How to be a Passive Aggressive Dictator

Welcome! My name is Logon, and before we start, let me just squeeze in a few things I find necessary. This is my first guide, so if you see anything looking rough, I'd appreciate the feedback. Next off, I think it should be said I'm a casual civ player, and this is NOT a guide giving you strict orders on what to build in order, and etc. Anyways, let get this guide rolling, and hope you enjoy this playstyle as much as I do!

"Wow! Sounds cool! But what is a passive aggressive dictator"? You may be asking. On behalf of my friends who I use this tactic against, it is hell. Your small aggressive actions will damage everyone around you, but not enough that they should start an invasion. The little things that are encouraged in this guide will slowly but surely bump you up in score, and your enemies down. Things such as claiming City States, Wonders, and what not. How could all of this happen though? You need some bank, some moolah, the big bucks you know? Eventually you'll have enough money to buy the world; Almost literally. With the money, you will also need religion. Not only does religion help you, but it blocks any benefits your enemy might be wanting.

Now not all victory conditions are applicable to this style of gameplay. First, let us make a list of civs that you personally should play.

• Now these are my 5 favorite civs for this playstyle.
  1. Enrico Dandolo - Venice (Late game you can make 300+ gold per turn easy.)
  2. Pocatello - Shoshone (Great start, if someone tries invading you, you can bite back.)
  3. Alexander - Greece (Keep the city-states longer, can focus on purchasing other things.)
  4. Ramses - Egypt (Not as great for this tactic, but just steal every wonder you can.)
  5. Theodora - Byzantine (Not as powerful, but can easily deny other players a religion.)

• Here is a bad example of nations to be.
  1. Attilla - Huns
  2. Ghengis Khan - Mongolia
  3. Shaka Zulu - The Zulu
  4. Oda Nobunaga - Japan
  5. Ashurbanipal - Assyria

Hopefully you can see the pattern. Leave the warmongering civs for your friends. Be ballsy and pick Venice. They'll laugh at first, but you'll show them! Anyways, time for a map. Really, any type of map is good, as long as you get a good handful of luxury resources. So don't change resources to sparce, they are fine at normal, then maybe avoid a map like Ice Age. Like I said, less luxuries means less money from trade routes! As far as world age, climate, sea level, etc, just go with whatever. However, I strongly suggest starting in the ancient era, as the first few moves and structures in the game really matter. Now this is where things could get messy. Barbarians are good, they only add to the chaos. However, they can prove to be quite pesky when the time comes to make trade routes. In the event of raging barbarians, your only hope is to turtle. Also, the victory conditions matter also. This guide is pretty all-round in my opinion, but in my experience, Domination and Diplomatic are the way to go. Also, make sure that the game has city-states. The more the merrier. Also, try to add in a few AI civs if you can. If you can, try to pick a few that generally have "good" armies. Because of your mass gold, science, religion, and luxury resources, you can easily buy of the AI as long as you don't do anything dumb (like denounce them). Once again, let's look at a list of some good and bad AI.

• Here are a good 3 AI you should be able to "buy out".
  1. Shaka Zulu - The Zulus (Is a warmongering leader, yet has the highest base loyalty[civilization.wikia.com] in the game. Make a bond with him, and you have yourself a bodyguard)
  2. George Washington - America (I've found Washington easy to befriend. He will be a trouble in the late game due to his love of mass producing cities. However, this game is to beat your friends right? Once they are out, you win)
  3. Napoleon - France (Maybe it's just the RNG, but the couple games I've had him I realized this man runs off of scraps. Show him a feast and he'll do anything for you. Not even joking, for just 2 luxury resources and about 10 gold per turn I had him declare war on 2 different people and a handful of city states for me. What's even better is he hauled his military from across the map and actually fought them)

• Now the bad AI for your game
  1. Alexander/Enrico - Greece/Venice (You want the city-states, you want the delegates. You'r friends and whatever warmongering swine in the game will be plenty enough, you don't need anyone actually going for your strategy too)
  2. Attilla - Huns (Although some people such as the Byzantine are solely religion based, I've never seen any AI player spread religion so fiercely as Atilla. So not only will he be ruining that for you, but he is naturally aggressive and will bully your city states. Unless it's the popular opinion, denouncing him will have little effect, as he general doesn't care about what everyone else thinks.)
  3. Pocatello - Shoshone (He has no reason to come out of his little shell. This guy has potential to be a powerhouse, but from what I've seen the AI version of him just kind of turtles the whole game)

Well now you have started the game. Your little settlers set up shop next to your coast line, or your desert, or wherever your start bias is. Hopefully, you see some nice resources around you, and it is not a bad idea to start exploring around you for barbarians, more resources, ruins, and everything else. Now hopefully it is a no-brainer, but you should ALWAYS start off building a monument in ANY playthrough of the game. Starts giving you culture for policies, and makes your borders expand, collecting more land to work on. Now while your monument is building, let's talk about what to research.

Well, as I said before, this is not a very strict game, as the scenarios that you will encounter in civ are not set in any particular order. However, taking a look around your capital, you should start researching whatever your luxury resources require. Now hopefully, this means you get pottery first, then go for the calendar. Kind of a to-do list here:

• Why pottery is a better start than animal husbandry, and especially mining
  1. Pottery starts your food production, meaning you get more citizens, better city growth, and can use more specialists.
  2. Going into calendar allows you to start utilizing your luxury resources for both gold, happiness, and perhaps food too.
  3. Calendar unlocks Stonehenge, a real religious powerhouse early on.

Now one could argue how animal husbandry gives some nice early production, and mining is just poo poo for a start, so I feel bad for you if you have something such as copper as a luxury resource. Your population will be critical, giving you a bigger capital in general, which is especially crucial if you are Venice. Also, IF you can get Stonehenge, you can get your religion benefits early on, and hopefully before everyone else. After that, going after writing is great, allowing embassies, which strengthen bonds with AI, and allow the player to locate where everyone is at. Also allowing you to start gaining a science boost. The only reason you shouldn't go into writing, is to either capitalize on an abundance of sea resources for optics, or numerous animals for animal husbandry. So now your monument is done, what to build? Well, honestly, I'd go for a shrine, or a scout, or stonehenge next. Maybe granary too. I'd hold off on building a worker, which I'll explain later. So as a passive aggressive dictator, you need to make sure your people are happy, and you are on some sturdy foundation, meaning you have plenty of food and what not. When you are stable, meaning barbs aren't invading, you have good food growth, and/or you need to rush a wonder, click on your city and on the right hand side, change the citizen focus to production. Helps you get the edge on building stuff.

Now this is where your friends will start calling you an ass. While your friends start off with mining, starting to build units such as spearmen, archers, and maybe even catapults, you'll be taking a different route. However, you must not allow yourself to be vulnerable! You will need to use persuasion and cheap tactics to make it to the late game. My favorite thing to do, more than any, is in the very beginning of the game, when you send out your scouts/warriors to look upon the land, if you meet another player, steal their workers. No only does that spare you the production of making them, but your opponent will then be reasonably behind already this early in the game. Same could be done to city-states, but beware! Starting too many wars with city-states will permanently lower their resting point with you. Even if you only pick on one city-state, all of them become angry, so try not to bully them much, as it will ruin your strength as a passive agressive dictator.
Another great troll tactic is to pay the AI to go to war with someone. Generally the warmongering AI will be knee deep in debt, even if they are not at war. From my personal experience, they never actually come close to taking on your enemy. However, the AI will be a real nuisance, pillaging your enemy's lands and hurting relations between the two. Sometimes, it is also a good idea to tell a rich civ to declare war on another player. The trade routes between both people will be destroyed, along with any trade routes that are going to a now warring city-state. However, if you have been playing your cards right, you should own most of the city-states.
This brings up another great point, which is to declare a passive agressive war. If you have any city-states near your enemy, you can declare war, and not have to make a single unit! Your trusty city-states will devote their little lives to making someone else's life much more miserable.

You are now more elite than the whole board. Your friends are way behind you in science and/or production. The AI are practically your personal goons, and if not, they are much to scared to try and invade you. You must get serious though. If your friends have any smarts, they will realize that they need to team up against you. So by this point in the game, you need to prevent an attack. Now there are a number of ways, but this guide is about being passive agressive. I believe that all the city-states and any AI left in the game will gladly fight for you. If you are still worried though, or maybe you have no buildings to produce, either a small defensive army or a raiding party is always nice to have. When considered though, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Both diplomatic and science victories are my favorite. Although gold can be spent on a number of units and buildings, it would be wise to save up to secure the city-states or to buy rocket ship parts (if you went with the freedom idealogy, my personal favorite). Buying rocket ship parts are expensive, so make sure you have some extra gold laying around. If you truly are dominating the board though, it never hurts to go after multiple victories. I generally focus on diplomatic, use science as my secondary, and then culture as my last pick. Building up for other victories is helpful, even if you are not going after them. City-states give you boosts to several things, such as food and happiness, science allows you to snag wonders and be ahead, and even if you don't focus too much on culture, having a culture wonder or two acts as more of a defensive technique. More defensive culture for you, but in all my time playing, I haven't seen anyone but a few AI go for culture victories.

I know this guide isn't perfect, not only because it's my first one, but because I've just worked on bits and pieces over the span of months. (Started somewhere in August, and now it's mid January). If you have anything to add or comment, go right ahead, I encourage any feedback. Thanks for reading, and I hope this strat works as well as it works for me!