Is there only one strategy for Emperor and lower??

[metalmadt]

I was watching the recents GOTM and I was wondering if Civ5 only offer 1 strategy for winning.

I would call it :

Early rush with warrior/ horseman

Once you control the map but one capital, focusing on your goal :

Gold for diplomacy
Culture for cultural
Science for space race

You can still win peacefully but being able to control the whole map early because most city have there own luxury ressource allow you to take hundreds of years on your victory date.

Did someone got a really good cultural, science or diplo victory date without using that tactic. At emperor, for me, it start getting harder to early rush but I'm sure good Deity win use that tactic too.

 

[BobbleBobble]

If anything, horseman rush gets MORE powerful the higher the difficulty gets, mostly because it remains effective while many other strategies get bogged down.

 

[CharonJr]

As you saw on the GotM I am a great fan of early warrior rushs, and yes, it works on diety, too, but you tend to need more warriors.

Basically I have seen no other tactic as powerful as an early rush, focused ICS might be the exception, but up to now I just keep failing to do a concentrated ICS and end up rushing anyway - I just hate having to raise my SP costs when I can get decent additional cities as puppets instead

CharonJr

 

[DonChipotle]

It's certainly a good strategy, but on Emperor or lower I think a lot of different strategies are viable.

I think it's been the case in every civ game that conquering a neighbor and then leveraging the additional land and resources to gain an advantage that ultimately leads to whatever victory condition you want was a strong game plan.

However, doing so on higher difficulty levels will likely lead to being DoW dogpiled by other AI's, which may ruin your day. It seems like aggressive expanding gets you diplo-demerits with the AI in Civ5. Sort of smart really, since that's what gives you a big advantage.

 

[Martin Alvito]

On Emperor, you can run just about any strategy you feel like running. As long as you remember to build a military and keep it current, you will do just fine.

You can even win peacefully on Deity (aimlessgun has an OCC screenie), but you give up a lot to play that way, which makes winning much more difficult.

 

[stormerne]

On Emperor, you can run just about any strategy you feel like running. As long as you remember to build a military and keep it current, you will do just fine.

You can even win peacefully on Deity (aimlessgun has an OCC screenie), but you give up a lot to play that way, which makes winning much more difficult.

I'm with DonChipotle and Martin Alvito on this. On Emperor the pressure is off to a great extent, you can relax a little, and you can more or less pick your target victory conditions and the strategy you want to try to get there. If you concentrate more on enjoying rather than just winning, I'll bet you find several ways you like.

 

[Txurce]

Agreed. I play Emperor and choose a victory condition beforehand, as well as a city range (3-8 for everything but conquest). I almost never keep puppet states. And I wind up building 75% of what's available, which is fun. In my last two games I've shifted from heavy use of TPs to all farms, and more experimentation with SPs, going much heavier on culture to help win the space race. It keeps the game fun.

 

[DaveGold]

All victories are open to you on an Emporer pangea map. Cultural will probably be the hardest on pangea as your production and economy are siphoned into cultural assets.