The Opera House will grant extra happiness but it takes a long time to get to it. Pretty basic but it helps with snowballing I guess.Д¬elts - They get extra faith from forests and their UU. That gives you more resources to trade for gold and more hammers means faster expansion. Russia - Well they get extra production from strategic resources and extra copies of said resources. So you'll need to expand quickly, locate sources of faith (religious CSs, faith mountains etc) and throw some points into Piety along the way. The extra religious belief is entirely dependent upon founding. Inland cities won't get this benefit so you'll have to be a little more careful. Additionally their land attack promotions are +33% each (instead of the +15% for land units) so that benefit ramps up much higher as they stack promotions. By the time you get to frigates you should have range 3 promotion so a naval conquest is very viable.Дromons can shoot inland from coastal cities essentially giving Byzantium very powerful early city defenses and coastal supremacy. It's best to expand along coastal cities as Dromons are essentially a stronger composite bowman on the ocean - and they are the only civ that gets access to a ranged naval unit before the galleas. Extra early gold from barb camps.Д«yzantium - Well their strategy is based entirely upon religion so you should try and play wide with them if you don't think a tall game where you focus on getting the Theology Wonders is viable. Songhai - The Mud Mosque removes the horrid temple upkeep and provides some extra culture. The Hoplite and Companion Cavalry are both beasts and can protect you from any threat. It's quite easy getting friendly with CSs so that covers over some of the shortfalls of playing wide. Greece - I'll add these guys because there UA is focused on citystates you should have extra cities to generate more culture and faith so you can win more citystate quests. The UA can help grab some key Wonders to help your strategy or get that National College up quicker. The Stable UB also gives some extra gold.Д®gypt - Get a great faith UB that cuts out the high upkeep of the temple and provides extra happiness. You can probably double dip into Liberty and Piety to pick up a reformation belief. Extra social policies make any strategy stronger. The UA is excellent and gives you access to Great People before you would normally be able to get them. a slightly cheaper archer unit which makes early military a little easier. The extra great generals are excellent for planting citadels in strategic locations or grabbing extra resources. The military bonuses are very useful too as you'll end up running into someones borders quite quickly.

That essentially covers up the lack of gold from playing Liberty. Legions can help with roads freeing up your workers elsewhere.Д¬hina is a good choice as the paper maker gives you +3 gold per city. You'll be able to build faith, science, gold and happiness buildings much faster so new cities will become self supporting more quickly. Rome are a reasonable choice but as its benefits gravitate towards lots of buildings and roads they suffer badly from the lack of early gold tiles that the BNW expansion removed.

The first 100 turns is usually pretty brutal but it gets better after that. The main constraints are space, happiness (luxuries) and gold. Generally any civ (except Venice) can play wide. If games went for 400 or 500 turns at standard speed than I have no doubt that wide would be stronger. Actually wide is almost always stronger than tall - but because most people finish their games between turns 250-300 wide is often still a bit behind where a tall civ would be.

Civ 4 best civs