If you're looking for a good Civ to practice going wide (I'm trying myself to break out of the 4 city tall empire) I have found Inca is actually a really great choice because your economy can be much more self sufficient and resilient. And a good economy helps all round, you can field a larger army, you have more options diplomatically, allows you to rush improvements, research agreements and you can take bigger loans if you need cash for example to buy 3 factories so you can get an early ideology etc.
I tried this map on large, continent, immortal by going wide and ended up conquering the entire continent by the renaissance. but I was still too slow and Greece had cleaned up the 3rd continent and had a huge science lead.
I'm currently doing a replay trying tradition but with the honor opener for barbs and republic in liberty (mainly so I could get pyramids).
I think it can be a viable strategy having a bit of honor and liberty if you aiming for an empire that is both tall and wide. The honor opener pays for itself many times over with the bonuses against barbs and if your smart in positioning units near city states you can use them to liberate captured CS workers and clear barb camps as city state quests. If your going wide the happiness, culture and faith bonuses from this really overcome the problems that you get from stagnant cities.
I will still finish Tradition as it easily has the best finisher with engineers from faith allowing me to rush wonders but since I can't use that until the Industrial age it's ok if it waits a little longer and terrace farms are so good that the extra growth from Tradition isn't missed too badly.
I have also found that if you're planning on going wide it can be very wise in some circumstances to pay your friendly/neutral neighbours (the ones you're trying to stay on good terms with) 5GPT and you should get the bright green "We've traded Recently". If you get that that flag with embassies and friendship (if you can get it) it will help to balance out the red "They believe we are building new cities too aggressively" and may thus prevent denouncements and and wars. And 5GPT is nothing compared to the cost of having every Civ declare war on you and losing all your trading partners. And once a Civ hates you it is very hard to rebuild friendships with them. So paying them a small amount of gold can help them to overlook the fact that you're quickly taking up the best land on the map.
Some of the tile yields from terrace farms adjacent to mountains are incredible and even better with deserts and the Petra. And those food yields are before fertilizers
Building Roads on hills saves a huge amount of money on tile maintenance and is even better with the Machu Picchu.
Currently I have only 3 cities connected to the capital and these city connections earn 32GPT (including Machu Picchu) with only 1 GPT maintenance. For all other Civs usually your lucky if your city connection income initially breaks even with the tile maintenance costs. And of course these costs go up even more once you research railroad which is the cost of the +25% production to cities. But for Inca the railroad cost for these cities will be next to nothing providing a free +25% productivity.
This makes Inca I think a very competitive choice for going wide.
Added initial save file.
I tried this map on large, continent, immortal by going wide and ended up conquering the entire continent by the renaissance. but I was still too slow and Greece had cleaned up the 3rd continent and had a huge science lead.
I'm currently doing a replay trying tradition but with the honor opener for barbs and republic in liberty (mainly so I could get pyramids).
I think it can be a viable strategy having a bit of honor and liberty if you aiming for an empire that is both tall and wide. The honor opener pays for itself many times over with the bonuses against barbs and if your smart in positioning units near city states you can use them to liberate captured CS workers and clear barb camps as city state quests. If your going wide the happiness, culture and faith bonuses from this really overcome the problems that you get from stagnant cities.
I will still finish Tradition as it easily has the best finisher with engineers from faith allowing me to rush wonders but since I can't use that until the Industrial age it's ok if it waits a little longer and terrace farms are so good that the extra growth from Tradition isn't missed too badly.
I have also found that if you're planning on going wide it can be very wise in some circumstances to pay your friendly/neutral neighbours (the ones you're trying to stay on good terms with) 5GPT and you should get the bright green "We've traded Recently". If you get that that flag with embassies and friendship (if you can get it) it will help to balance out the red "They believe we are building new cities too aggressively" and may thus prevent denouncements and and wars. And 5GPT is nothing compared to the cost of having every Civ declare war on you and losing all your trading partners. And once a Civ hates you it is very hard to rebuild friendships with them. So paying them a small amount of gold can help them to overlook the fact that you're quickly taking up the best land on the map.
Some of the tile yields from terrace farms adjacent to mountains are incredible and even better with deserts and the Petra. And those food yields are before fertilizers
Building Roads on hills saves a huge amount of money on tile maintenance and is even better with the Machu Picchu.
Currently I have only 3 cities connected to the capital and these city connections earn 32GPT (including Machu Picchu) with only 1 GPT maintenance. For all other Civs usually your lucky if your city connection income initially breaks even with the tile maintenance costs. And of course these costs go up even more once you research railroad which is the cost of the +25% production to cities. But for Inca the railroad cost for these cities will be next to nothing providing a free +25% productivity.
This makes Inca I think a very competitive choice for going wide.
Added initial save file.
Though no railroad there.
