Wanna play wide? Here's some civ-specific strategies to try!

[Tzar Sasha]

Took a few map re-rolls to get one that had sufficient luxuries to warrant a wide play.
Standard speed, Emperor, Huge, Lakes, Shoshone, Science Victory at T376. Its my fastest (and second) Emperor finish.

I had almost 10k faith saved up and couldn't use any of it. Never completed the rationalism tree (didn't pick up the research agreement one seeing how I was hoarding gold). Once I got Freedom, I worked my way up to being able to buy spaceship parts with gold. Then finished out the piety tree (all that was left was temples providing gold) and started working on the commerce tree. In the end I bought 3 and built 3.

Did do something different that shaved off a few turns. I didn't buy parts right away. Instead I waited till all the parts were researched and assigned them to cities that had built the spaceship factories (started to build as soon as factories were done, didn't wait for all to be researched before assigning -- just wanted to be clear on that). Then I changed production on the one that would take the longest and bought. Repeat till I did not have enough to purchase.

 

[sixty4half]

inthe,

The Feitoria does give unique luxes like Porcelain and Jewelry from Mercantile CSs.

The Nau has a single use ability that can only be used inside a CSs borders. It gives a sizable amount of gold and then it can't be used again for that ship.

Everything that you said about the Feitoria is correct in regards to providing more happiness and money. However; that doesn't make it more biased towards Tradition or Liberty. Sure Liberty needs the gold and happiness more, but it's not like Tradition can't find uses for it either.

Feitoria's do not help with Portugals UA because the term "Resource Diversity" refers to the diversity of Resources (Strategic and Luxury) within the borders of the Home and Destination city. The Feitoria does not affect this number because the resource is within the borders of the CS.

 

[Solutionfinder]

The UB is the real workhorse of Austrian relevance, and because it's both percent based and favors wonders and great people, it favors taller play.

May I just add that it is even better than most people think. You can build it in cities on hills unlike windmill which it replaces. It is the real workhorse, not only for GP production but also for hammers production, especially if you placed your cities on hills.

It favours both tall and wide play if you work specialists.

 

[danaphanous]

Took a few map re-rolls to get one that had sufficient luxuries to warrant a wide play.
Standard speed, Emperor, Huge, Lakes, Shoshone, Science Victory at T376. Its my fastest (and second) Emperor finish.

I had almost 10k faith saved up and couldn't use any of it. Never completed the rationalism tree (didn't pick up the research agreement one seeing how I was hoarding gold). Once I got Freedom, I worked my way up to being able to buy spaceship parts with gold. Then finished out the piety tree (all that was left was temples providing gold) and started working on the commerce tree. In the end I bought 3 and built 3.

Did do something different that shaved off a few turns. I didn't buy parts right away. Instead I waited till all the parts were researched and assigned them to cities that had built the spaceship factories (started to build as soon as factories were done, didn't wait for all to be researched before assigning -- just wanted to be clear on that). Then I changed production on the one that would take the longest and bought. Repeat till I did not have enough to purchase.

congrats! I don't usually pick freedom on huge with large empires as you miss the 25% science from factories and have less happiness sources until you get pretty tall, but it can work well if you got enough growth to have significant specialists empire-wide.

I assume if you went piety you got a religion as well? I'd like to hear what you chose and how successful it was.

Wide empires can do a lot better then that on finish time, but it takes some practice to get the speed and timings right. Hope it was a fun game!

 

[linaker]

An interesting guide - I think a lot of people misplay liberty like someone in their last game who had the Songhai, adopted liberty and only had 4 cities by turn 150. Not much point in going liberty if you are going to play it as if its tradition

Often with Liberty, you want to go with Honor or Piety as well. But the opener of both of these is most useful the earlier you get it. What do people do? Open Piety or Honor and delay Collective Rule? Rush for Collective Rule and then open Piety or Honor? Finish Liberty before opening another tree? Also do people wait to get to Collective Rule before building a settler?

 

[inthesomeday]

There's a fair amount of discussion on that, but I go scout>monument>shrine>settler (or a second scout if I feel my city can competently grow fast enough to make delay worth it, in which case scout>scout>shrine>monument>settler) on multi, unless I feel a granary is necessary/worth it. Policy progression goes Liberty>republic>collective rule>citizenship>meritocracy>representation>EITHER commerce opener>road maintenance reduction OR patronage, depending on how many I've left until rationalism. Piety very occasionally, only if I've got faith aplum and culture to throw around. To the Glory of God theoretically saves you two policies later on, from needing to fill rationalism, but also takes several policies to achieve.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

congrats! I don't usually pick freedom on huge with large empires as you miss the 25% science from factories and have less happiness sources until you get pretty tall, but it can work well if you got enough growth to have significant specialists empire-wide.

I assume if you went piety you got a religion as well? I'd like to hear what you chose and how successful it was.

Wide empires can do a lot better then that on finish time, but it takes some practice to get the speed and timings right. Hope it was a fun game!

My original plan was to go Order and get the reformation to purchase any GP with faith, but when I got to reform and saw that Sacred Sites was still available, I took it instead. Since I wasn't going to use Tradition that meant I'd have no reliable access to GEs for the spaceship parts, thus Freedom was the alternative.

My religion (if I recall correctly):
Sacred Waters -- not much help, only 2 cities founded on rivers
Tithes
Pagodas
the further spread or faster spread can't remember which one.
Hermitage gets culture and tourism
Sacred Sites.

After the first emperor attempt where I got shot down with major unhappiness once ideologies came around, I chose the above religion setup as a culture/tourism defense. By choosing Sacred Sites, I denied it to the others. By getting early tourism, I was at sufficient levels that when the others surpassed my tourism I had enough of a lead that I wasn't swayed by any other ideologies. In fact, I think it helped to convince a few civs to pick the same ideology. Of which, one of them proposed (and passed) making it the world ideology which helped with the happiness even further.

There were two wars which set me back a bit.
First Carthage wasn't happy that when I forward settled, my extra land grab split between their capital and their expo. In my defense they were still covered in fog due to forest and hills. They waited till well after the promise not to expand near them expired. One of my cities was taken but retaken in a few turns, then I took Carthage's capital and made peace. Some time later (like a couple of eras later) England and Korea wiped out Carthage.

England turned her eyes on me. I bribed Korea to fight England. I took a defensive posture against England. Between a city state ally next to one of the former Carthage expos and narrow passage between lakes, none of England's land troops attacked my cities. For some reason Denmark declared war and fought another ally that was near them (maybe they had a defensive pact, idk). Anyway England wouldn't negotiate peace until I took the original first expo of Carthage. Not wanting the happiness hit at that time (was in atomic era), I liberated the city and gave Carthage new breath. England and Denmark both sued for peace with a liberal donation of luxuries.

Thankfully in that last war I only took two cities to build additional troops and left the rest on building up for the space race. After all that it was a quiet button push till the end.

 

[danaphanous]

Yeah the fact that skipping tradition does not allow you to buy great engineers is a weakness of the liberty/order empire. It's a real shame because everything synergizes so well up to that point but you don't have a way to purchase engineers. Since you run the science specialists quite early to catch up it's unlikely you'll get more then 1 engineer naturally and usually it's the pyramids engineer which comes so early it's better spent on getting a nice renaissance wonder like Pisa, Forbidden palace, or sistine chapel.

My recommendation would be to save them if you can get them and maybe set one city on engineers so you'll be sure to get one. Maya long count can get a late engineer when it resets. You might look for other free GP options and use them taht way. Usually it's those 1-2 late tech parts that are holding you up so 1-2 engineers is all you need to save yourself a few turns. However, it is quite possible to just build them all at the same time cuz your empire is so big. What I do is buy spaceship factories and nuclear plants in the 6 best production cities and build hubble in my best city and then switch it to the last part when it comes around for the best finish time. This will make all your parts effectively half-price and minimize the time even without engineers. I'd still recommend order over freedom since the science, building purchasing perks, and happiness is better for a wide empire.

For religion your idea sounds good. Sacred waters is solely something you pull if you have a lot of rivers around. As you found if your area is too dry it will not be that powerful. I'd recommend it if you see your area can found 2/3 cities on river positions and if you take it definitely prefer them. The advantage of the pantheon is your happiness stretches farther allowing you to rapidly settle more land early and beat the AI to more sites peacefully. Because it is global happiness it also allows you to support a sizeably larger empire early game then would otherwise be possible as it reduces the settling penalty allowing to found some cities not in spots near new luxes. Since river cities get buildings that enhance production and growth it is a great choice for a wide empire if the rivers are around. It's great when it works but it doesn't work all games.

Thanks for sharing your game!

 

[psparky]

Thanks for the info in this guide. I like playing wide because, despite the city management workload getting pretty heavy, I just think it's more fun. I've been playing a few ICS type games recently (last one I founded 17 cities on a small map ), but thought I would give this guide a try.

I'm playing as Rome (never played them before) on a standard pangaea at emperor. This map looks pretty suitable, but I can't decide what pantheon to choose. The only one taken is the Wine/Incense one by Suleiman who is a little SE of the wine in the East.

Spoiler :

I seem to have a bit of everything! I could take desert folklore and buy some tiles. I could plan on settling coastal cities and take GotS (building shrines to get a religion). Maybe GotOS as I will be working 7 pastures fairly soon. Or even Stone Circles...

Any advice appreciated on pantheon or city locations.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

If you're going to have lots of cities, you could try the pantheon that gives you 2 science for each city connected to the capital. Drawback is it doesn't provide any faith to help you get to founding or enhancer any faster. You could take a great prophet, however, from the liberty finisher if you get that before a natural prophet and you fear losing the beliefs that you want.

There is also the pantheon that gives faith and culture for quarries I believe. Since you've got a marble and there are several stone in the near vicinity, you could try that. Wouldn't give you as much faith as the desert one tho.

As far as locations for cities... To the left of Rome there is a copper and a cocoa. Settle on the cocoa next to the mountain, then you can settle another on the hill to the left of that sticking out into the water to eventually grab both of those whale. You'll have 3 tiles between those two locations.


Question for you:
How do you manage the happiness if the city you found doesn't have access to luxuries/horse/stone for any extra happiness? Do you just not let them grow until the happiness is increased by other means?

 

[danaphanous]

yeah, you're right that terrain is literally perfect for a liberty start! Looks fun! Due to the diversity there isn't really a lot of pantheon picks that are "great" you're right.

My thoughts about pantheons: You don't have enough rivers to fully take advantage of the sacred waters REX. Stone circles is solid for faith but 3 of your 5 resources are in tundra which is a poor yield to be working and will dramatically hurt your growth and you won't want to settle your first cities down in the tundra so I'd pass on it. I usually only take it if I can work potentially 3-4 stone/marble quickly and they are in plains or grassland. Culture from pastures is solid, but not much better then other sources of culture in this case. I think your strongest pick definitely desert folklore and it's the only one I'd really take of the faith choices. The others are too weak in this scenario. With at least 5-6 workable tiles near the capital and desert near several other settlement sites. That will rake in faith all game with a wide empire and the desert hills and floodplains. If you manage to get it, then you may even get an early enough religion to pick a religious building to buy like I describe in Celts strategy for more happiness. Pagodas is the best. Dance of Aurora is not a bad choice either for a long term plan--you have a lot of flat tundra and several resources/hills that you'll eventually be working that it'll buff. But it won't be great for early faith like desert folklore so not recommended.

Alternatively you can pick another pantheon and just build the discounted shrines first in your expos for extra faith. I might be tempted to mix in piety just as an experiment this game. In combination with the faith output of folklore and an early building to buy + reformation belief it could be a nice synergy. Other ok pantheons: Goddess of love for extra happiness later, messenger of the gods for early science since you'll be ICS'ing a bit here, +1 culture from pastures, or even +1 culture from shrines. If you go with desert folklore you'll probably get a very early religion if you expand your borders at the capital. If you don't you'll get a later one and could go religious community like my guide. I do like that with Romans.

For city placement:

1. Forward settle suleiman and place a city on that eastern river to claim the 2 bison, 3 wine, and fish. Hilltop spot is best but your call based on how safe you feel. Suleiman is a bit aggressive but you're the Romans and I think you can take him on emperor, you might even DOW him early and steal his workers to keep him distracted if you can produce a few units. Pick up the tech for iron and then legions a bit earlier and keep a few near that city to watch him. This keeps him from expanding into your territory giving you time to settle many more areas. His faith with culture/faith from wines will spread to you giving you more culture and faith in that city too. He will attack you if you do this so watch him and be ready. Conquering him might be your second expansion after you settle all nearby spots.

2. Nearby site with mountain/river and extra cocoa, copper, sheep is nice and close

3. settling the desert hex near the whales is a solid spot for 3 ocean resources and stone. It is also +1 faith from the base hex with desert folklore converting the worthless desert.

4. tundra hex to the east just to the right of fish and north of deer is ok. Gives unique sugar and has good nearby food and several resources.

5. Desert hex east and northwest of extra cocoa near cow and fish

I'd need to see more but these are the best spots I see near you. It'll be interesting trying to fill it in as there is a lot of poorer terrain to the south. If there are any good spots up in the huge desert to the East you could really use your desert folklore there! After the nearby areas you can either choose to keep expanding toward what is free (up into desert or northern island) or invade suleiman. Taking him over might be a good call as your second expansion given rome's 2 powerful early UU.

 

[inthesomeday]

I count 12 desert tiles I'd be working as Liberty with this start. The 10 in the capital and then the two in the expand by the cocoa. Which I'd plant on the plains sheep hill. Then an expand by the sugar, one by the Ottoman wine. One near the whales, then that's enough global happiness from meritocracy alone to merit a no-lux expand, for which I might search that island north of the mainland, or expand near a CS/the Ottomans, depending on the out of frame terrain. Looks like 6 (MAYBE another on the land bridge with that cocoa, cow, and fish, and lumber mills for hanmers) cities to me, but maybe you could stretch some more depending on the other land.
Rome is unique in that you can go geographically VERY wide with them due to legion road building. I usually get iron working shortly after or shortly before education, around which time is a good time to road out to far expands.

 

[psparky]

Thanks a lot for the detailed replies guys I'm definitely going to take desert folklore and probably buy a couple of desert hills and mine them whilst building settlers (although gold could become a major problem)

2. Nearby site with mountain/river and extra cocoa, copper, sheep is nice and close

3. settling the desert hex near the whales is a solid spot for 3 ocean resources and stone. It is also +1 faith from the base hex with desert folklore converting the worthless desert.

The spots to the west are a little tricky. I can't settle on the cocoa for #2 and build at #3. I would have to build 3 on the peninsula like Tzar said. I'm tempted to settle the desert between the mountains, missing out on the river but gaining an immediate faith and allowing #3 on the desert near the whales.

I'm still thinking of going for the wine expo first. Of course when I reveal iron in three turns my plans may change.

Question for you:
How do you manage the happiness if the city you found doesn't have access to luxuries/horse/stone for any extra happiness? Do you just not let them grow until the happiness is increased by other means?

Essentially yes. Although I don't factor in local luxuries in deciding how big a city can grow - that global happiness (and the +1 from city connections) is used to grow what will be my best cities (or MORE CITIES) Most cities are capped at the the local happiness from buildings, although it's ok to grow once the city is building it's next happiness source (and this speeds up the building process too). Happiness from religion is key, pagodas in particular. Happiness can go somewhat negative as long as I can see the route back to positive happiness.

Update: Turn 45, plenty of iron including a 2 deposit east of the bison near wine. Moved a settler onto target hill turn 44, a Suleiman settler then moved alongside and his escort moved away to kill a barb . So, free worker and Suleiman blocked in and crippled.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

Maybe it is the lack of me using any extra mods, but I don't see how to determine an individual cities happiness in order to limit its growth. All I see is what is displayed on the main screen and so try to keep that happy rather than unhappy. Doesn't always work when the AI sometimes steals a CS out from under you or a CS loses its luxury for some reason.

 

[psparky]

Maybe it is the lack of me using any extra mods, but I don't see how to determine an individual cities happiness in order to limit its growth. All I see is what is displayed on the main screen and so try to keep that happy rather than unhappy. Doesn't always work when the AI sometimes steals a CS out from under you or a CS loses its luxury for some reason.

EUI shows the happiness from each building. I spent a lot of time counting these (and eventually tweaked EUI to display the count for me). Without EUI you can just count it using Colosseum (+2), Circus (+2), Stone Works (+1), Pagoda (+2) etc. I think it's also displayed on the Economic Overview, Resource and Happiness tab, but I don't yet have any in my current game to check.

 

[danaphanous]

Nice work on the forward-settle and free worker haha! I love doing that move to AI. On wide I consider it essential, especially in this case, because it prevents them settling your land and gives you time to settle a wider empire. Plus--free workers.

On turn 44 he won't be much a threat to a hill city with garrison but watch him. The one game I forward-settled the guy he was attacking me every 50 turns after building up his army. Not really the peaceful type. He'll probably remain angry all game but it's worth it. Plus you crippled your nearest religious competitor. With all those CS about and a wide empire you should get really good money from tithes this game. I've tried other founder beliefs but nothing seems quite as good. Some people like the conversion award of 100 per city or 2 gold per city for the early-gold effect but I think they pay out far less despite being earlier gold.

 

[inthesomeday]

Settling happiness: 3 global unhappiness from founding, 1 local from population on founding. With one unique lux here you've counterbalanced up to pop one. Meritocracy allows for one extra, so pop two. Colosseum, circus, zoo gets you up to population 8. One lux trade (one per city usually isn't hard) gets you to pop 12 per city. Pop 12 is usually enough, unless it's cap or good observatory city.

Founder beliefs: If tithe is gone (always first choice), church property. If church property is gone, it's a toss up between initiation rites and the two happiness beliefs. Going wide the happiness ones are actually considerably good, the one for every two lets you count down another population in several cities or several population in your cap, as does the 1 for 8 foreign. The latter is harder to use but can be better if you've a strong missionary activity and nearby high population neighbors/CS.

 

[psparky]

Nice rule of thumb for city size/happiness. There are no horses (nor ivory) in my lands which is a shame but I have a good luxury mix to compensate.

Turn 69 now and I get to found, probably first, in five turns. Definitely need gold and was weighing up the merits of the three gold-generating beliefs. I tried all three in recent ICS games and they were all ok. For my own cities, it will be some time before tithe catches up to the 2-per-city one. However if I can keep the CS in my religion tithe will work out better. I found initiation rites great for giving me early gold for whatever I needed, but the impact is somewhat reduced because you need to retain some of it against the days of somewhat large negative gpt to come.

Anyway, since tithe got two good recommendations, I'll pick that.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

12 pop cap for expos? Oops, last game saw an expo at 30 while the cap was a low 20 something. Couldn't really help it. Only a few production tiles in the city the rest were all farmland or ocean/coast. I even filled every specialist slot available. It still grew like crazy. Wish I'd put my writer/artist/musician buildings in there.

 

[inthesomeday]

Obviously if you can exceed that's great too, I was just saying as long as you're able to reach ~10-15 before you have to stop growing/stop growing because of food, you shouldn't be too unhappy because it's still perfectly optimal.
3 scientist specialists in a size 15 city still leaves 12 pop to work 30 food (to stagnate) which could be 10 plains/river farms or cattle pastures. Normally from your food tiles you can get something like 10-12 hammers-- just from working food, with some citizens left to work straight up production, like mines. You can also work stable pasture sheep, one of my favorite tiles in the game, or stable pasture horse, or farmed hills, or... Obviously there are ways to further optimize your hammers/food ratio. But what I'm saying is that 15 or less, down to around 12, is fine for the stagnating pop of a liberty city. If you have a city with high hammer potential, you can feed it through trade and let it work hammers. If you have a city with a bunch of banana jungles with 2 science, you can send it hammers or work engineers. What I'm saying is low population does the job perfectly well because you can work all the tiles you need and as many specialists as you could want in any city with less population than you might think most of the time. Growth tiles are great but the bottom line is they're a tool for achieving hammers and science (and gold) and when you reach a point where you have the hammers, science, and gold you want fairly comfortably there's no reason to keep working growth/growing in general.