Super Growth strat.

[arii]

When the game is from a scenario (typical for a premade map) you have no restriction regarding the choice of techs. You can go straight for monarchy or republic.
In a regular game you need a 4th tech to get to monarchy.

[Nap Bonaparte]

As usual, Markus has presented some very good ideas in this thread. I usually learn something when I see how he has disected this game. However, I take a slightly different approach in my civ growth strategy. Markus' strategy is mainly land oriented and requires two things: 1)Favorable terrain, 2)Intensive land improvement. My own growth strategy is more sea oriented. The 1st tech I go for after Republic is Seafaring and it allows you to build my favorite early game city improvement.....Harbors(my favorite late game improvement is Superhighways)....and then I can do WLTCD ad nauseum. The sea based stategy allows for faster early expansion IMO as fewer settlers are tied up for doing land improvement and can be used to found new cities. It is also much easier to grow cites with WLTCD with the increased trade narrows from sea hexes. In my last game against Markus I was forced to go into a sea based growth strategy since my initial starting terrain was so poor( my starting continent was over 25% desert/mountains/jungle/swamp). The final size of your cites is maxed out earlier as you can not irrigate as much farmland but I think that you can build more quality mid-sized cities( size 15-21 ) and ultimately work more hexes on the map. I will admit though that if you start with some nice terrain you can build a very effective large city of 25-30 that can generate very impressive trade after superhighways....I just dont reliably get good terrain on random maps.