Question: Best strategy for having a sprawling empire?

[futurehermit]

I think that if you want a sprawling empire early you should focus on cottages, currency, and col as they will give you more bang for your buck than shrines and pumping missionaries everywhere.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

Hmm I may agree to some extent. Personally, I don't think you can miss if you incorporate both strategies.

Aim for an early religion or two first, because code of laws and currency take far longer to get if you try to beeline them, stunting your science growth.

To make it easier, maybe try polytheism and monotheism, claim as many techs like agriculture and pottery as possible. Then beeline code of laws and Oracle your way into theology. Or vice versa, oracle your way into code of laws and research theology. Whip yourself a mess of workers and settlers, and focus on one or two types of missionaries at a time. Don't worry so much about spreading EVERY faith. You will only get one or two holy shrines without serious effort. Your capital and perhaps one other city should focus on the proper wonders. It's a difficult journey, and it works best if you can have 6 cities sitting right on the border of your capital in good locations. In other words, spawning on a peninsula or tundra or in the middle of a desert is not your friend. The freshwater lake in the middle of a continent is your friend.

If you have a city dedicated to building workers and settlers, a city dedicated to building missionaries, a city dedicated to wonder production, and some of your capital's neighbors dedicated to cottage growth and merchants, you are sitting pretty.

When you have built your second holy shrine, preferably in the same city, turn a couple people into priests and try to get a third great prophet that way. The third always takes the longest, unless you have the 100% great people bonus.

At some point, if your neighbors are close, you will need a dedicated military barracks. Maybe aim for a former "missionary" city to do that, as it is most likely one focused on production, not commerce.

I say that a combination of the two strategies is good for business.

 

[globester]

I wonder, you seem to entire neglect your military. Don't you get troubled by neighbouring civs that send a SoD? You play at prince, but already at noble other civs will have a go at you when you neglect your army.
Also, aren't you troubled with not having anything for your workers to do, since you seem to beeline religions and forget about worker techs.
You seem to get techs so much easier than the AI that it more sounds like you're playing on warlord. Ofcourse I've only started playing civ4 a few weeks ago, so it might be true what you're saying.

 

[Jet]

This is my first post on this forum.

Welcome.

How would YOU improve this strategy of mega-expansionism in spite of maintenance costs? What would you add to this? Suggestions, questions, comments, all are welcome.

I'd spread just one religion, let my science slider drop below where yours is, and build different stuff. If I didn't need an offense army I'd probably build more Markets, Courthouses, Banks, and/or Hereditary Rule units than you build. I don't know how you use your land, but I suspect I might emphasize Cottages and city growth more than you.

If you want to post a 4000 BC save, a save from the date you come out of anarchy after switching to State Property (for which you'd probably need YouSendIt or something), and information about how many cities you had when, I'll post my save at the same date without looking at yours, keeping rough pace with your number of cities, and show you what I mean. Not to one up you, but for the sake of discussion.

Edit:
focus on cottages, currency, and col
Yes. What he said. Listen to him; he has recently become a bodhisattva. Somehow this was also crossposted with your last post, askthepizzaguy. But one shrine or two is very different from four.