In Civilization 5 there are a large amount of awesome characters that you can pick in order to be the better person over all of your other opponents; Washington is probably the best of them all. However, keep in mind that this guide is meant to give tips and tricks in order to find yourself with the majority of the wonders and the biggest and best civilization on the map. Also, some of the success of this strategy is to make sure that your preliminary placement of your first settler is near some luxury resources and iron, because you really don’t want to have to deal with happiness and iron shortages. Usually one or two luxury recourses can do the job, but just keep this in mind.

This guide is a linear path to utter glory, and following it will get you the best result in the end. While it might not be a pure militaristic or economic push, the end result will leave you with the ability to do whatever you want when it comes to endgame and beyond.

Enjoy! :)

When playing the sort of game that I am about to describe in Civ 5, it is important to always keep in mind that you are playing it safe. This means giving into people that are asking for recourses or pacts, making friends with as many city states as you can afford, and not going to war for any reason whatsoever. If someone goes to war with you, they will most likely come to you with a peace treaty that will benefit you extremely if you have done the above.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, the first thing to do when you are plopped down into a game, is to found Washington DC right on the spot that you were placed. Repeat, DO NOT MOVE YOUR FIRST SETTLER. This might seem insignificant, but if you move him around at all, even for a single turn, it will be very hard to make up the lost turns of production. After immediately settling, send your warriors off to explore. You can forget about them if you have “No Barbarians” on, but if there are barbarians, make sure that you let them explore for no more than ten turns, just so that they collect the goodies that are hidden in the surrounding ruins.

You will be faced with what to build in your first city, and you should choose to build a monument first, seeing that the first few sciences that you can research don’t really give you really big and important buildings. For the sake of space, here is a bullet list of things that you should choose to build, from top to bottom:
1. Monument
2. Worker (Set on automatic always except for invasions during war)
3. Granary
4. Settler (Depending on which sciences you research, what your warriors discover, and if you follow my recommended path for Policies. If your warriors find a settler, do not make one. If you follow my policy guide, do not make one.)

After this point, you are basically set up for the rest of the game until as long as you follow my Policy Guide, Science Guide, Wonder Guide, and Politic Guide. :) It’s that simple. (Relatively speaking)

My Policy Guide is quite simple. When you are first starting out, you can choose between three Policy Trees: Tradition, Liberty, and Honor.
You will rarely even touch on Tradition or Honor unless you choose to after following this guide. So let’s get into this! Here is what you should research:
1. Liberty (Complete this entire tree)
And then
2. Piety – Organized Religion Only
And then
3. Commerce – Don’t do anything more than adopt Commerce.
And then
4. Piety – Complete this

At this point you have two paths that you can go for:
Path number ONE:
5. Commerce – Complete this
And then
6. Freedom – Complete this

Path number TWO (Only do this if you have City States enabled)
5. Patronage – Complete this
And then
6. Do Path number ONE

And after you do this, you can do whatever you want to, except for Autocracy and Order.

Science is a lot more simple than the others:
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DO WHATEVER IS THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TURNS.
*Gasp*
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Except for nuclear tech... always do nuclear tech.

(WARNING: You need at least two cities (your capitol and one more) in order to do this properly)
Once again, wonders are pretty easy to do, but you have to understand this first:
In this guide, your capitol will be, essentially, a wonder ♥♥♥♥♥. If everything goes well, you will never actually build anything but wonders except for at the start and near the endgame. And here’s how you do it:

Once you’ve researched philosophy, Stonehenge will be unlocked. And this will be the start of your capitol’s addiction to wonders. If there is a wonder to be built, build it immediately in your capitol. Buy every other type of building that is actually needed in your capitol for it to not absolutely die. This is why it is important to spawn near luxury resources, because they give you money and happiness.

And there ya go! :D

This is really simple as well! :)

Just be as nice as you possibly can, and make as many friends as you can with the other Civs and the City States. If you do this, there won’t be anyone that will want to go to war with you, and if they do, not for very long… :)
Give money that you don’t need for your capitol, and always go for the pacts of friendship with everyone except for Montezuma.
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Montezuma sucks.