danaphanous
religious fanatic
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2013
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Ever dreamed of having an enormous empire but couldn't seem to keep up with the details?
I too love playing games with rather large empires and have become fairly adept at crushing the AI with this strategy on immortal. I'm adapting my strategies to Deity now and will let you guys know how that goes, but most of my experience testing these strategies is for immortal difficulty as it is the level I test new things at.
There are a lot of civilizations whose abilities support big empires or grow stronger the larger your empire grows. Here's some of the ones I find more interesting and some specific strategies to take advantage of them. This thread is a work in progress so if anyone has comments or wants to share their way of playing please do!
First off: the basics
I'm going to be recommending you always choose liberty as your starter tree so get used to it and get used to living without the early perks of tradition. The reason is that the benefits of liberty increase with every city and grow stronger. I see it as the obviously strongest choice of the first 4 trees if you want to peacefully settle a large empire early. Nothing else has the same total sum of benefits as liberty for early expansion and support and you will lose the land and chance if you go tradition and try to expand late on immortal. Liberty has a lot of helpful tenets but not everything you need so your second tree will vary based on your strategy. A strong secondary choice is commerce with the lack of a specific synergy.
The problems you will need to overcome to optimally manage a competitive large empire that keeps up with the AI in science, culture, economy, and military:
- learning to found a religion as quickly as possible*
- Building cities quickly enough to claim the land you need before the AI
- the early rushes by warmongering AI
- the penalties to science, culture, and happiness per new city
- the maintenance cost of extra buildings per city (midgame economy)
- the lack of happiness to keep growing in the late medieval and renaissance before ideologies
* some players argue you don't need to found, just keep good AI religions to benefit your wide empire. Though this is workable, I find it less effective then founding even the 4th or 5th religion of my own, reasons here:
Founding a Religion:
Almost every religious belief and pantheon grows stronger the more cities you have. this is especially true in the case of special buildings, culture, or growth and production modifiers. If you attempt a large empire I would always recommend trying to found your own religion. You can make it work without one but it is harder to use productively when the AI are warring over your cities.
The reason is the AI always seem to leave some of the better beliefs for you and if you found you get the founder belief, an early pantheon benefit during expansion/settling, and a decent faith income from the investment for the rest of the game which translates into about 3-5 post-industrial GP with a large empire. Tithes is rarely taken on standard by founding and will mean a huge income boost for your wide empire. And religious community, swords into plowshares, and happiness from temples and gardens is also taken late so you can usually get some of them. It's also an easy source of CS quests. If you don't found the AI war over you all game with prophets and missionaries making it very hard to keep the religion you like where you want. Your own religion will probably be better tailored to your strategy and terrain. Lastly, contrary to popular belief it does not require a significant early game investment for a wide empire to attempt a religion. Even if you don't get a religion (which has never happened to me with any recent attempts) you have solid faith income and an early-pantheon benefit till it is replaced. This can have dramatic effects on the early game for a wide empire.
My strategy for grabbing a religion varies based on the civ and their potential sources of faith. But in general you want to explore aggressively with scouts searching for ruins and religious CS. You also want to research pottery first and build the shrine as fast as humanly possible. It is cheap enough I find it worth it to even delay growth for a couple turns if I can gain 2 turns on production. Every turn matters in getting a pantheon before the AI as the cost in faith goes up and it can translate into 15+ turns difference in beginning progress toward your prophet. This is all you need to do to get a pantheon usually. When you get a pantheon this is the time to choose if you will attempt a religion but you should always attempt the pantheon as early as possible as it can make a big early-game difference in growth, production, culture, or faith, especially during your fast expansion phase.
You might think opening piety would make a big difference in founding. It can, situationally, given the cheaper shrines if you delay building monument and build shrines first in your early expos but the fast AI on immortal and Deity will beat you regardless without some stronger advantage. So I'd never open with it. What it will mean is a lot more faith after founding for a quicker enhancement or faster/cheaper religious buys if you got a building. Also gold multiplier from temples and a reformation belief.
If I have a civ with no faith advantage I often pick a terrain-appropriate faith yielding pantheon to accelerate my progress toward a religion. Stone circles, desert folklore, dance of aurora, goddess of festivals, one with nature, tears of the gods, religious idols, and earth mother, etc are all good. I can usually find one that works. The first AI pick is usually goddess of protection so if you can be 1st or 2nd you'll get exactly what you want. Any faith on tiles that keep you growing is better as otherwise you need to sacrifice growth. If you don't want to found a religion or have a civ with a religious advantage (Celts, mayans, ethiopia...) just pick the pantheon that benefits your early-game the most. For building cities as quickly as possible sacred waters is usually best as it lowers your happiness penalties to settling on rivers.
Building Cities Quickly (REXing):
REX (Rapid Early Expansion) is a must for building a large empire peacefully. The AI will fill in the world quickly so you want to follow the route that builds you cities the quickest. I aim for 8 cities on standard using the wide liberty strategy (double the tradition number) as this is a solid, supportable number that is made quite strong by liberty. Your end-date for the rapid expansion is variable and depends a lot on terrain and tech of surrounding civs and what land you can "trap off" from their settlers, but I would say at the latest you should be finished by turn 100. This is pretty late and I'd recommend trying to be finished settling between turns 70-90.
The size you want your capital to be prior to pumping out settlers is variable and depends on the productiveness of terrain. If you have some nice hills, quarry sites, forest resources...your production might be high enough to start cranking out settlers quite early. If not, waiting to grow a bit more is often just as effective. You get better early science, and later faster settlers and have 2 workers chopping at the capital. You can be building them for 75% off later with forest chops so keep that in mind. Maybe a military unit to steal workers or fight off barbs or extra worker is more important.
Your spots can be a little weaker then tradition spots. Overlapping rings up to 4-5 tile spacing is fine. Your cities will be smaller anyway so they don't need a full ring. I usually pick a spot near one unique or duplicate luxury, on a river or on a hill preferentially, including as many nearby resources as I can. since you're being less picky found some cities near mountains as well even if the terrain isn't great since the observatory boost is very nice and also seek out a few cities with jungle.
How can you do this? A lot of players have complained that they can't place settlers down fast enough to beat the AI or the AI forward settle them but it can be done with some early aggression. I recommend a strategy I usually employ called early game guerilla warfare or harassment. It goes hand-in-hand with the commonly known strategy of worker-stealing from the AI.
Basically, you want to find your closest neighbor as soon as possible, DOW, and steal the first worker you can. Pick a more peaceful civ if possible not known for early rushes. Don't engage them in their own territory but try to draw them out. Basically you are trying to make them waste turns dealing with you which will trickle down and make them weaker later in the game. Try to leave a unit or two near them to detect any settlers leaving in your direction to forward-settle you. On Deity this happens really early, sometimes as early as turn 35 or so. The AI usually escort with a single warrior so plan an ambush and kill the warrior and steal the settler for a second worker. You can use barbs to your advantage, especially if you play raging barbarians which slows down the AI and makes them lose a few workers and settlers, but even if you don't attacking while barbs are invading makes it easier. If the AI sends a few extra warriors toward you to respond at this point don't be afraid. This is even better as this is your chance to destroy their early military leaving them unable to deal with barbs around them. kite the force towards a barb encampment then ambush them when weakened or just draw them into city fire and finish them. There is no need to make peace with this AI anytime soon. You actually want to stay at war for a while as it gives you the opportunity to steal their 2nd built worker, pillage for gold, and continue to hurt them. Doing this properly can earn you 2-3 free workers, easy gold, experience, and keep them from settling your territory. Nerfing your closest neighbor like this should buy you enough time to settle your 8 cities or so and the only AI you anger is the guy you've been at war with and weakened as they are the only one you needed to crowd and forward-settle. Occasionally if you start in the middle you have 2-3 AI forward settling you in which case you may have a tough time, but usually I can find the closest coast and carve out a place for 8 cities just hemming in the one most threatening AI.
A hidden benefit of this play is the AI you harassed is pretty weak later in the game. Often the other AI attack them instead of you since they look weak if you keep a decent military but at the very least if you watch the armies and military scores you can see ahead of time who might attack you and bribe them to attack your weak neighbor. I call this play using a "buffer state".
Handling Early Rushes:
If you find yourself near an AI known for warmongering expect an early rush if you REX. It's a given as they hate it. Even non aggressive AI may rush depending on their rolled flavor but it is usually a bit later. And actually, if your nearest neighbor is zulu, greece, japan, france, etc. or someone who builds massive ancient and classical era armies for early rushes I don't recommend picking them as your early game punching bag. They are likely to just do nothing but produce military and never end the war which will waste too many turns. If you see them near you your best move is to DOW a more peaceful civ nearby to do the guerilla warfare against and then later when you see suspicious troop mobilization bribe them with a luxury to DOW your weaker neighbor instead. Use the time to solidify your empire, build up your own military, lay down the road network and make friends. Then when they come for you next you'll be ready.
If for some reason this is impossible (Can't be bribed or no neighbors) then you will need to overcome the early game rush. Usually you can see if you'll be attacked by T20-30 as the AI will overbuild their military suspiciously. If so build an archer in your expos. They are very cheap and a great early defense force. Build a couple melee as the 3rd build in your first few expos as well. An archer for each city and a few melee to wall the city they rush is all you need to resist these weaker earlier units.
Also if you can predict the city they rush build a wall there if you have time and definitely pick up the tech for composite bowmen and upgrade the archers you made in advance. Now, when the attack comes. Fortify your melee in forward positions screening roads to keep the AI from surrounding the city. The AI brings primarily melee in these early rushes though I've seen a few exceptions. The way they take down cities quickly is by surrounding and pounding with melee but they can't do this if you have a few fortified melee of your own. I find swordsmen or spearmen to be best. Don't bother with a 2nd warrior. Hopefully you've got a few upgrades from fighting barbs as they make a huge difference. Encamp an CB in the city and a couple more CB in the screened positions on the road/hills behind the city guarded by the fortified melee. This should be enough to break the early rush. They will weaken themselves on your melee but can't get close enough to all attack the city. With 2-3 CB focus-firing you'll chew through armies up to 20 units with your 6 units. If you have the gold or can borrow it from a friend and haven't had time to build the wall buy it--it can save a vulnerable city from a big rush and make enough turns difference to matter. If you have a wall you can leave two spots open for them to assault the city each turn and they'll kill themselves faster doing that.
After destroying the first wave usually the AI relents but sometimes they don't if they are producing military fast enough to keep their unit score higher then yours. However I kinda like this early grinding as it allows my troops to quickly level to really good promos and basically be invincible for a while with logistics and blitz abilities. To change their mind if you really want peace you will need to build more units to have a more impressive score. Replace your melee if you lose them and try to keep 3-4 on hand in these situations. Build a few more archers. But a better move is to build 2 horse units and send them to pillage and steal workers. The AI dislikes this and it is often enough to make them finally ask for peace.
Per city penalties to science, culture, and happiness:
On standard the penalties are:
10% extra culture per policy per city
5% extra science per tech per city
3 global happiness consumed per founding of each city
If you want to practice or settle a larger empire with more ease I recommend playing a huge map which halves the culture/science penalties and reduces the happiness penalty to 1.8 per city. It's good practice. Keep in mind techs cost 130% more (vs 110% on standard) so if you build less then 8 cities on huge map your science WILL cost more. You NEED to play a larger empire to take full advantage of huge map settings but it is balanced to play similar just with a few more cities for each strategy. I like to play with at least 12 cities on huge.
For standard you need to deal with the higher penalties. I choose 7-8 cities because It's what I can often settle on standard and keep competitive with. And my rule of thumb is for a good game I want to double the tradition 4 cities.
For culture: representation reduces the per city penalty by a whopping 40%, one of the reasons why liberty is a must for a large empire. To compensate I always build monument first with liberty game. And build and work the slots for great writer and great artist as fast as possible. This will make your culture rate quite decent. Other then this you'll just need to deal with the penalty but religion is a great opportunity to grab some early culture to accelerate your policy rate. Many pantheons or Religious buildings have culture. Even though the AI like them and often take them unless you have a civ with a religious advantage it's likely some of your border cities may convert before your religion gets out. It can be advantageous to keep it here awhile to buy the religious buildings here before converting them to your side. The result can easily mean 10+ extra early culture which is enough to completely remove the penalty for the first half of the game. If you manage to actually get a religious building like pagodas that's even better but don't count on it unless you have one of the 3 religious civs I list.
For happiness: the 3 global happiness consumed per founded city is a major limiting factor and the most common complaint by new players. Your cities building happiness buildings can't remove it either. Only global happiness like luxuries can. This is why I recommend trying to stick each city near a new or duplicate luxury. You actually don't need one near EVERY one it's just a good rule. Again, here, liberty shines with meritocracy. Connect your new cities quickly with a road after this policy and you get a free 1 global happiness for each. With fast roads this means your penalty is really only 2 per city, already 1/3 better then any other policy tree. If you got a religious civ and really see a lot of sweet territory you want I'll also recommend trying my sacred waters pantheon REX strategy. Take sacred waters and the penalty after representation for cities on rivers is only 1 happiness. You can ICS them much more quickly without running into the red like this as there are usually many river spots nearby. The downside of this is if you aren't a religious civ with extra sources of early faith you are likely to get a religion very late or not at all choosing this. However, if you don't want to found your own religion it can work for anyone. Just keep in mind you'll lose that pantheon and get hit by more unhappiness when the AI come evangelizing. So something with a more permanent benefit like growth or production might be better. Ceremonial burial is also pretty nice but unreliable as the AI like it more then tithes. Tithes is my recommendation because for a wider empire it means a lot of money even kept in your own territory which solves a lot of midgame financial problems with maintenance.
For science: Build libraries 3rd build order and keep your cities growing up to their local happiness limit to limit the penalty and stay competitive early game. To grow new cities quickly you need a strong fast workforce to build roads out to them and improve them to match their growth rate. Having this strong workforce can save dozens of turns of science. Luckily liberty gives a 25% improvement speed bonus to workers and a free one with an early tenet. I usually take this right after the settler policy. I also basically always build pyramids. Why? Because the AI don't prioritize it and I can always get it. Pyramids is great. For the cost of about 2 workers I get a wonder, +1 culture, 2 free workers, and another 25% improvement to worker speed. I also get an engineer point that after I get workshops and work that specialist in the same city means a free wonder in the late medieval or renaissance. I can usually use this to easily snag something nice like sistine chapel, forbidden palace, or leaning tower of pisa. After pyramids and REXing, work your workers fast, connect everything with roads fast to activate meritocracy, I usually have my workers only a few turns behind the new settlers so I can keep the happiness up, and beeline the aqueduct technology and build them early to improve the growth rates. Build NC after all this, it's not worth delaying REX as some games this means you lose the opportunity to build more then 4-6 cities.
Save money to buy a few universities or other buildings as soon as you get the science techs. Run the science specialists all game in every city when they become available for a huge mid-game science boost and more scientists late game. You actually get a bigger advantage from science specialists then a taller empire as you can run twice as many. This takes some planning ahead as local happiness sources are limited early game. This is why I recommend founding your own religion as you can get a reliable source of internal happiness from something like +2 happiness from temples and still buy the religious buildings where foreign religions spread into your lands. However, beliefs like temple and garden happiness vanish when the religion changes so you can't take advantage of them well without owning and protecting the religion. Overall I get more happiness on average from owning the religion. It is unlikely if you didn't invest religiously you'll have the faith to buy a lot of foreign religious buildings when you get the opportunity anyway. And if you are going to invest in faith to buy things like this you might as well do it early so you own a religion for the founder benefit and early pantheon. This is my philosophy. Lastly for science: I should note on immortal and deity the AI trade routes give you a lot of science. You will attract more of them if you keep 1-2 peaceful neighbors, get a big road network up early (because they use it to move their caravans further to more cities), and grow your cities faster.
Midgame economy and growing maintenance costs:
Many players complain about midgame economy. How the money grows tighter and tighter after your REX your cities and start building buildings. this is because the maintenance costs in each city and from military keep going up while the tile yields for gold stay the same. How do you overcome this problem and get the gold you need midgame when it is most important to save money to buy buildings in slow cities and buy universities quickly?
I'll let you in on my personal strategies for this. And I rarely have midgame gold problems. How is that possible? Well via a few overlooked/misunderstood features.
#1: Wide empires get about double the normal resources of horse and iron. Early game Deity and immortal AI will often pay 2 gpt for EACH of these if you sell them one at a time. I sell them to non-neighbors to help them build up their militaries so they won't use them to attack me unless a have a friend neighbor I trust then I might sell for lump gold if I need gold fast. This is a TON of early gold. I often can get almost 30 gpt or more from doing this before the AI stop wanting it and they continue to want it almost till the end of the renaissance. By this time you have banks to replace the lost gold. I also aggressively search for all the civs so I know them early so I can make these trades. I look for 1 for 1 lux trades first but with a wide empire often there aren't enough to use all my duplicate luxes so I also sell them for 7 gpt each. Check every few turns to look for new 1 for 1 luxes though. If you see one. buy it with gold to reserve it, then switch over to 1 for 1 lux later after the first round of deals.
#2: city connections. They are so bad right?
Well early game when you first connect those 1-2 pop cities you are doing it to activate meritocracy to continue REXing. It also helps with troop mobility to quickly respond to the early rushers. The roads will most likely cost a little more then the city connections. But as you grow this begins to change. The gold you get is based on both the connecting city population and the capital population. That's it. This means it is far more cost-effective in happiness to overgrow your capital since this improves the gold from every city connection. So after I finish REXing, I usually start feeding my capital with trade routes and put it on max growth. It almost doesn't matter about it's production you just want it to grow as fast as possible. Your other cities you can worry about growing with the amount of local happiness but the capital grow as tall as possible and you'll soon see huge amounts of money from your city connections. Enough in some games to nearly cover maintenance costs as they rise if you build all your food and growth buildings early. Not a lot of people know this is how the math works but I know and it's why I still grow a big capital on liberty games. Besides the tons of money from doing this, it means I have one city that is competitive for pumping out quick military or wonders later. For this reason also always build the money buildings (market, bank, etc) as soon as possible in the capital to get multipliers on all that money and start your gold trade routes (if you have any) from there as well to centralize the money flow. I usually switch all my trade routes to internal food routes quite early though to get slower cities growing faster as I don't have gold problems usually.
#3: work gold yielding tiles. With liberty growing fast is important but you have enough cities you don't need to grow them at full-tilt to be competitive. I recommend if you need the gold locking down some gold-yielding tiles (esp. during golden ages) or mines early game as you build your local happiness buildings. Grow in pace with your happiness otherwise you'll shoot yourself in the foot later. Plus extra gold later translates to extra science when it allows you to quickly buy universities and start working all the specialists earlier then normal. I work on my gold a lot just prior to techs for science buildings for this reason.
#4: attract AI trade routes. This is the main reason to keep friends and work hard to do so. The AI send you more trade routes meaning more gold and science if you are a large empire and you have some friendly neighbors. You tend to attract more routes if you quickly build a large road network too as their caravans can use it to get to more of your cities. This is another reason to have one huge city like the capital too as it attracts a lot of AI routes that bring you money and science.
#5: religion. By far the best argument for taking tithes is the huge amount of money it can bring in on a wide game. If you found a religion and make a big empire that's a lot of money, especially if you manage to passively spread it to a neighbor. Tithes yield varies from maybe 50 gpt (in your own empire only midgame) to as much as 200+ gpt. But regardless that's a LOT of money. I rarely take anythign else it is so powerful midgame and lategame in gold. that money directly translates into buying far more buildings to quickly develop your empire.
#6: piety gives an early game boost of 25% gold from temples. Can work well with a religious build/civ that has great temples.
#7: commerce gives a midgame boost to economy and is a great choice as a filler tree before rationalism (if you are going max science) or even your main tree if you just want to keep up with AI.
Lack of midgame happiness:
this is described as the slump in growth when midgame around late medieval or renaissance there are no new local happiness sources and you may have to slow your empire growth for a while till you get an ideology and all the happiness from that. I find order to be the best pick.
The length or existence of this phenomenon varies significantly by the civ you pick and the religious beliefs you chose. Knowing this is coming I almost always try to get at least +2 happiness from my religion. I can pretty much always get this. I try to get 4 for my most successful games. If you can do this you'll be fine and barely feel the midgame slump. Also any civ that has a unique building that yields extra happiness has an advantage here and can grow faster. Depending on how much you can get total based on the civ and your religion you may choose to switch your trade routes to growth earlier or later. Also keep in mind the beginning of this era you gain universities and workshops so it can be quite profitable to run all the specialists, slowing growth for this period but still maintaining great science and production as a result of all those specialists in cities. A civ struggling on happiness can simply do this to remain effective and resume growth when ideologies come. If in this situation rush ideologies and build/buy a rapid 3 factories. This goes very well with the choice of order where factories boost science 25%.
Note that religious civs may not experience this slump at all because they were able to get 4-5 happiness per city from their religion or neighboring religions.
Certain midgame wonders can alleviate this problem. If you can manage to get the Forbidden palace, in addition to the 5% of meritocracy, 3/20 of your citizens will be happiness free, a very strong boost to a growing civ, but difficult to get as the AI love it. Keep in mind one early renaissance wonder can be rushed with the engineer from Pyramids and workshop which will come before the scientist in that city. The +10 happiness from Notre Dame also helps allowing all your cities to grow one pop higher if you can score it but the AI compete for this as well. Whether or not you get these 2 wonders depends a lot on your priorities and successful early teching. For instance, if you have solid happiness I think sistine chapel and leaning tower of pisa are very strong for a wide empire massively boosting your generation of culture and GP empire-wide for an even stronger bonus then a tall empire. It's a gamble but getting an engineer with the LToP finisher can mean a free sistine chapel or forbidden palace if you have decent tech rate for the best of both worlds.
That's the basics and I include them in basically every civ I play this way! Now on to specific civ strategies...I will add them in amendments below:
I too love playing games with rather large empires and have become fairly adept at crushing the AI with this strategy on immortal. I'm adapting my strategies to Deity now and will let you guys know how that goes, but most of my experience testing these strategies is for immortal difficulty as it is the level I test new things at.
There are a lot of civilizations whose abilities support big empires or grow stronger the larger your empire grows. Here's some of the ones I find more interesting and some specific strategies to take advantage of them. This thread is a work in progress so if anyone has comments or wants to share their way of playing please do!
First off: the basics
I'm going to be recommending you always choose liberty as your starter tree so get used to it and get used to living without the early perks of tradition. The reason is that the benefits of liberty increase with every city and grow stronger. I see it as the obviously strongest choice of the first 4 trees if you want to peacefully settle a large empire early. Nothing else has the same total sum of benefits as liberty for early expansion and support and you will lose the land and chance if you go tradition and try to expand late on immortal. Liberty has a lot of helpful tenets but not everything you need so your second tree will vary based on your strategy. A strong secondary choice is commerce with the lack of a specific synergy.
The problems you will need to overcome to optimally manage a competitive large empire that keeps up with the AI in science, culture, economy, and military:
- learning to found a religion as quickly as possible*
- Building cities quickly enough to claim the land you need before the AI
- the early rushes by warmongering AI
- the penalties to science, culture, and happiness per new city
- the maintenance cost of extra buildings per city (midgame economy)
- the lack of happiness to keep growing in the late medieval and renaissance before ideologies
* some players argue you don't need to found, just keep good AI religions to benefit your wide empire. Though this is workable, I find it less effective then founding even the 4th or 5th religion of my own, reasons here:
Founding a Religion:
Spoiler :
Almost every religious belief and pantheon grows stronger the more cities you have. this is especially true in the case of special buildings, culture, or growth and production modifiers. If you attempt a large empire I would always recommend trying to found your own religion. You can make it work without one but it is harder to use productively when the AI are warring over your cities.
The reason is the AI always seem to leave some of the better beliefs for you and if you found you get the founder belief, an early pantheon benefit during expansion/settling, and a decent faith income from the investment for the rest of the game which translates into about 3-5 post-industrial GP with a large empire. Tithes is rarely taken on standard by founding and will mean a huge income boost for your wide empire. And religious community, swords into plowshares, and happiness from temples and gardens is also taken late so you can usually get some of them. It's also an easy source of CS quests. If you don't found the AI war over you all game with prophets and missionaries making it very hard to keep the religion you like where you want. Your own religion will probably be better tailored to your strategy and terrain. Lastly, contrary to popular belief it does not require a significant early game investment for a wide empire to attempt a religion. Even if you don't get a religion (which has never happened to me with any recent attempts) you have solid faith income and an early-pantheon benefit till it is replaced. This can have dramatic effects on the early game for a wide empire.
My strategy for grabbing a religion varies based on the civ and their potential sources of faith. But in general you want to explore aggressively with scouts searching for ruins and religious CS. You also want to research pottery first and build the shrine as fast as humanly possible. It is cheap enough I find it worth it to even delay growth for a couple turns if I can gain 2 turns on production. Every turn matters in getting a pantheon before the AI as the cost in faith goes up and it can translate into 15+ turns difference in beginning progress toward your prophet. This is all you need to do to get a pantheon usually. When you get a pantheon this is the time to choose if you will attempt a religion but you should always attempt the pantheon as early as possible as it can make a big early-game difference in growth, production, culture, or faith, especially during your fast expansion phase.
You might think opening piety would make a big difference in founding. It can, situationally, given the cheaper shrines if you delay building monument and build shrines first in your early expos but the fast AI on immortal and Deity will beat you regardless without some stronger advantage. So I'd never open with it. What it will mean is a lot more faith after founding for a quicker enhancement or faster/cheaper religious buys if you got a building. Also gold multiplier from temples and a reformation belief.
If I have a civ with no faith advantage I often pick a terrain-appropriate faith yielding pantheon to accelerate my progress toward a religion. Stone circles, desert folklore, dance of aurora, goddess of festivals, one with nature, tears of the gods, religious idols, and earth mother, etc are all good. I can usually find one that works. The first AI pick is usually goddess of protection so if you can be 1st or 2nd you'll get exactly what you want. Any faith on tiles that keep you growing is better as otherwise you need to sacrifice growth. If you don't want to found a religion or have a civ with a religious advantage (Celts, mayans, ethiopia...) just pick the pantheon that benefits your early-game the most. For building cities as quickly as possible sacred waters is usually best as it lowers your happiness penalties to settling on rivers.
Building Cities Quickly (REXing):
Spoiler :
REX (Rapid Early Expansion) is a must for building a large empire peacefully. The AI will fill in the world quickly so you want to follow the route that builds you cities the quickest. I aim for 8 cities on standard using the wide liberty strategy (double the tradition number) as this is a solid, supportable number that is made quite strong by liberty. Your end-date for the rapid expansion is variable and depends a lot on terrain and tech of surrounding civs and what land you can "trap off" from their settlers, but I would say at the latest you should be finished by turn 100. This is pretty late and I'd recommend trying to be finished settling between turns 70-90.
The size you want your capital to be prior to pumping out settlers is variable and depends on the productiveness of terrain. If you have some nice hills, quarry sites, forest resources...your production might be high enough to start cranking out settlers quite early. If not, waiting to grow a bit more is often just as effective. You get better early science, and later faster settlers and have 2 workers chopping at the capital. You can be building them for 75% off later with forest chops so keep that in mind. Maybe a military unit to steal workers or fight off barbs or extra worker is more important.
Your spots can be a little weaker then tradition spots. Overlapping rings up to 4-5 tile spacing is fine. Your cities will be smaller anyway so they don't need a full ring. I usually pick a spot near one unique or duplicate luxury, on a river or on a hill preferentially, including as many nearby resources as I can. since you're being less picky found some cities near mountains as well even if the terrain isn't great since the observatory boost is very nice and also seek out a few cities with jungle.
How can you do this? A lot of players have complained that they can't place settlers down fast enough to beat the AI or the AI forward settle them but it can be done with some early aggression. I recommend a strategy I usually employ called early game guerilla warfare or harassment. It goes hand-in-hand with the commonly known strategy of worker-stealing from the AI.
Basically, you want to find your closest neighbor as soon as possible, DOW, and steal the first worker you can. Pick a more peaceful civ if possible not known for early rushes. Don't engage them in their own territory but try to draw them out. Basically you are trying to make them waste turns dealing with you which will trickle down and make them weaker later in the game. Try to leave a unit or two near them to detect any settlers leaving in your direction to forward-settle you. On Deity this happens really early, sometimes as early as turn 35 or so. The AI usually escort with a single warrior so plan an ambush and kill the warrior and steal the settler for a second worker. You can use barbs to your advantage, especially if you play raging barbarians which slows down the AI and makes them lose a few workers and settlers, but even if you don't attacking while barbs are invading makes it easier. If the AI sends a few extra warriors toward you to respond at this point don't be afraid. This is even better as this is your chance to destroy their early military leaving them unable to deal with barbs around them. kite the force towards a barb encampment then ambush them when weakened or just draw them into city fire and finish them. There is no need to make peace with this AI anytime soon. You actually want to stay at war for a while as it gives you the opportunity to steal their 2nd built worker, pillage for gold, and continue to hurt them. Doing this properly can earn you 2-3 free workers, easy gold, experience, and keep them from settling your territory. Nerfing your closest neighbor like this should buy you enough time to settle your 8 cities or so and the only AI you anger is the guy you've been at war with and weakened as they are the only one you needed to crowd and forward-settle. Occasionally if you start in the middle you have 2-3 AI forward settling you in which case you may have a tough time, but usually I can find the closest coast and carve out a place for 8 cities just hemming in the one most threatening AI.
A hidden benefit of this play is the AI you harassed is pretty weak later in the game. Often the other AI attack them instead of you since they look weak if you keep a decent military but at the very least if you watch the armies and military scores you can see ahead of time who might attack you and bribe them to attack your weak neighbor. I call this play using a "buffer state".
Handling Early Rushes:
Spoiler :
If you find yourself near an AI known for warmongering expect an early rush if you REX. It's a given as they hate it. Even non aggressive AI may rush depending on their rolled flavor but it is usually a bit later. And actually, if your nearest neighbor is zulu, greece, japan, france, etc. or someone who builds massive ancient and classical era armies for early rushes I don't recommend picking them as your early game punching bag. They are likely to just do nothing but produce military and never end the war which will waste too many turns. If you see them near you your best move is to DOW a more peaceful civ nearby to do the guerilla warfare against and then later when you see suspicious troop mobilization bribe them with a luxury to DOW your weaker neighbor instead. Use the time to solidify your empire, build up your own military, lay down the road network and make friends. Then when they come for you next you'll be ready.
If for some reason this is impossible (Can't be bribed or no neighbors) then you will need to overcome the early game rush. Usually you can see if you'll be attacked by T20-30 as the AI will overbuild their military suspiciously. If so build an archer in your expos. They are very cheap and a great early defense force. Build a couple melee as the 3rd build in your first few expos as well. An archer for each city and a few melee to wall the city they rush is all you need to resist these weaker earlier units.
Also if you can predict the city they rush build a wall there if you have time and definitely pick up the tech for composite bowmen and upgrade the archers you made in advance. Now, when the attack comes. Fortify your melee in forward positions screening roads to keep the AI from surrounding the city. The AI brings primarily melee in these early rushes though I've seen a few exceptions. The way they take down cities quickly is by surrounding and pounding with melee but they can't do this if you have a few fortified melee of your own. I find swordsmen or spearmen to be best. Don't bother with a 2nd warrior. Hopefully you've got a few upgrades from fighting barbs as they make a huge difference. Encamp an CB in the city and a couple more CB in the screened positions on the road/hills behind the city guarded by the fortified melee. This should be enough to break the early rush. They will weaken themselves on your melee but can't get close enough to all attack the city. With 2-3 CB focus-firing you'll chew through armies up to 20 units with your 6 units. If you have the gold or can borrow it from a friend and haven't had time to build the wall buy it--it can save a vulnerable city from a big rush and make enough turns difference to matter. If you have a wall you can leave two spots open for them to assault the city each turn and they'll kill themselves faster doing that.
After destroying the first wave usually the AI relents but sometimes they don't if they are producing military fast enough to keep their unit score higher then yours. However I kinda like this early grinding as it allows my troops to quickly level to really good promos and basically be invincible for a while with logistics and blitz abilities. To change their mind if you really want peace you will need to build more units to have a more impressive score. Replace your melee if you lose them and try to keep 3-4 on hand in these situations. Build a few more archers. But a better move is to build 2 horse units and send them to pillage and steal workers. The AI dislikes this and it is often enough to make them finally ask for peace.
Per city penalties to science, culture, and happiness:
Spoiler :
On standard the penalties are:
10% extra culture per policy per city
5% extra science per tech per city
3 global happiness consumed per founding of each city
If you want to practice or settle a larger empire with more ease I recommend playing a huge map which halves the culture/science penalties and reduces the happiness penalty to 1.8 per city. It's good practice. Keep in mind techs cost 130% more (vs 110% on standard) so if you build less then 8 cities on huge map your science WILL cost more. You NEED to play a larger empire to take full advantage of huge map settings but it is balanced to play similar just with a few more cities for each strategy. I like to play with at least 12 cities on huge.
For standard you need to deal with the higher penalties. I choose 7-8 cities because It's what I can often settle on standard and keep competitive with. And my rule of thumb is for a good game I want to double the tradition 4 cities.
For culture: representation reduces the per city penalty by a whopping 40%, one of the reasons why liberty is a must for a large empire. To compensate I always build monument first with liberty game. And build and work the slots for great writer and great artist as fast as possible. This will make your culture rate quite decent. Other then this you'll just need to deal with the penalty but religion is a great opportunity to grab some early culture to accelerate your policy rate. Many pantheons or Religious buildings have culture. Even though the AI like them and often take them unless you have a civ with a religious advantage it's likely some of your border cities may convert before your religion gets out. It can be advantageous to keep it here awhile to buy the religious buildings here before converting them to your side. The result can easily mean 10+ extra early culture which is enough to completely remove the penalty for the first half of the game. If you manage to actually get a religious building like pagodas that's even better but don't count on it unless you have one of the 3 religious civs I list.
For happiness: the 3 global happiness consumed per founded city is a major limiting factor and the most common complaint by new players. Your cities building happiness buildings can't remove it either. Only global happiness like luxuries can. This is why I recommend trying to stick each city near a new or duplicate luxury. You actually don't need one near EVERY one it's just a good rule. Again, here, liberty shines with meritocracy. Connect your new cities quickly with a road after this policy and you get a free 1 global happiness for each. With fast roads this means your penalty is really only 2 per city, already 1/3 better then any other policy tree. If you got a religious civ and really see a lot of sweet territory you want I'll also recommend trying my sacred waters pantheon REX strategy. Take sacred waters and the penalty after representation for cities on rivers is only 1 happiness. You can ICS them much more quickly without running into the red like this as there are usually many river spots nearby. The downside of this is if you aren't a religious civ with extra sources of early faith you are likely to get a religion very late or not at all choosing this. However, if you don't want to found your own religion it can work for anyone. Just keep in mind you'll lose that pantheon and get hit by more unhappiness when the AI come evangelizing. So something with a more permanent benefit like growth or production might be better. Ceremonial burial is also pretty nice but unreliable as the AI like it more then tithes. Tithes is my recommendation because for a wider empire it means a lot of money even kept in your own territory which solves a lot of midgame financial problems with maintenance.
For science: Build libraries 3rd build order and keep your cities growing up to their local happiness limit to limit the penalty and stay competitive early game. To grow new cities quickly you need a strong fast workforce to build roads out to them and improve them to match their growth rate. Having this strong workforce can save dozens of turns of science. Luckily liberty gives a 25% improvement speed bonus to workers and a free one with an early tenet. I usually take this right after the settler policy. I also basically always build pyramids. Why? Because the AI don't prioritize it and I can always get it. Pyramids is great. For the cost of about 2 workers I get a wonder, +1 culture, 2 free workers, and another 25% improvement to worker speed. I also get an engineer point that after I get workshops and work that specialist in the same city means a free wonder in the late medieval or renaissance. I can usually use this to easily snag something nice like sistine chapel, forbidden palace, or leaning tower of pisa. After pyramids and REXing, work your workers fast, connect everything with roads fast to activate meritocracy, I usually have my workers only a few turns behind the new settlers so I can keep the happiness up, and beeline the aqueduct technology and build them early to improve the growth rates. Build NC after all this, it's not worth delaying REX as some games this means you lose the opportunity to build more then 4-6 cities.
Save money to buy a few universities or other buildings as soon as you get the science techs. Run the science specialists all game in every city when they become available for a huge mid-game science boost and more scientists late game. You actually get a bigger advantage from science specialists then a taller empire as you can run twice as many. This takes some planning ahead as local happiness sources are limited early game. This is why I recommend founding your own religion as you can get a reliable source of internal happiness from something like +2 happiness from temples and still buy the religious buildings where foreign religions spread into your lands. However, beliefs like temple and garden happiness vanish when the religion changes so you can't take advantage of them well without owning and protecting the religion. Overall I get more happiness on average from owning the religion. It is unlikely if you didn't invest religiously you'll have the faith to buy a lot of foreign religious buildings when you get the opportunity anyway. And if you are going to invest in faith to buy things like this you might as well do it early so you own a religion for the founder benefit and early pantheon. This is my philosophy. Lastly for science: I should note on immortal and deity the AI trade routes give you a lot of science. You will attract more of them if you keep 1-2 peaceful neighbors, get a big road network up early (because they use it to move their caravans further to more cities), and grow your cities faster.
Midgame economy and growing maintenance costs:
Spoiler :
Many players complain about midgame economy. How the money grows tighter and tighter after your REX your cities and start building buildings. this is because the maintenance costs in each city and from military keep going up while the tile yields for gold stay the same. How do you overcome this problem and get the gold you need midgame when it is most important to save money to buy buildings in slow cities and buy universities quickly?
I'll let you in on my personal strategies for this. And I rarely have midgame gold problems. How is that possible? Well via a few overlooked/misunderstood features.
#1: Wide empires get about double the normal resources of horse and iron. Early game Deity and immortal AI will often pay 2 gpt for EACH of these if you sell them one at a time. I sell them to non-neighbors to help them build up their militaries so they won't use them to attack me unless a have a friend neighbor I trust then I might sell for lump gold if I need gold fast. This is a TON of early gold. I often can get almost 30 gpt or more from doing this before the AI stop wanting it and they continue to want it almost till the end of the renaissance. By this time you have banks to replace the lost gold. I also aggressively search for all the civs so I know them early so I can make these trades. I look for 1 for 1 lux trades first but with a wide empire often there aren't enough to use all my duplicate luxes so I also sell them for 7 gpt each. Check every few turns to look for new 1 for 1 luxes though. If you see one. buy it with gold to reserve it, then switch over to 1 for 1 lux later after the first round of deals.
#2: city connections. They are so bad right?
Well early game when you first connect those 1-2 pop cities you are doing it to activate meritocracy to continue REXing. It also helps with troop mobility to quickly respond to the early rushers. The roads will most likely cost a little more then the city connections. But as you grow this begins to change. The gold you get is based on both the connecting city population and the capital population. That's it. This means it is far more cost-effective in happiness to overgrow your capital since this improves the gold from every city connection. So after I finish REXing, I usually start feeding my capital with trade routes and put it on max growth. It almost doesn't matter about it's production you just want it to grow as fast as possible. Your other cities you can worry about growing with the amount of local happiness but the capital grow as tall as possible and you'll soon see huge amounts of money from your city connections. Enough in some games to nearly cover maintenance costs as they rise if you build all your food and growth buildings early. Not a lot of people know this is how the math works but I know and it's why I still grow a big capital on liberty games. Besides the tons of money from doing this, it means I have one city that is competitive for pumping out quick military or wonders later. For this reason also always build the money buildings (market, bank, etc) as soon as possible in the capital to get multipliers on all that money and start your gold trade routes (if you have any) from there as well to centralize the money flow. I usually switch all my trade routes to internal food routes quite early though to get slower cities growing faster as I don't have gold problems usually. #3: work gold yielding tiles. With liberty growing fast is important but you have enough cities you don't need to grow them at full-tilt to be competitive. I recommend if you need the gold locking down some gold-yielding tiles (esp. during golden ages) or mines early game as you build your local happiness buildings. Grow in pace with your happiness otherwise you'll shoot yourself in the foot later. Plus extra gold later translates to extra science when it allows you to quickly buy universities and start working all the specialists earlier then normal. I work on my gold a lot just prior to techs for science buildings for this reason.
#4: attract AI trade routes. This is the main reason to keep friends and work hard to do so. The AI send you more trade routes meaning more gold and science if you are a large empire and you have some friendly neighbors. You tend to attract more routes if you quickly build a large road network too as their caravans can use it to get to more of your cities. This is another reason to have one huge city like the capital too as it attracts a lot of AI routes that bring you money and science.
#5: religion. By far the best argument for taking tithes is the huge amount of money it can bring in on a wide game. If you found a religion and make a big empire that's a lot of money, especially if you manage to passively spread it to a neighbor. Tithes yield varies from maybe 50 gpt (in your own empire only midgame) to as much as 200+ gpt. But regardless that's a LOT of money. I rarely take anythign else it is so powerful midgame and lategame in gold. that money directly translates into buying far more buildings to quickly develop your empire.
#6: piety gives an early game boost of 25% gold from temples. Can work well with a religious build/civ that has great temples.
#7: commerce gives a midgame boost to economy and is a great choice as a filler tree before rationalism (if you are going max science) or even your main tree if you just want to keep up with AI.
Lack of midgame happiness:
Spoiler :
this is described as the slump in growth when midgame around late medieval or renaissance there are no new local happiness sources and you may have to slow your empire growth for a while till you get an ideology and all the happiness from that. I find order to be the best pick.
The length or existence of this phenomenon varies significantly by the civ you pick and the religious beliefs you chose. Knowing this is coming I almost always try to get at least +2 happiness from my religion. I can pretty much always get this. I try to get 4 for my most successful games. If you can do this you'll be fine and barely feel the midgame slump. Also any civ that has a unique building that yields extra happiness has an advantage here and can grow faster. Depending on how much you can get total based on the civ and your religion you may choose to switch your trade routes to growth earlier or later. Also keep in mind the beginning of this era you gain universities and workshops so it can be quite profitable to run all the specialists, slowing growth for this period but still maintaining great science and production as a result of all those specialists in cities. A civ struggling on happiness can simply do this to remain effective and resume growth when ideologies come. If in this situation rush ideologies and build/buy a rapid 3 factories. This goes very well with the choice of order where factories boost science 25%.
Note that religious civs may not experience this slump at all because they were able to get 4-5 happiness per city from their religion or neighboring religions.
Certain midgame wonders can alleviate this problem. If you can manage to get the Forbidden palace, in addition to the 5% of meritocracy, 3/20 of your citizens will be happiness free, a very strong boost to a growing civ, but difficult to get as the AI love it. Keep in mind one early renaissance wonder can be rushed with the engineer from Pyramids and workshop which will come before the scientist in that city. The +10 happiness from Notre Dame also helps allowing all your cities to grow one pop higher if you can score it but the AI compete for this as well. Whether or not you get these 2 wonders depends a lot on your priorities and successful early teching. For instance, if you have solid happiness I think sistine chapel and leaning tower of pisa are very strong for a wide empire massively boosting your generation of culture and GP empire-wide for an even stronger bonus then a tall empire. It's a gamble but getting an engineer with the LToP finisher can mean a free sistine chapel or forbidden palace if you have decent tech rate for the best of both worlds.
That's the basics and I include them in basically every civ I play this way! Now on to specific civ strategies...I will add them in amendments below:
Probably not needed but it is a very fun synergy for building expensive buildings from the industrial/modern/atomic very fast. And nothing else seems as useful as religious community when enhancing rolls around. It's very powerful and virtually always there. 
, in addition to the guaranteed unique luxes from the UA...
