Civilization 5 Strategy That Worked For Me

[Rartis]

Hey,

I like sharing this strategy, it's like an awesome back door to Civilization 5... It's Not like how most people play the game yet it's amazing...

I'm used to civ IV and lots of stuff that worked in there isn't working here.. But change is good I suppose,
But I play on a high difficulty level, really need to know what I'm doing and what happened was that the AI was always a step ahead and had a WAY bigger army than me..

So I read a guide and this is the strategy:

"There are 2 phases to this strategy. In phase 1 you play the game normally. In phase 2 you start ignoring happiness and what happens is quite amazing.

This strategy works best with France, as you're going to have a HUGE empire.

First phase, play the game as normal. You'll want to slingshot a bit to get the commerce / freedom trees. Every tree before then is going to be bad for you (except maybe liberty for culture and happiness, as well as fast expansion).
Don't build any happiness buildings, as their maintenance is too much. Focus on nabbing a lot of luxury resources, as once phase 2 hits, you won't grow anymore. Trade for as much luxury resources as possible, and max out your happiness. Get currency at some point, and start all your towns up on markets.

Phase Two. Your goal is to start up a massive war machine, and never stop. You know those times when you want to keep up the fight but you don't because your happiness is capped? Ignore that entirely! Attack enemy cities. ANNEX every single one. Don't build courthouses.

Ignore happiness, and keep capturing cities. Switch all your mines to trade posts. Ignore growth and production. Get every single city maxed out on merchants, and pray for some great merchants. Sell off all happiness resources for more gold. Grab the key commerce policy of -25% spending cost. Build the key wonders for buying units/buildings. Gun for the Renaissance era, as Freedom is the key policy tree.
Put your civilians to work in Trade posts and as Specialists (bottom right in city menu).
As this is really a specialist economy, you'll see quite a few great people, as well as lower food costs from Freedom.

What you lose
- NO city growth
- NO golden ages from happiness
- Half production
- Penalty to combat

What you gain
- A LOT of gold off selling luxuries
- More gold from production
- Cities switching from growth to more useful tiles, like merchants and trade posts
- No maintenance from happiness buildings and previously needed workshops
- No maintenance happens from marketplaces or any other key buildings
- Benefits of currency modifiers over production modifiers
- More specialized policies
- No caring to stop the war machine, and thus a much larger empire
- Gobs and gobs of great generals and other specialists to use for golden ages (+1 commerce per tile in a massive empire!)
- The highest science you'll ever see

You'll be tempted to try this with Arabia for its gold on trade routes, but you need the culture from France. No other civilization can have an empire this size and still pump out social policies."

(source of the strat: http://tinyurl.com/civ5guide)

Tell me how it goes for ya!

[Hermann the Lombard]

I'm puzzled by the way this gimps production in Phase II, both by unhappiness and by converting mines to trading posts. You don't end up with many hammers at all, but instead lots of gold. Does this strat depend on buying the conquering armies?

[rah]

And do your troops still do ok suffering the penalty?

[pdxsean]

I love that there are a ton of different strategies and some of them can be pretty unique. However, a lot of them just don't sound very fun and sort of exploit loopholes in the game (for example, that unhappiness has no real penalty) so I'll stick to my strategy of measured growth, diplomacy, and defensive war instead of locking myself into a rigid path toward victory.

[Monthar]

You'll be tempted to try this with Arabia for its gold on trade routes, but you need the culture from France. No other civilization can have an empire this size and still pump out social policies."

This strategy will work just as well, if not better with the latest patch's default of not allowing policy saving, with the Aztecs. Especially once you crank up the war machine. For every enemy unit you kill you'll gain culture.

You can also use your riches to ally all the Cultured City States. This will give a few benefits.
- Culture for your policies.
- Luxuries to help combat some of the unhappiness.
- Strategic resources
- AI controlled troops to help slow or distract your enemies.