Your most interesting/fun/weird strategy

[Minh Le]

Hi guys.
I know that any of us have some games we try something very interesting/fun/weird. How about we share it so we can have some fun read together?
I will go first. This is a game I played not long ago, and I think its kinda interesting. I named it Egyptian Artifact Raider strategy. Its actually very simple. I played as Egypt, and I go war with my neighbour(s), capture their cities, build the burrial tomb, swap the artifact, then raze . Since I go Authority, I have reward when capturing cities and killing units so It worked out well. I have a lot of culture and science from artifact, and my cost stay the same because I didnt keep cities. The only problem is slots to keep them so I pick all the building with art and artifact slot from my religion. In the end, I filled all the artifact slots in my 7 cities. I could choose to win either by science or culture, it doesnt matter.
How about your games? Im very curious .

 

[chicorbeef]

Hi guys.
I know that any of us have some games we try something very interesting/fun/weird. How about we share it so we can have some fun read together?
I will go first. This is a game I played not long ago, and I think its kinda interesting. I named it Egyptian Artifact Raider strategy. Its actually very simple. I played as Egypt, and I go war with my neighbour(s), capture their cities, build the burrial tomb, swap the artifact, then raze . Since I go Authority, I have reward when capturing cities and killing units so It worked out well. I have a lot of culture and science from artifact, and my cost stay the same because I didnt keep cities. The only problem is slots to keep them so I pick all the building with art and artifact slot from my religion. In the end, I filled all the artifact slots in my 7 cities. I could choose to win either by science or culture, it doesnt matter.
How about your games? Im very curious .

I'm fairly certain that costs don't lower if you raze the city after annexing it. Also, why not just take puppets and shift puppet artifacts to your core cities?

It might not qualify as the most radical or fun strategy, but something I like doing is picking Mosques + Stupas, picking up the Fealty opener for the Monasteries/Faith savings, then trying to go for a wide Sacred Sites CV with Artistry. Try it as Polynesia.

One funny thing I tried in Vanilla was not settling until I saw an enemy capital and then planting right by them and harassing the crap out of the AI, planting your first General as a Citadel two tiles from their capital to further screw them over.

Polynesian Terra can be fun. Get a continent all to yourself. See if you can catch up!

Never actually tried this last one... declare on literally everyone in the game as Japan. Build Great Wall/go Goddess of Protection. Win a CV via grinding.

 

[Minh Le]

Wow really, I thought it based on my total number of cities...

 

[CrazyG]

On older versions, you could get a religion with only one city and take way of transcendence (I liked doing it with Aztec and God of War). Way of Transcendence just a flat 500 of everything, instead of being based on spreading. You could get some really absurd results with this approach, like reaching the Renaissance era before year 0.

Wow really, I thought it based on my total number of cities...

The doesn't update social policy/ science costs that often. So if you raze a city, you will be "overpaying" until it updates (also if you puppet the city). I think the only thing that updates them is acquiring a new city.

 

[Minh Le]

The doesn't update social policy/ science costs that often. So if you raze a city, you will be "overpaying" until it updates (also if you puppet the city). I think the only thing that updates them is acquiring a new city.

Oh then it was fine. I didnt take more than 2 cities until I made peace and raze.

 

[chicorbeef]

Oh then it was fine. I didnt take more than 2 cities until I made peace and raze.

If you instantly raze then you're fine (it won't update until you catch another city, but after that it'll work fine) but razing after annexing, the cost will be permanently raised.

Costs never go down (eg. lose a city, recapture it), your costs won't go down when you lose that city, your costs will stay the same after recapturing it.

 

[Minh Le]

Ops thats suck...

 

[crdvis16]

Border blobs is still pretty fun. Off the top of my head the pieces were: god of the expanse, tradition tile acquisition cost reduction, authority's tribute (and finishing authority for tribute x2), angkor wat, and fealty's faster border growth during WLTKD. Can combine with Russia's UA, Ethiopia's UB, as well as others I'm forgetting. The main problem is that your cities tend to acquire all of their available tiles by mid game at which point all of these bonuses stop.

I agree with Chicorbeef that wide tourism with Polynesia is fun- that's one of the civs/strategies I go back to every now and then because it's a favorite of mine. Moai being converted to tourism via hotel/stadium/airport/visitor center can get really strong tourism and adding sacred sites to the mix is a nice supplement. I imagine other civs could pull this off as well if they have a way to create strong culture tiles (Brazil maybe?).

I still wonder if there's a way to pull off a wide tourism strategy without needing spammable culture tiles like Maoi. You'd probably need sacred sites and you'd need to get a lot out of dig sites which means dipping into both Fealty and Artistry, just not sure if that alone would get you enough tourism without also securing a bunch of wonders.

I think games with the Maya, Byzantium, and India in general lend themselves to doing some fun things with religion.

 

[Galbias]

Making a super-religion to take over the world with Ethiopia was great, but it's not really as viable anymore since the beliefs to boost passive spread and to erode pressure on Missionary conversion are both Enhancers now. I tried doing something similar a couple times with Byzantium and it never went anywhere near as well. Still kind of want to try India on a small all-land map so there's nowhere to run from his boosted pressure.

Aside from the America game where I set all the AI Civs to ones with UI/Indonesia, something I want to try is picking Mongolia and then doubling (or more, if possible) the number of City-State spawns for free real estate shenanigans.

I had also considered going England, setting the number of Civs to 10 so you would get double the normal number of spies, and then taking the religious belief that gives religious pressure from spies, but I doubt it would do enough to be worthwhile.

 

[tu_79]

Not a strategy, but I enjoy it when I successfully time envoys with world congress sessions, getting the right number of policies just when I unlock a wonder, or distributing spaceship parts among several cities so they are all completed at the same time.

 

[Minh Le]

Making a super-religion to take over the world with Ethiopia was great, but it's not really as viable anymore since the beliefs to boost passive spread and to erode pressure on Missionary conversion are both Enhancers now. I tried doing something similar a couple times with Byzantium and it never went anywhere near as well. Still kind of want to try India on a small all-land map so there's nowhere to run from his boosted pressure.

Haha its really fun. I succeed doing that with Byzantium after 2 tries and shared it as a photojournal. I can share some tips: you only need the erode 50% one, its much stronger in term of spread and erase other religion. You will need Hagia Sophia (25% tronger missionaries, free prophet) and Borobudur (3 spreads). You will have to do it fast, later it will become much harder. You have to send missionaries in pack, and do the convert at once. Dont let AI have the chance to fight back .

 

[Favorius]

Information Era serial coups (preferably as Venice): I install as many 3 rank spies as I can to city states that are allied to other players just before finishing Intelligence Agency NW. Then initiate couping session which yields enormous amounts of science and culture as well as many CS allies.

 

[Galbias]

Haha its really fun. I succeed doing that with Byzantium after 2 tries and shared it as a photojournal. I can share some tips: you only need the erode 50% one, its much stronger in term of spread and erase other religion. You will need Hagia Sophia (25% tronger missionaries, free prophet) and Borobudur (3 spreads). You will have to do it fast, later it will become much harder. You have to send missionaries in pack, and do the convert at once. Dont let AI have the chance to fight back .

Yeah, I enjoyed reading it. I think the one big thing that I didn't do as Byzantium but you did was go Council of Elders which should give a real nice tech/production boost and allow you to get Hagia Sophia and Borobudur faster so your religion can snowball from there, without it I lost basically every Wonder before Renaissance to AIs because Byzantium doesn't really have any advantages before they get a religion.

 

[GhengisCat]

I was forced into an unusual strategy while playing as the Celts the other day. The game was played using the 11/21 version on the YnAEMP Giant Earth map with marathon speed and emperor difficulty. I changed my starting location to the middle of France since starting on Britain leaves you literally doing nothing but clicking "Next Turn" until you reach Fishing and can get off the island. Anyway, I had selected Rhiannon as my pantheon and had started the Progress tree. I'd barely selected two policies (opener + Organization) when I realized I had to do something about Maria Theresa. She was rapidly pulling ahead of everyone in techs and policies. I decided the only way to stop her was to go to war, so I abandoned Progress and started going down the right side of Authority. The combo of Rhiannon + Organization + Authority was giving me huge amounts of production and gold. After spamming skirmishers and catapults, I made my move and easily took her capital which was lightly defended even though her military strength was 5 higher than mine.

Unfortunately, I got a little too greedy. After making peace with Maria, I noticed Catherine moving units to my border, so I struck preemptively and decided to settle for nothing less than capitulation. I easily won and vassalized her, but then Atilla declared war on me and Maria attacked as soon as our treaty expired. Both of them had stronger armies than mine, and I had too few units to defend the vast amount of territory I had, so I gave up and restarted. But I was incredibly impressed with the gold and production I was getting from Rhiannon + Organization + Authority. If I would have stopped fighting after taking Vienna and switched to a more defensive approach, I probably could have pulled off a win.

 

[DonStill]

Yeah, I enjoyed reading it. I think the one big thing that I didn't do as Byzantium but you did was go Council of Elders which should give a real nice tech/production boost and allow you to get Hagia Sophia and Borobudur faster so your religion can snowball from there, without it I lost basically every Wonder before Renaissance to AIs because Byzantium doesn't really have any advantages before they get a religion.

I thought you're only allowed one religious wonder though?

Anyway, a strat I like is Sacred Sites Byzantium. Take three buildings for your religion, then Fealty (opener only if you like) and spam missionaries until you get the Reformation and Sacred Sites. Then dump those buildings in every city you can until you're influencing everyone. Also helps if you go Progress first, to really go wide with those buildings.

Another I like is going England, getting that pantheon for mines and 1 prod for every 3 pop, grabbing Diligence and going thru Authority, then just sit back and enjoy building everything in under 10 turns. Even better when you get to Steam Mills for their 1 prod for every two pops.

 

[ryanmusante]

Can someone point me to a thread or give an explanation that states which buildings are related?
I mean in terms of effects and how some are prerequisites to others. (As in Barracks to Armory to Military Academy)

 

[DonStill]

Can someone point me to a thread or give an explanation that states which buildings are related?
I mean in terms of effects and how some are prerequisites to others. (As in Barracks to Armory to Military Academy)

I think the UI shows you what building comes before and after whatever you're hovering over. Other than that, I think it goes by class of buildings.

Military -> Barracks - Armory - Academy
Defense -> Walls - Castle - Arsenal - Military Base
Boredom -> Arena - Circus - Zoo - Stadium
Science -> Council - Library - University - Public School - Research Lab
Culture -> Monument - Amphitheater - Opera House - Museum

There's some others probably, but I can't think of them.

 

[kkkitten]

I like these threads a lot, give me ideas for games, as if I need more reason to stay up at night

I once played a game where all I was aiming at was to vassalize the entire world.
Rules being that you only win when every single Civ in the game is your vassal at the same time. Also if a Civ is "gone" you have to liberate them then vassalize them as well

Edit. You have to be careful not to conquer an entire civ yourself before you can vassalize; also Autocracy helps a lot with Iron Fist, I couldn't finish the game because of rebellion and World Congress I'm going to try it again soon

 

[azum4roll]

Food -> Granary - Aqueduct - Grocer - Hospital - Medical Lab
Gold -> Market - Customs House - Bank - Stock Exchange

I probably got some wrong. Please correct me.

 

[tu_79]

There are miscellaneous buildings, like the herbalist, which is mostly food, but does not belong to the food chain. Maybe Agribusiness too. Caravansary is technically a gold building, but is not required either.
Then, there are national wonders that require a building and a minimum population in the empire. The National Monument, for example, is a culture building that requires a monument.

And you forgot the sea buildings, lighthouse - harbor - Seaport.