being slightly harder to get now, playing tall is a lot easier than playing wide. you also recieve a science penalty for building multiple cities, which is horrible, because (technically) science is best early game and against deity or immortal ai you will have to settle really fast in order to get the few decent spots.

firaxis really fu-ked up with ethiopia. stele is literally the perfect building for going wide, it has everything and costs so few hammers. the bonus could have just been the other way around, more combat strength against civilizations with less cities than you have. they have so much potential, it really is a shame they turned into yet another boring tradition civ playing safe all game long.

that being said i am very surprised that the arabs have not been mentioned yet. they and the mayans are the only ones that comes close to being able to do a strat similiar to ics, maybe egypt or the celts, but not really in my opinion. due to arabias desert start bias you can (this is a big problem, too, wide is extremely map dependant, tall only needs a river..) get a great religion (if you manage to get the pantheon, which on deity often times you won't, another reason why wide is not that great anymore).

caravans make it extremely easy to spread religion to nearby city states and opponents without having to spam missionaries, which means you can invest more faith into pagodas or mosques. it also means you get more gold from tithe or more faith from pilgrimage. really, faith is an early game investment which scales slowly, but works insane well mid to late game. arabas ub might be one of the best in the entire game, getting more luxuries for trading is obviously huge if you are struggling with happiness anyway.

only with the arabs i've been able to successfully settle more than seven or eight cities and have them actually be decent. if you get pagodas or mosques you should be golden, your faith output lategame is absolutely insane and you should be able to buy great people every other turn, which is really helpful. if i do get a strong religion i almost always go piety after liberty, because the ai tends to prefer getting the perks for faithbuying science buildings or industrial era units, which means you can get the belief that allows you to buy all great people. a big help, especially considering liberty does not give you a gp to buy, neither does piety. generally you will have a ton of gold and a ton of faith, supporting any kind of victory condition really. another thing i love about the arabs is that even "useless" cities, for example desert cities without a river and without petra have some use: they generate one faith per tile, so one faith per citizien.

give them a try, they're an all around amazing civ and the camel archer is easily one of the best uus in the entire game, definitely up there with keshik, chu-ko-nu, longbows, impi and all the other goodies.

 

[noonex]

What do you guys think about commerce +2h/lux ans patronages +2h/lux for a +8h/lux from CS?

IMHO: If you can't control your happiness - then any happiness source is good. But usually there are better choices than commerce/patronage trees. (because those need really a lot of culture investments with relatively smaller outcome; and because happiness bonuses come very late).

@yung.carl.jung - please note that OP was talking about Immortal, which quite differs from Deity.
And science penalty per city doesn't hurt that bad if you able to build University in there and fill Scientist slots relatively quickly.

 

[Evil Spock]

Ethiopia, Mayans or Romans on standard Pangea with 6 civs 10 city states choose where you want your land, settle the barrier and backfill while maintaining a relatively normal military and a spaghetti road network and your fine. Rome a for faster city development and legions Connecting roads also a good deterrent, maya and Ethiopia faith from Their UBs and with piety for both of these especially Mayans you will produce truck loads of faith (gold and science with Jesuit education and gold bono uses from temples mainly Mayans when producing temples)

 

[BARBEERIAN]

You could also try going Poland, those extra policies let you have the best of both world. Go liberty and get collective rule (for the free settler + settler production bonus). Usually I'll send three settlers out fairly far to block off a chunk of land. any policies you get at this point put into tradition (finish all of tradition then go back and finish the rest of liberty). build NC asap in your 4 city empire and then plop down as many cities as you can get afterwards.

 

[Chunkook]

Hello baekgom84!

Every Civ player has to be mindful of this simple dogma - You must play what you've been given in order to be successful.

In essence that means that you shouldn't try to go wide if you have space for 3 cities and your neighbours are warmongers.

4-city Tradition is the ultimate strategy due to the sole reason that it's universal. There's almost no scenario in which you cant make it work. Strength + Simplicity = Success

Wide is strong too, don't get me wrong. But it's requirements are a lot more - luxuries, space, religion (optional, but highly recommended) and on top of all it's harder to play due to the need of better planing and micro-ing when it comes to city development, Great people, etc.

My advice would be this:
- Play on the general maps - Pangaea, Continents, Fractal.
- Begin with a scout. Remember - Without space you can't go wide, so you need to get info on the land asap!
- Depending on your starting location go for either Pottery (When you can get a decent pantheon to help with religion) or AH (When there's some flat grassland or plain for a production boost)
- Next you should build a monument - you need your culture going fast in order to get those settlers out.
- Now you need to choose: Get a scout if there's a lot more to discover (usually 1 scout and the warrior should be enough), shrine (if you went pottery for the pantheon), worker (if you don't need either of the previous 2)
- At pop 3 start building settlers - it's tempting to wait for the policy to get 1 free and the others 50% faster, but the AI will have settled too much if you hadn't gotten lucky with culture ruins.

From there on settling with priority is key: Settle where you can border the AI from expanding towards you; where you will get at least 1 lux; on land with production (due to happiness problems you won't be growing these cities early on, so in order for them to be effective you need good production tiles).

Don't be too greedy when it comes to land - remember that a wide city will never work all the tiles in its range - if a you watch out to settle your 4 cities with Tradition in perfect spots at about 5-6 tiles from one another, when going wide aim at 4 tiles distance.

There's much more to it but these are the principles in the beginning (At least for me they are). Good luck with your empire and tell us of your successes!

 

[stormtrooper412]

If you want a wide empire, and you want to be peaceful, you should consider the following:

1. Settle near luxuries, ideally every city should have one at least
2. Try to plan ahead your settlement. That means first build MUST be a scout. Look ahead and watch out for barbs, in the early game (before turn 50-60) they are more dangerous than an other Civ.

3. It's a gamble to wait out for the free Settler. I usually don't wait that long, I send my scouts to steal workers and get settlers as soon as I have the opening scout/scout/monument finished.

4. At that point your game might slow down, in my experience, a Liberty game is exponential, meaning you can start out slowly but then snowball really well.

Obvious tradeoff is that national wonders are more costly. Your main focus should be gold, religion and science. Culture is usually good on its own, grow if you can and when you can. Never neglect your military though, build pikes whenever you can.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Two wide empire threads merged

 

[yung.carl.jung]

@nonex

..but playing on immortal should only make getting a great religion easier, so the things i said apply even more, no? if i really go for it i can get petra or desert folklore in most deity games, it really shouldn't be a problem getting a decent religion and petra on immortal imo

 

[beetle]

does the term 'wide empire' imply that its wideness is at least partly gained through military might?

No, the convention is that wide means self-founding six or more cities. Warmongering is combatable with both Tradition and Liberty, but is a different subject.

Lots of good advise in this thread, the only suggestion I can add is to give yourself the option to replay maps. Try 3/4 city Tradition first (because it is strong and easy) and once you feel like you have that mastered, go back to games where it turns out there was room to go wide with Liberty. Once replaying maps leads to games that are close to as strong (maybe stronger, but for sure more engaging) as when you went 3/4 city Tradition, you will be in good shape to make the Liberty/Tradition decision more dynamically with future games.

 

[BlackWizard]

On ICS style games I usually settle cities on top of luxuries if possible. You dont have to improve that luxury to get happiness and you get extra gold instantly.