Civ 5

[FatAndFaithless]

Greece interests me. I/m not sure how well the hoplite really does against enemy cavalry, as I haven't had much chance to test it. Cavalry itsself has always been situational, but in an older age with fewer hills they can still be good in the right spots.

Later if I get my gold up, I try to use city states as shields against the enemy. I think it's one of the better civs.

If you're going for a diplomatic victory, I can't think of a better way to ensure victory than to play Greece. At easier difficulty levels, I think you'd have to really try to fuck it up to fail.

For a domination victory, I don't know - there's probably plenty of ways to exploit city-states that I'm not aware of. When playing for a military victory, I generally only care about city-states that have strategic resources I want (or want to deny my enemies), or have other strategic value. Since I find invading them usually less costly than sending them gold, most of my city-state friendships/alliances are accidental in such games.

I don't see any real military value to Greece's unique units much past the ancient era - and in my typical game, I avoid military action in the early stages of the game and often skip the earlier eras, so Greece doesn't seem all that compelling to me.

The possibilities of leveraging city-state relationships are intriguing though.

What I've been doing is befriending all the city states with a quest here or there, and a good chunk of them are militaristic. I've kept every unit they've given me, and I'm currently in the industrial era with 8-10 fully upgraded units that I didn't have to waste any time producing or buying, more than enough to defend my borders from my more science-illiterate opponents as I build my spaceship.

EDIT: Also, Seahawks-Packers this Thursday. Let's see what you got bird boy~