Five Steps to a (Civilization) V

Strategy games are the best. They test your ability to make smart decisions, plan for the foreseeable future, and crush all of your opponents to dominate the entire world.

Ah, okay maybe that last part isn't so common, but if you know of Sid Meier's Civilization V, ultimate ruler is the name, world domination is the game.

This is the beginning of the end for all the other civilizations out there.

The general idea of Civilization V is to grow your civilization starting from the prehistoric times and try to advance through history to become the most successful, powerful nation. You start off as some famous leader, let it be Genghis Khan of the Huns, Theodora of the Byzantium Empire, or even Gustavus Adolphus of the Swedish. Now, it's not as easy as it sounds, and this game should be handled with a lot... discretion.

Now that you know about Civilization V, you should know how to handle the game! It's not as easy as pushing down Ghengis Khan and telling him to submit to your empire, you've got to examine and understand the economic and political weight of your decisions. No successful nation became as it was without good 'ole strategy, so if you wanna pass that AP test - errr, uhhh, I mean conquer the world - then carefully follow these Five Steps to a (Civilization) V!

I'm more of a beach person myself, but hey to each his own.

Step 1: It's all about location, location, location.
When you start off the game, you're given two units to control: a fighting unit, and a settler. The settler is the important one here, because you need to direct your settler to a tile that offers the most ideal capital. The settler can found a city, and the first city they can found is your capital city, so you should choose a really nice place for all of your sheeple. Some of the most successful empires start off by a coast, and have significant, useful resourceful tiles surrounding the city. A great incentive to starting an empire off by a coast is the future expectation of naval travel. A city has to be aligned to water to enable to even begin any sort of sea-faring abilities, so why not kill two birds with one stone by choosing an area that starts you off with a potentially useful ability while also being geographically strategic. Having the early advantage of naval units can get you ahead of the game from other landlubber empires on your continent, as well as allow you to get into contact with empires across sea. Of course, the opportunity cost to choosing a coastal capital is a less security. That is, if you choose to put your city right at the edge of a continent, you open the possibility for easier targeting when other empires decide they don't like your face and decide to conquer you. At that point, you're vulnerable to attack from triremes and other long-ranged militaristic naval units. Ouch. It's all quite subjective, so how much do you weigh the opportunity cost?

Apparently this is the recipe for happiness.

Step 2: Supply the demand
As with everything in the real world, humans depend on goods in order to thrive. Likewise, your sweet little civilians need some help in order to grow and populate your cities. The world in Civ V is flourishing with tiles of untapped resources, from salt quarries to whales. In order to not only improve wealth and happiness within your cities but also be the empire with the most luxurious, desirable resources, you need to be quick to exploit the resources first since there is a scarcity in super desirable, luxury resources. When you "work" a tile, you absorb the benefits of the terrain/resource of that tile, thusly providing the city from where the workers came from to have that resource available. More resources equals happier citizens. But that isn't the only benefit to having resources! Keep in mind that once you enter the realm of awareness that no, you are not alone in the world, you've unwittingly joined a world economy. As a result, you need to interact with other nations to find out what mutually beneficial agreements you can make, for the greater good. This is why it's important to realize that....

Diplomatic relations are difficult when you're talking to a scary lady with a sword.

Step 3: Macroeconomics is your friend
As much as you'd like to pretend everyone else isn't as important as you and that you can just do you, and then boom world domination, yea no you're gonna have to actually be social. So, working with other nations is how you set up the rest of the dynamic of the game, establishment of allied forces and resentful enemies. This can only be accomplished by actually having to be social and be in contact with whatever empires you are aware that exist. By doing so, you can see how they act around you, what their general diplomatic policies are, and what the wealth of their nation is. This, is where international trade is key. Trade is what allows countries to interact with one another: you can find some sort of price equilibrium, where the value of their goods is equal to the value of your offer, whether it be a tangible or diplomatic, like open borders. Sometimes, another country has access to a luxury resource that you cannot get, or they have ownership to lands you can't pass through unless you are allies. So, it's important to understand that the workings of another nation has a huge effect on how you strategize the rest of you path to world domination, because how can you conquer the Byzantine empire when they block your every path to the outside world and are allies with all of your enemies? Mmm yea it might get a little difficult then, might wanna rework the whole being mean to everyone thing.

Solomon's temple is totally awesome, until it's weirdly built in some place like India or Canada.

Step 4: It's a Wonder you didn't already lose.
You uncultured swine, did you really think you could win this game by just beating people up and taking all the money? Have you no sense of diversity, dynamic, culture??? It's one thing to be a prosperous nation with just like, a lot of money, 2 friends, and a sworn enemy, you've got to show the world that you spend your time doing amazing things too. How do you do amazing things? Well, you discover wonders. You know how there are the Seven Natural Wonders of this world, and also some man made Wonders? Well, wonders are the key to cultural success. Every city you possess in this game can put into production something useful for your empire, it could be creating a new naval unit or building a market. However, one of the really important things it can do is put into production the creation of a wonder. Wonders are landmarks like the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, or even the Sistine Chapel. Let's try not to think to much about why the Chinese Empire has the Sistine Chapel in its capital city of Beijing, because the point is that these are wonders yet to be introduced to this world, so you need to be the first to build it. Not only will you impress the world with your incredible architectural taste, but you'll also heighten your placing on the progressive scale for your civilization. Each civilization gets ranked for how progressive they are as an empire, and this is based off their cultural breadth. Yes, you can just simply destroy your competition and wave off the insults of what a philistine you are, but that's no fun. Of course, this is where strategy becomes extremely important to the game. Opportunity cost is really you best friend in this game, because while you put a city into production, they are unable to work on anything else besides what you designate them to work on. Also, Wonders take a lot of time and costs lots of production units to build. So, if you're currently in war with the Swedish, and they are throwing out catapults and spearman like candy to smol children, you might not want to spend about 28 turns trying to build the Kremlin. Just saying.

.... I can't quite say this peace treaty is gonna work out well....

Step V: Them's fightin' words, friend. 
Unless you're the ultimate strategist and can have some sort of emperor eye that predicts the future movements and decisions of your enemies, chances are this game takes a lot more thinking and consideration than you had intended. Civilization V is quite useful in understanding that humans are unbelievably, irrevocably irrational. Perfect economic behavior would mean that the there is some obvious price you can put on a resource or a diplomacy that should be in all sense and purposes equal in value to both parties. However, sometimes you just like, don't like a person's mien, or personality, or just them in general, so you tend to be pickier in what they offer you. Of course, someone you have no problems with can offer the exact same thing and you'd take it up in a heartbeat, but, god literally everything Gustavus Adolphus does just gets on my nerves, like, no what makes you think I'd just give you my horses for 200 pieces of gold what kind of civilization do you think I run here? (Disclaimer: I don't hate Gustavus Adolphus) It is quite possible that some of those rulers out there might feel just like that to you. You really may have met them for the very first time, but they'd already have an irrational outlook towards you and it just takes a whole lot of bargaining to find something they like about you. At that point, when the trading is just not adding up, and their irrationality is reaching pathetic new levels, you might consider moving them to the top of your To Conquer List, because chances are the utility you'll get from that friendship, considering the amount of resources you invested into it, will not be worth it.

Well, it looks like you're pretty prepared to exert your power on the lesser people now! Strategizing these sorts of things isn't easy, but by following these five easy steps, you'll be ultimate ruler in no time. Good luck!