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After having tried most races I settled for France and chosed a standard map with 7 other civilizations. France are a Commercial and Industrious nation. The only civilization in game that have both those strengths. And the way I play, those two combined are just amazing together. I quickly realized I had a small continent by myself and started my expansion. When the continent was filled I had 15 cities and thats all I would have to the end of game. One thing that I disliked with the other civilizations I had tried out was that all of them always had so high corruption and waste. Not with France. Commercial is truely amazing, it turns a new town far from the capital from one shield in production and one wasted for example to two shields in production. And having a Industrious strength as well I could quickly build mines around my 12th city so I could finish up the forbidden palace very quickly, turning down corruption and waste to negligible levels. Commercial also adds alot of extra money in the treasury. Meaning you will always be able to rush something extra that needs to be completed. Or just rush in general to be ready to take on the building of wonders as soon as you can.
I sometimes use a bit of a cheap tactic getting ahead in wonders.
If I know that for example I will research a new technoligy in say about 10 turns that will make it possible for me to build a wonder I just start a palace building at a town I see fit to complete that wonder. Then when the technoligy comes along I switch from Palace to Wonder, simple as that. That gives me a headstart since the town have been pumping in shields in for many turns before the wonder actually comes along. This is also possible partly by Commercial. Since I am able to always hurry improvments, most of the times my citys will just stand on Wealth in production. Another thing with Research is that I usally check up with the Domestic Advisor every turn to see if I can change the tax/sciene ratio a bit to my advantage.
Anyway, all this kept me ahead of the other civilizations all the time. Letting me snag 90% of all the wonders in Ancient and Medival times. And 100% of all wonders in Industrious and Modern times. The real strengths of Commercial and Industrious comes at Industrious and Modern time. At Modern time my Workers completed a road,railroad or irrigation on 1 Turn on plains,grassland. That means, I click on road,irrigation or railroad on a empty plain and bam, its done. Next turn the worker can be assigned to another task. This is very useful when it comes to cleaning up poltution. When Modern time started I had about 10 000 gold in my treasury. And it would stay around 10 0000 to 20 0000 gold all the game. Since I was isolated on that continent I had to rely on other civilizations to trade for resources. And I was missing two big ones, Rubber and Aluminium. Rubber is needed for pretty much any modern war units and Aluminium as well. Aluminium is also needed for the Space Race. Anyway, I traded with the Zulus for Rubber awhile, then with the Russians and Germans for Aluminium. I found it easiest to give them a lump sum of gold for a 20 turn deal on the resource. However it is not cheap. The Russians for example wanted 4000 gold for the Aluminium and the Germans 5000 gold later on. This was not a huge issue for me since I had a stuffed treasury and got about 500-600 gold per turn. But I can easily see this being a impossible mission for a poor nation to try and trade for resources. Another thing is that I had to wait on the nations that had these resources to get the proper advancments so I could trade with them. So, I got the aluminium and started to build the spaceship and was able to beat the others. The only other nation that had built a part on their space ship when I was done was the Russians.
So I must say....Viva La France!
I sometimes use a bit of a cheap tactic getting ahead in wonders.
If I know that for example I will research a new technoligy in say about 10 turns that will make it possible for me to build a wonder I just start a palace building at a town I see fit to complete that wonder. Then when the technoligy comes along I switch from Palace to Wonder, simple as that. That gives me a headstart since the town have been pumping in shields in for many turns before the wonder actually comes along. This is also possible partly by Commercial. Since I am able to always hurry improvments, most of the times my citys will just stand on Wealth in production. Another thing with Research is that I usally check up with the Domestic Advisor every turn to see if I can change the tax/sciene ratio a bit to my advantage.
Anyway, all this kept me ahead of the other civilizations all the time. Letting me snag 90% of all the wonders in Ancient and Medival times. And 100% of all wonders in Industrious and Modern times. The real strengths of Commercial and Industrious comes at Industrious and Modern time. At Modern time my Workers completed a road,railroad or irrigation on 1 Turn on plains,grassland. That means, I click on road,irrigation or railroad on a empty plain and bam, its done. Next turn the worker can be assigned to another task. This is very useful when it comes to cleaning up poltution. When Modern time started I had about 10 000 gold in my treasury. And it would stay around 10 0000 to 20 0000 gold all the game. Since I was isolated on that continent I had to rely on other civilizations to trade for resources. And I was missing two big ones, Rubber and Aluminium. Rubber is needed for pretty much any modern war units and Aluminium as well. Aluminium is also needed for the Space Race. Anyway, I traded with the Zulus for Rubber awhile, then with the Russians and Germans for Aluminium. I found it easiest to give them a lump sum of gold for a 20 turn deal on the resource. However it is not cheap. The Russians for example wanted 4000 gold for the Aluminium and the Germans 5000 gold later on. This was not a huge issue for me since I had a stuffed treasury and got about 500-600 gold per turn. But I can easily see this being a impossible mission for a poor nation to try and trade for resources. Another thing is that I had to wait on the nations that had these resources to get the proper advancments so I could trade with them. So, I got the aluminium and started to build the spaceship and was able to beat the others. The only other nation that had built a part on their space ship when I was done was the Russians.
So I must say....Viva La France!