After rah´s City States centred Strategy this is another attempt at exploring general strategy in the brand new Civilization V. The strategies and ideas I´ll present in the first couple of articles have proven themselves in Single Player on Deity difficulty - that though defnitely does not mean they represent some fundamental truth. This is the very beginning of this game and I definitely hope it has enough depth that we´ll see lots and lots of development in strategies and understanding of the game´s mechanics.

The following is a look at a quick expansion strategy with France focusing on taking advantage of this civ´s trait and the Liberty Cultural Policy tree.

Like almost anything you can call "strategy" in civ, this approach does not refer to the whole game, but instead is about the initial expansion phase from Ancient up to early Medieval era.

The nice thing about this buildup is that it puts you into a position of many options. You expand your empire quickly - what you do in between is your choice. This strategy is the strongest if left unchallenged till early Medieval. It´s still easily possible to get units to defend the growing empire - though defending against a rush by a human in a MP game should be very hard without cutting down on the expansion parts in favor of units.

Against the AI the "full buildup mode" will be much easier to pull off than against humans in Multiplayer.

The numbers in the build order relate to quick game speed.


France - Fast Expansion
Adopted LibertyIt´s worth growing the city here past pop2 if there are tiles worth hooking and working fast before starting contruction of a settler. I recommend hooking and growing to enough size to work the tiles that provide more than 2 food or 1 food and at least 2 production. Hooking Gold tiles isn´t important during this very early stage.Optimally you plant your second city the turn you adopt your second Social Policy, Collective Rule, definitely not before since otherwise it won´t receive the half full granary on foundation.Once you found your second city, continue expanding with another worker and settler. At this point it´s likely you have to compromise. You might need additional units though if you do it right your warrior and the cities should be able to defend against barbarians relatively easy at this point in the game if those are your concern. In a MP game the danger of units coming your way is even bigger, especially if it´s not a 1v1v1vX, but a team game or duel.
Attempting Henge
Republic


Citizenship

Adopt your third policy before building your third city, sometimes even before building your second, depending on when you could get the settler for it and plant it.

Remember that costs for Cultural Policies scale with the overall number of cities you control (puppet cities don´t count).

Costs for adoting third Cultural Policy: at 2 Cities: 80culture, at 3 Cities 95 culture

Costs for adoting fourth Cultural Policy: at 3 cities 170 culture, at 4 cities 200 culture

At this point - still exploring the abilities of the Liberty branch - you can chose between Republic and Citizenship.

Republic is a straight forward hammer bonus. If it is good anywhere, it should be best in a strategy that aims for many cities quickly like this one. At this point you cities should be accumulating around 3-10 production per city, which makes the additional hammer of Republic a bonus of somewhere between 10% - 30% - not too shabby. Also multipliers apply to this 1 hammer, which thanks to decimal places becomes 1.5 for example when producing a settler with Liberty having been adopted.


Production in Cities when adopting Republic

Citizenship increases the speed with which worker build tile improvements. It says 25%, though that depends on the game speed.
On quick speed it shaves off a turn of farms, mines, plantations, trading posts, not roads though for instance.

You have to take an educated guess here whether Republic or Citizenship first will bring you better results. If you have lots of resources to hook, maybe go with the last, if you have enough workers and all relevant things hooked and are now connecting your cities with roads, go Republic.


4 Cities

• Adopt next Cultural Policy: Represenation vs. Meritocracy

Where you strategically go from this initial buildup is your choice. You can get a military and attack someone, you can keep on expanding, you can rush for a specific wonder etc. See this article for different tech paths after initial buildup.

In any case you´ll be able to adopt more Cultural Policies.
Still exloring the strengths of the Liberty brancn, Representation
and Meritocracy are the options. If it´s only between those two, then gor for Representation first if you have enough happiness, other Meritocracy - that mostly depends on how much you expanded at this point in the game.


Adopting Meritocracy

Representation pays for itself over the course of the game - if it´s a long enough game and makes your new citiy acquire tiles even faster giving them +3 cultural from the start together with France´s trait.
The choice is not too hard, Representation is a bonus, Meritocracy an answer to a problem, not so much a gain. If you´ve got that problem, go that route first.


5 Cities


Empire running, ready to produce an army for instance


Demographics


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