War or wonder bee-line to start, everything else sucks?

[Levgre]

I'm a long time civ 4 player, I've played Civ 5 on Prince and King difficulty now, I don't abuse the horrible war AI so I go for peaceful victories.

Anyways, with early peaceful starts, it seems any strategy is mediocre compared to bee-lining a wonder. With land typically being so barren and unproductive, building up an economy or production base is futile.

I guess if you have a lot of luxuries and great land about you can focus on expansion, but you would likely not end up ahead of the wonder strats.

I don't see any point to use the vast majority most of the leaders for peaceful strats, as most don't help with wonders. This patch doesn't seem to help this imbalance issue. I guess that's just how the game is?

 

[Levgre]

Never mind, tried the wonder strat, it sucks since Rome will just rush you with 10 warriors if you appear weak.

So yeah guess I had the right strategy with expanding and simply killing people if you don't have the land for it...

 

[Seek]

I'm a long time civ 4 player, I've played Civ 5 on Prince and King difficulty now, I don't abuse the horrible war AI so I go for peaceful victories.

Anyways, with early peaceful starts, it seems any strategy is mediocre compared to bee-lining a wonder. With land typically being so barren and unproductive, building up an economy or production base is futile.

I don't find this to be true at all - sure before you have a few workers out production can be rough going, but if you focus on production you can get a really strong capital. I'll typically stagnate my cap at size 4-6 (depending on terrain) for a while (~20 turns) in order to build up my production and economy. Micro you citizens if you don't already, it helps a lot.

As far as the wonder-strat is concerned, yes it's powerful, but it's not the absolute necessity you make it out to be - beelining Writing -> Philosophy is very powerful in getting your science rate up, as is rushing to a key military tech (though like you, I am typically a peaceful player so I don't often do this), or going Liberty to REX can be just as good as in Civ4 if you're somewhat isolated are all totally valid options that can lead to success.

If you can hold off a rush you will often be in a better position than your attacker. A simple way to hold off a rush is to invest in some Archers and focus down the attacker's melee units. Once you've beaten them back, go take some of their cities, make peace and expand onto all the land you've claimed.

I'd highly recommend checking out MadDjinn's and Wainy's Let's Plays on Youtube for picking up general strategies and useful habits for Civ5 - most are as useful with VEM as without.