Another unsuccessful strategy.

[Dinner]

There seems to be only one real way to play the game, at least at higher level; you expand aggressively and early making sure to nab as many luxury resources as possible. You then trade the excess luxury resources for money. I've been trying out alternative strategies just to see how they go but universally they have all been a disappointment and pushing for big early expansion seems to be the only way to go. My latest experiment was to remain with just my first city until the national college and national military college were built, because to build those national wonders you have to have buildings built in every city, so I wanted to try to build them early with just one city and see if it helped. Sadly, while the national college helps science you get a much, much, much bigger bump simply from having more cities while I found your capital is seldom free to produce military units so the rather small bonus you get for a national war college just doesn't make up for the lost science, gold, and luxuries.

I've tried a number of different strategies and tactics but I'm afraid Civ5 remains with just one truly successful strategy. You expand fast and you expand early because the bonuses you get from more cities and more pops early just can't be beat by any other strategy. Of course, this means cultural victories are out and domination or science are the only reasonable ways to go; especially in MP (not that MP matters if you plan to play with more then one person because it will just crash). I'm getting seriously sick and bored with Civ5 because it seems a very poorly thought out game which forces you to do the same thing over and over.

[a.kitman]

i play mostly on small maps but i find one city cultural victory is way to easy in single player. get stonehenge and cristo redentor and just build all the cultural buildings and you got it in the bag.

and i can pull of a science win whit a small empire. 2-3 citys and the ai got 10-15 citys each.

hade the ai been better civ 5 would be a far better game then civ 4 imo. atm bts is a better game tho.