The small things that give you an edge.

[Nekondas]

You can combine Consulates with "Pledge to protect" to get permanently friendly with all City-States on the map without spending a dime.
Siam + above = extremely good, some say even overpowered

 

[Gori the Grey]

Move naval exploration units one space at a time. If you hit one tile of Great Barrier Reef, see if you can move around the space to continue your exploring without hitting its second tile. Wait until some CSs ask for a natural wonder, then go spring the second tile and get some influence.

 

[Tich]

Set your cities to production focus at the start of every game. You'll build things as quickly as possible.

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

Start by building a Worker and researching animal husbandry to get your horses hooked up. You can sell them for 1gpt per to civs that you meet.

Beeline Drama and Poetry so that you can open up Aesthetics. Everyone builds the guilds regardless of their VC and having extra great musicians is always going to be helpful.

If a CS wants a road set your Workers to auto-improve. They'll take care of those kinds of tedious tasks for you.

ICSing is still the strongest strategy. Plant cities every 4 tiles (don't worry about how good/bad the spot is) to maximize its benefits.

Comp Bows are good but Horsemen are better. If you want to wage early war and capture cities mass Horsemen. They're fast and they shred ranged units such as CBs. They're great taking cities and they have a ton of resilience.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

Egypt is the strongest civ in the game because they're the best wonder spammers. If you re-roll for Marble and get Aristocracy from Tradition and the pantheon that adds 15% production to early wonders then you can build nearly every wonder in every game. They are God tier and you should always pick them.

You need to establish trade routes before you can trade luxuries to people. Get caravans fast and get some Open Borders so that you can send them to people. You'll fall behind on money/happiness otherwise.

Moderator Action: Can we please be a little kinder to new members? Look at the mess this creates below.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Set your cities to production focus at the start of every game. You'll build things as quickly as possible.

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

Start by building a Worker and researching animal husbandry to get your horses hooked up. You can sell them for 1gpt per to civs that you meet.

Beeline Drama and Poetry so that you can open up Aesthetics. Everyone builds the guilds regardless of their VC and having extra great musicians is always going to be helpful.

If a CS wants a road set your Workers to auto-improve. They'll take care of those kinds of tedious tasks for you.

ICSing is still the strongest strategy. Plant cities every 4 tiles (don't worry about how good/bad the spot is) to maximize its benefits.

Comp Bows are good but Horsemen are better. If you want to wage early war and capture cities mass Horsemen. They're fast and they shred ranged units such as CBs. They're great taking cities and they have a ton of resilience.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

Egypt is the strongest civ in the game because they're the best wonder spammers. If you re-roll for Marble and get Aristocracy from Tradition and the pantheon that adds 15% production to early wonders then you can build nearly every wonder in every game. They are God tier and you should always pick them.

You need to establish trade routes before you can trade luxuries to people. Get caravans fast and get some Open Borders so that you can send them to people. You'll fall behind on money/happiness otherwise.

This is some really good advice, but you forgot to mention that you should always keep a spare of each luxury resource around, just in case barbarians sneak in and pillage one of them.

 

[Buccaneer]

I guess I am reading that list differently as I don't agree with many of them.

 

[KingMorgan]

I guess I am reading that list differently as I don't agree with many of them.

I agree with none of them, thought the post was missing the /s tag.

 

[kb27787]

Set your cities to production focus at the start of every game. You'll build things as quickly as possible.

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

Start by building a Worker and researching animal husbandry to get your horses hooked up. You can sell them for 1gpt per to civs that you meet.

Beeline Drama and Poetry so that you can open up Aesthetics. Everyone builds the guilds regardless of their VC and having extra great musicians is always going to be helpful.

If a CS wants a road set your Workers to auto-improve. They'll take care of those kinds of tedious tasks for you.

ICSing is still the strongest strategy. Plant cities every 4 tiles (don't worry about how good/bad the spot is) to maximize its benefits.

Comp Bows are good but Horsemen are better. If you want to wage early war and capture cities mass Horsemen. They're fast and they shred ranged units such as CBs. They're great taking cities and they have a ton of resilience.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

Egypt is the strongest civ in the game because they're the best wonder spammers. If you re-roll for Marble and get Aristocracy from Tradition and the pantheon that adds 15% production to early wonders then you can build nearly every wonder in every game. They are God tier and you should always pick them.

You need to establish trade routes before you can trade luxuries to people. Get caravans fast and get some Open Borders so that you can send them to people. You'll fall behind on money/happiness otherwise.

REALLY? as far as I know I don't use any mods for my emperor/immortal games... (and still win easily on emperor)
And while Egypt is somewhat strong, I find in BNW that a lot of civs have more OP bonuses than Egypt.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

*shakes head*

 

[kb27787]

Tip: Early game, as long as your happiness is not negative, it's all good. (feel free to delay improving luxuries if they are not salt)

No need for early scouts if you do not have optics and you are not playing Pangaea; also if an enemy civ blocks a choke, you cannot get pass without OB so don't bother to much. Scouts (unless you are Shoshone) are overrated.

Don't rush to get workers if you do not have enough military units to protect all your improved tiles!

Granaries are powerful for any city with combinations of wheat, banana, or deer, and building it first in those cases will net you more food than a worker.

Don't bother building workers if you can steal one!

Hanging gardens are a terrific way to boost your city's productivity (since it negates having to work food tiles); go for it if the other civs took liberty or piety first. It will ensure you can afford to speed build more important things later.

At spawn look for choke points and defensible terrain when considering where to place your capitol. If possible, save your initial spawn point for your 2nd city and move your capitol up to where it can block the other civ from expanding into your territory. (if you spawn in a peninsula and you see tundra tiles, signaling that it is the edge of the map, for example, this is a good time to wander with your first settler a bit)

Most gold based luxuries (plantation products) are not worth improving early game once you get your first copy to offset unhappiness (food/production is king). Settle your cities within 3 tiles of non-luxury resources, while you can afford to be 5-6 tiles away from luxuries and still get them with culture.

It is well worth it to spend a great general's citadel ability in extending your borders to access some resources like oil for your planes or aluminum for your hydro plants and rockets; those things can make the difference between life and death.

Keep your neighbors weak by bribing THEIR neighbors to declare war on them, then move in for the kill on their capitol.

It is not the end of the world if you do not have your own religion; try to pick whatever religion will give you most faith endgame and do whatever means to get access to it (sometimes it means DoW and capturing their prophet/missionary in foreign lands).

Isabella is OP with certain NWs. Kill her first if she spawns with Mt Sinai, Uluru, Great Barrier Reef or lake Victoria. (or at least take the city with the NW in it)

Likewise, salt-spawn AIs are OP. Plot for their downfall first.

If you do not have enough votes (but still have a good amount) to become WC host, and there is a runaway civ, consider giving all your votes to a 3rd civ (who hopefully has some CS allies of their own and can win with your help) They will greatly appreciate it and you won't have to worry about diplomatic victory for a while; and you can always take the host status away from them the next vote if they get annoying.

Jungle spawns suck. Clearing jungle does not give production and requires a higher tech. Your first city (if you want to get any production going at all) MUST be on a hill if you spawn in a jungle.

Protect your friends and CS allies by surrounding their cities with your units when they are at war. Then let their enemies shoot at the city in vain because they cannot get a melee unit adjacent to the city to take it.

You can steal enemy great prophets to found a religion of your own.

If you have another source of gold (from religion), feel free to have all the caravans send food/production to your capitol.

A good way to stagnate a losing war is to take a city (hopefully at a choke) then hand it over to a 3rd civ (hopefully one the civ warring against you is reluctant to make a DoW with; usually, their friend, or a stronger military force, the latter of which is risky because they might eventually attack you, or a civ in which the warring civ does not have open borders with) for some gold/luxuries/whatever. Their troops can never reach your empire now and you can easily go kill off any remaining CS allies in reach they have. Their AI will rate the war's progress on 2 things: remaining army (you may still be much smaller) and trend of the war (which side has lost more). Even with an inferior force if the AI sees that you've been the one doing all the damage, they will offer peace with some extra goodies in most cases.

Horses and artillery make a terrifying combo as they can bring a city down with impunity. Horses are weak against cities themselves but their range allows them to stay at a safe distance until the city has no HP.

Use spies even on minor cities to gain sight for your artilleries.

Naval units are generally more powerful than land ones for the same cost. A frigate will go a long way if battles are being waged on the coast, even if the city itself is not coastal.

Finally,
Grow your capitol!!! A size 50 capitol is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[knighterrant81]

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

Bad idea. You want your Warrior for early barb rushes. He can do some exploring before, say, turn 25. But after that he needs to go hi-tail it to your capital and protect your tiles (especially if you went for an early worker and have upgraded tiles).

Automate is ok once you've basically won the game anyway, but the early game is the WORST time for automated anything.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Depends on your neighbors and if you do anything to tick them off. Settling near your neighbors ticks them off. Being more powerful (in population, cities, or whatever) ticks them off. They also are more likely to invade if your army is wimpy. You can't really spam units early on, but you'll want a few to deter the Shaka's and Alex's of the world. Its sort of like outrunning a bear - you don't have to more units than the bear, you just have to be a harder target than the other guy.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

THe honor opener has its place, however it isn't ALWAYS the first move you want. If you're planning on attacking (relatively) early, like when you're playing Zulus or Assyrians, Honor (the whole tree) might be useful. Otherwise, there's better options out there.

Basically, don't OPEN a tree unless you plan to use the rest of it (Exploration is an exception). Its not worth the culture hit otherwise.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

I think you need a bit more practice. Civ is a bit weird in that, strats that are the best at low to mid difficulties are completely worthless and have to be thrown out at higher difficulties. Usually in a game, its more about executing the same strategies more effectively, but Civ has always turned this on its head.

Namely, at higher difficulties you often have to give up on things like Wonders and even Religion, and instead focus on being extremely efficient with your tech, cities, and growth, and take advantage of the AI's inefficient play to get ahead by the endgame.

 

[IBYCFOTA]

People are really bad at recognizing sarcasm on the internet.

 

[kb27787]

People are really bad at recognizing sarcasm on the internet.

Scary part is, I don't think he's being sarcastic
(he got the Egypt part right... if you play on prince/king you halve the time you spend on wonders with marble + pantheon)

 

[_megafone_]

rofl @ this thread

 

[Arachnofiend]

Scary part is, I don't think he's being sarcastic
(he got the Egypt part right... if you play on prince/king you halve the time you spend on wonders with marble + pantheon)

Tich's a deity player, he's absolutely being sarcastic. And that includes the section on Egypt.

Important point to note: if your argument for why a civ is the best begins with "if you play on prince/king", that is not a very good argument.

 

[ense7en]

Set your cities to production focus at the start of every game. You'll build things as quickly as possible.

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

Start by building a Worker and researching animal husbandry to get your horses hooked up. You can sell them for 1gpt per to civs that you meet.

Beeline Drama and Poetry so that you can open up Aesthetics. Everyone builds the guilds regardless of their VC and having extra great musicians is always going to be helpful.

If a CS wants a road set your Workers to auto-improve. They'll take care of those kinds of tedious tasks for you.

ICSing is still the strongest strategy. Plant cities every 4 tiles (don't worry about how good/bad the spot is) to maximize its benefits.

Comp Bows are good but Horsemen are better. If you want to wage early war and capture cities mass Horsemen. They're fast and they shred ranged units such as CBs. They're great taking cities and they have a ton of resilience.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

Egypt is the strongest civ in the game because they're the best wonder spammers. If you re-roll for Marble and get Aristocracy from Tradition and the pantheon that adds 15% production to early wonders then you can build nearly every wonder in every game. They are God tier and you should always pick them.

You need to establish trade routes before you can trade luxuries to people. Get caravans fast and get some Open Borders so that you can send them to people. You'll fall behind on money/happiness otherwise.

Troll post...not sure why either, since Tich is a great player who usually offers great advice.
Unfortunately these are just things you don't want to do.

Moderator Action: Calling someone a troll is to be a troll. Please report trolls and let the staff handle it.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[digrosz]

Let people have their humor

 

[Ramanag]

To be fair to Tich's 'advice,' I do set my cities to focus production at the beginning of the game, I just override the governor most of the time.

 

[glory7]

Set your cities to production focus at the start of every game. You'll build things as quickly as possible.

Set your Warrior to auto-explore. He'll uncover the whole map while you think of clever strategies based on the terrain that you're given.

If you have peaceful inner intentions the AI won't declare war on you. There's no need to build units.

Opening Honor enables your scouting Warrior to better tackle the barbarian scum. Always take the opener at the very least.

Start by building a Worker and researching animal husbandry to get your horses hooked up. You can sell them for 1gpt per to civs that you meet.

Beeline Drama and Poetry so that you can open up Aesthetics. Everyone builds the guilds regardless of their VC and having extra great musicians is always going to be helpful.

If a CS wants a road set your Workers to auto-improve. They'll take care of those kinds of tedious tasks for you.

ICSing is still the strongest strategy. Plant cities every 4 tiles (don't worry about how good/bad the spot is) to maximize its benefits.

Comp Bows are good but Horsemen are better. If you want to wage early war and capture cities mass Horsemen. They're fast and they shred ranged units such as CBs. They're great taking cities and they have a ton of resilience.

On Emperor+ the AI cheats and the only way to win is to cheat back. Download mods that appeal to you and use them to your advantage. That's how the game is played online. Talk to the No Quitter (NQ) group if you want to learn more about the cheat mods that they use.

Egypt is the strongest civ in the game because they're the best wonder spammers. If you re-roll for Marble and get Aristocracy from Tradition and the pantheon that adds 15% production to early wonders then you can build nearly every wonder in every game. They are God tier and you should always pick them.

You need to establish trade routes before you can trade luxuries to people. Get caravans fast and get some Open Borders so that you can send them to people. You'll fall behind on money/happiness otherwise.

lol nice trolling post....


Moderator Action: Calling someone a troll is to be a troll. Please report trolls and let the staff handle it.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Gruminmor]

Stealing a worker from a CS early(turn 19-20, quick speed) is a big help. I almost always do this.

 

[Novalia]

When researching a tech you can select the next tech to research by shift-clicking it.