Whats your favorite map, mod and strategy?

[Cataclisto]

Whats everyones favorite map(s), mod(s) and strategy? I'll list mine below.

Favorite maps - continents and ice age,
I like continents because im not a fan of being connected to everyone and i put it on arid, for more floodplains, ice age for a connected thin map.

Mod - Portugal since begining - it suits my playstyle :P has maria II which has a civ tech bonus, health upgrade to units, and i mix her with a different civ portugal africa which has a fast worker thats +4 instead of the normal fast worker +3 and a forge that gives off culture which helps keep people away

Strategy - Relegion fanatic - Yep... we start the game with advanced start i get the first 2 relegions before the rest of the map, it drastically slows down the ai, both relegions go into my second town, then i get the rest of the relegions in that town, and get divine right with oracle, which takes me 50-75 turns total for all relegions, By turn 100 i have 2 towns, surounded by ai, am close to rifleing, 50-300 gold per turn with the two towns, and hope that my warhappy buddy i started the game with can come save me with the starting techs/war techs before i get whiped out :P ... we play on the quick settings, both of us start with warlord setting, with 12 ai on a normal size map takes days/weeks to win... the ai gets crazy too if they catch up in tech... my boats have been nuked by them in their terrotory...

(edit: We play on conquest only victory settings, no time or turn limits... a full destroy everyone or die game) :D

[Cypherinツ]

I generally play on Pangaea. Continents used to be my thing but then I gave up on it due to how frustrating it is to steer my research towards techs like astronomy for the galleon then having to train 100000 galleons to kill my enemies at another continent. Pangaea makes it much easier to destroy all my enemies (which is usually how I play).

Starts are the usual; whatever suits the situation, however I usually get bronzeworking and ironworking fairly early regardless to train up an army of swords / axes and kill whoever's closest to me to get like 5 cities before 1 AD. (War is hella easy early on, AI only defends themselves with like 1 or 2 archers per city) Or if I'm playing the egyptians (my fav civ) I try to get animal husbandry and get horses then train war chariots instead and focus my research on other techs. I usually settle only two or three cities depending on where everything is and go from there.

So basically..... I focus on military while settling very little cities, not worrying too much about creating any allies or any religions while still maintaining decent city production, research, gold production and dumpstering every AI that exists in the game. Although I usually only manage to kill 3 or 4 civ's and then I just get a domination victory lol. (I play on Noble / Prince difficulty)

[ghpstage]

I like to mix up the maps a lot, but more often than not its a pangea, continents or archipelago map of some variation.

The mods I use most is BUG which is a UI improvement mod that makes useful information much less tedious to find, but I also like Dune Wars and Fall from Heaven 2 which are bnoth total conversoin mods.

Strategy wise, when the map lets me and I revert to type, I tend to expand out to 6-8 cities , cottage up the capital for bureacracy and use great scientists to bulb down the liberalism line, pick up gunpowder and nationalism and stage a massive breakout with cuirassiers at 300-800AD. I am quite fond of chariot rushes, horse archer wars, elepults, cannons, aircraft carrier spam and annihilating civs in one turn with nukes+paratroopers too.
When i'm not at war, and not in the middle of a buildup my military is usually very, very small, virtually non existant in fact.

What actually happens is driven by the map and neighbours primarily, where I pick something suitable out of quite a list of approaches I know work, but I also like try out unusual or experimental approaches when I think of, or see someone else try/mention such as espionage powered culture wins, beelining to drama for happiness, crossbow/treb/knight rushes, longbow+catapult wars and even challenges like no cottage games, most cities at 1AD or playing a map made up entriely of flat grassland tiles, no hills, no resources, no rivers, no coast/akes (now that one was interesting!)


I mostly play random leaders at emperor/immortal at normal speed.

[CHI LONG QUA]

The big mods I love are:

Dune Wars (there's been a recent modmod that can be found over at civfanatics with a little digging)

Legends of Revolutions, maybe not that particular mod as a whole but the part of it that introduced stability and dynamic revolutions wasawesome

FFH2 of course, my favourite submod is the Magister modmod

The various Rhye's and Fall mods, especially the Sword of Islam mod.

[Gil_Nutz]

It depends on my mood for what map I play on. I really like Highland as a map with Dense peaks and Sea's. It makes for long games due to being so spread out and you still get to have a naval aspect with the seas. The Dense Peaks make for some very good defensive and Tactical gameplay and is just overall very fun to do. I def. reccomend trying it out. As for mods right now im sticking with next war. I tend to like end game warfare over ealy so I tend to do the peaceful builder until Late game then start my war path.

[Tech Geek 19]

Maps: Continents, although depending on the civ, archipelago
Because my fav civs are Germany and America, and sometimes the Brits or Japanese

Mods: My all time best is Final Frontier Mod, I'm all about space exploration, and of course NextWar because I prefer late game dominance

Strategy: Build up my cities as much as I can, avoid war, until my cities have no more buildings to build. Then pure military bliss from there on out!

P.S. Looking for people to play Final Frontier Mod with!

[mastarfin]

Currently:
Favorite Mod: Star Trek http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=6201
here is a how I discovered it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIFI3NJA4no

Not much into playing scenarios. Prefer to play open sandbox style. This mod is a true gem.

[Ogmok]

I play the game in the "moderate" difficulties like chieftain and warlord most of the time, difficulties like emperor etc. will need other strategies.

Favourite map: Pangea. I do not enjoy games with islands. There will still be water, but you can reach everything without boats.

Favourite Strategy: agressive expansion & technology overkill. Later I also use massive terraforming and try to have railroad on more or less every single field in my kingdom. I never trade technology unless it's extremely (!) low - like stone age tech in the 14th century.

Normally I win the space race, but I also dominate the world if the other players declare war on me. They might think that I'm weak since I do not build much military in peace time, but I stomp them as soon as I start the machines of war (especially with gunpowder units and tanks vs. archer and cavalery )

Favourite Civilizations: I got several ones, but the most broken one is Inca with Huayna Capac as their leader. HC got an incredible good early game and an overall awesome bonus to everything. --> Your granary spreads culture like mad, so you exand easily. You will swim in gold and wonders. Your unique unit (Warrior) will devastate everything in the early game (double damage vs. archers!) which makes "HC" to the most vicious rushing leader. You can save the game at the very first turn, seach for the closest enemy, load the original first turn and simply kill the first enemy civilization with your first warrior (save before attacking, but the enemy bonus defense is often lower than your veteran warrior bonus and you simply destroy the first enemy capital city around turn 10!)

[Meat Gave Me Chest Pain]

Favourite map - Medium and Small (normal continents, islands mixed in)
You start on the same continent as half of all civilizations.
I like that I get massive land to myself after I conquer a few.
Then, it still gives me the mid-game challenge where I have to build caravel to discover other civilizations and trade techs/go to war.

Strategy -
Rush horse archer or unique unit axemen for early game warmongering.
Also ush oracle to get code of law.
After that I get great library built to keep my research higher than rival civ's.

After that, I have an option to warmonger again after getting macemen/trebuchet.
If not, I beeline Education and get Oxford university built asap. This will again keep my research higher than others.

Once I get to this stage, the game is in my hand and I can go for an easy space victory.

[Jake the Hawkeye]

I always play Terra, on the biggest map size, on marathon length.
>starter continent with everyone
>"New World" separate continent, with a few other minor islands

Strategy:
>Found all religions
>Build as many wonders as I can
>Great prophets + religions = money money money
>Avoid war early on
>After religions, race to optics
>Get to New World
>All those tribal villages....mmm
>Colonize (religious money funds colonies)
>Control New World
>Try to control all of it before others get astronomy
>Have entire continent of my own
>Start focusing on military
>Basically all of North America versus separate countries in Europe
>Dominate Old World
>America F yea!!!
But seriously, it's basically the closest thing I've found to a real-world game and playthrough, which is why I like it. Scenarios are only good for one playthrough (except Civ 2's WWII scenario... man that was so epic to try and win...), but using terra's random map makes it fun