Which Civ for this particular strategy?

[zijin_cheng]

My strategy right now is with China, 3-4 cities, going crazy cultural building every culture and going crazy on science too. Once I have a lot of wonders, I start churning settlers and placing them beside luxuries but not settling them. I build the wonders that say eg "need monument in every city". once those are done, I settle 6-7 cities at once and immediately research paper maker.

My research jumps like crazy and by 1940s I have those huge robots.

This is on the third difficulty from the bottom. I want to use the same strategy on the normal difficulty but I don't think China is suited for it.

Any suggestions on my strategy and which Civ?

 

[metatheory]

Siam. Build Wats in every city with a population of 5 and over. Get at least 2 maritime and 1 cultural CS allies. Take Tradition with the Wonder building bonus policy. Build a workshop and garden in your capital and populate it with a citizen to start a Great Engineer. Prioritize Education and Scientific Theory techs. Immediately buy the science building upgrades in your major population cities as soon as possible.

 

[YYY]

You don't need all the National wonders early on. Getting all of them out of the gate is a fairly weak strategy, since it keeps you from getting the benefits of these luxuries earlier, stunts city growth, and leaves the area open to be stolen by rival civs. Instead, focus on the one that will help your victory style most (conquest -> heroic epic, science/culture -> national college). You can safely ignore the National Epic early on, since you're going to want Monuments in every city anyway to pop borders. You can also put off the National Treasury (best for diplomatic victory) until after your rapid expansion phase because Currency comes relatively late and, again, you will eventually want Markets in all your cities, anyway.

That said, one of the best civs for this sort of strategy would definitely be Rome. Caesar's unique ability gives a +25% production bonus for any building that's built in the capitol, so if you're trying to push for the Heroic Epic, you can build a Barracks in Rome and get the bonuses on your satellite cities.

 

[Smote]

Yeah, you really don't need +25% great people generation from national epic until you are actually generating many great people points .



Regardless, it sounds like you want to get a lot of social policies and national wonders before doing an expansion surge. Civs specifically suited to this are:

Russia (extra hammer from horse = build everything faster)
France (extra culture-> faster aristocracy or faster theocracy or faster liberty )
Egypt (build those national wonders faster)
Rome (builds infrastructure faster -> requires staggered production, capital first, then all other cities)

 

[diz2]

You don't need all the National wonders early on. Getting all of them out of the gate is a fairly weak strategy, since it keeps you from getting the benefits of these luxuries earlier, stunts city growth, and leaves the area open to be stolen by rival civs.

This was more or less my reaction.

I really would like to get after either growth or conquest early. I can see limiting city count if I am going to go for a cultural victory, but not for the sole purpose of grabbing the national wonders. Most of them aren't that great.

And this strategy doesn't appear to be even that focused on the NW's as it also seems involve grabbing other science and culture buildings. Seems to be a lack of strategic focus if you are getting anything that is not a NW pre-req.

That said, if you are going to delay for the NW, the focus should be on beelining the NWs so you can get back to growing ASAP.

So, probably Egypt which would save a lot of hammers if nothing else.

 

[Smote]

I'd like to point out that you will have to delay for 100+ turns if you expect to build the Hermitage and Iron Works before expanding.

 

[zijin_cheng]

I'm not actually building all the ones but just the ones that provide real benefits like hanging gardens, stonehenge, the national college and pyramids. I'm building all the important ones, so I'm leaving out about 5-6 useless ones like great lighthouse

 

[Smote]

Ah, thank you for enlightening me.

I would again recommend Egypt. Combine their wonder building and aristocracy social policy and the typical wonder takes little longer than an ordinary building.

I would also recommend expanding, emphasizing hammers, and building multiple wonders at the same time if wonder-building is your goal. It is very difficult to get enough hammers to build all the wonders you want without expanding.

You are likely going to have to take out a barb camp before turn 11, defend against the other barb camp (I am assuming just 2) and steal a worker or 2 from nearby city-states in order to properly manage your hammers and cities. Wonder-spamming is a tough play to do well.

I would recommend not building workers, or military. You must defeat all the barbarians with 1 warrior and 1 scout. You must improve all your squares via captured workers, along with one purchased worker. You have no time to build anything other than wonders or settlers. You should also limit growth to churn out more hammers to get the wonders out so you can go back to growing after.

 

[YYY]

I'm not actually building all the ones but just the ones that provide real benefits like hanging gardens, stonehenge, the national college and pyramids. I'm building all the important ones, so I'm leaving out about 5-6 useless ones like great lighthouse

You may want to re-evaluate which wonders you consider useful. Hanging Gardens, in particular, is a really bad Wonder in this iteration of Civ. +1 pop in each city might be useful when you have 10+ cities and they are all 10+ citizens, but when it comes around you are lucky to have 4 or 5, and many of those cities may not have more than 2-3 citizens. Couple that with the fact that the AI, for whatever ridiculous reason, REALLY likes the Gardens and you're looking at something with a very high cost and very little benefit.

The Pyramids, as well, are only useful in a minority of situations. With the fall of putting roads on everything, quite often the limiting factor in work completion is simply getting your workers where they need to be. Pyramids allow a 'wide' empire to squeak by with fewer workers, but even then a 'wide' Civ is going to need the extra hammers to build city basics, such as Monuments and Libraries, to say nothing of the large amounts of Settlers to simply enable the strategy. As another mark against the Pyramids, remember that a 'wide' empire will most likely want Liberty as their first social policy...and Liberty contains a policy that will give you most of the benefits of the Pyramids, with no hammer investment, and no chance of being beaten out by another player.

I would encourage you to look at Trickster's Civ 5 guide to get some input and perspective on which Wonders you're prioritizing. Wonders are not the make or break buildings that they were in Civ 4, and when you take a hard look at them there's really not many World Wonders worth the risk of going in hard for. In fact, it sounds like you are running the risk of having your play style rely too much on Wonders. I'd encourage you to play a game or two with absolutely no World Wonders at all (only National wonders) to get the feel of the fundamentals of the game. After you can handle a Prince or King game without any Wonders at all, you can look into how they can supercharge your play style.

 

[zijin_cheng]

oh yeah I can handle a prince and king game without wonders, in fact that's how I've always played, until recently my friend said to try wonders then I went to easy to try it out

 

[alpaca]

Well the only really good early wonder is the Great Library, and that only if you play on a low enough difficulty to use it for a slingshot, and Stonehenge, mainly for the GE point. In the middle ages, Chichen Itza is good and the Porcelain Tower and Himeji Castle are quite solid. Renaissance, it depends a bit on your playing style but usually Taj Mahal and the Sixtine Chapel are nice, sometimes the Forbidden Palace is decent (although 0.5 happiness per city isn't very good) and the Louvre and Brandenburg Gate are good if you can grab them without much fuss and haven't spent too many GP on golden ages yet.

The only one I really try to get is Taj Mahal usually.

 

[Ulti_mecia]

I agree with the Taj, it is much better than you'd think because the GA is so long.
It works especially well if you have Chichen Itza/are Persia/both as well.

The Stonehenge engineer helps with getting the Chichen

 

[zijin_cheng]

The Louvre and the Gate? what's the point of building them? Are artists really that good for culture bombing?

 

[diz2]

The Louvre and the Gate? what's the point of building them? Are artists really that good for culture bombing?

I use the artists for golden ages. The Louvre is nice, and usually not too hard to get.

Two 4 turn GAs is a lot of gold and hammers for the investment.

 

[biohazard72]

If you're not swimming in Great Generals, those Great Artists can be worth 15 turns of golden age, which is excellent. If I'm on a lower difficulty, I prioritize Chichen Itza + The Louvre (Taj Mahal too).

 

[alpaca]

I use the artists for golden ages. The Louvre is nice, and usually not too hard to get.

Two 4 turn GAs is a lot of gold and hammers for the investment.

This. I think I never used the artists for anything else than golden ages in vanilla, though. The Louvre is not awesome but ok. If you have a large empire, the golden age probably nets you more production and gold than you spend on the wonder.