Rhye's and Fall of Civilization - German strategy
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The Germans (Generic)
(note this is just a general guide to playing as Germany, not point-by-point. Also it is rough draft. I am going to come back and clean this up, don't delete it!)
Location
One of the most important things in RFC is your civ's location. While Rhye gives you a weak starting position in his eyes (two stars), I think the start is quite good. You are on a heavily wooded plain with mountains to the south and the ocean to the north. There are lots of resources and rivers that keep pop and health up.
Neighbours
One aspect you must consider in your planning is that you are surrounded by other civs. You have a old (usually weak) Greece to your south, an old-fashioned but usually strong Rome to your southwest, a new France to your west, and soon a huge Russia to your east. Among these, Rome and Russia are your worst enemies. Not only is Rome strong but it also often takes the good city spot(s) in Austria.
Russia is bad because not only does it grow huge, but its leader also likes war AND it is very hard to invade due to General Winter. One way to deal with Russia is to declare war early and try to knock them out of the game quickly. This is tricky since they are hard to invade. A second way to deal with them is to try to make them friends, but this also hard---for some reason they almost never want to be friends.
My usual start is to war with Russia a few times to keep them weak while trying to build up a tech lead. Rome is also often good for a war or two. You almost have to take that Austria spot on the ocean. Greece is usually weak or gone or taken by the Romans; either way, try to take it early. Also try to take Turkey, which is almost always barbs.
City sites
One of the initial city sites I pick are Berlin (start) right at the mouth of the river to the north. (It is my great people farm.) I try to get that space by the forest in Austria, and one way over by the horses above Istanbul. After that you must war to get more cities. Be careful! You have lots of enemies.
Warring as Germans- You must use your three great advantages if you want military success. Your first advantage is your great production lands and abilities. You can usually outproduce anyone else, so build up! Second, you must use your 'interior lines': since Germany is rather small it gives you the advantage of only having to defend a small space in comparison to your enemy. You have to use your central location as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. It can be like a wheel in that you can attack at any front you choose at any time. Your third advantage is your UP, free upgrades! Use them often! Europe is usually good to get, but the Middle East is usually not worth the trouble unless you need the oil.
BTS Add-On
In Beyond the Sword, things have changed. Independant Italy, Byznatine Greece, and a few new civs have come. How does this change things? Usually, I find, France will eventually conquer Italy, unless you kill them first. The Netherlands are annoying, but not at all a threat-- usually Willem is happy to let himself grow bloated on overseas colonies, and he can't flip cities unless they're in the Netherlands (Amsterdam). The Byzantines are a tougher nut to crack than Greeks, and Pikes or rifles are a must if you're trying to defeat them. You don't have to eliminate the dutch, but I find that they become less and less useful as you acquire all their useful starting techs, as they have very slow research rates, what with only one city in Europe. The Turks are a potential enemy, but don't pack nearly the punch that Russia or France or Spain pack, and they can be a useful ally against Russia. France should be taken down before she can acquire a large empire in Italy, as Rome provides what Paris, Cherbourg, Bordeaux, and Marseille do not-- a very good production city-- with the colosseum and a barracks and stable (provided that infrastructure stays through the conquest), so expect to see 9 EXP cuirassiers if you wait too long. Mainz should culture flip to you, as that is usually barbarian or french. Paris, however, could threaten Mainz as it can be high in culture.
Germany (UHV)
by Squirrelloid
The Germany UHV is actually remarkably easy, as it gives you plenty of time to acquire the necessary land. The hard part is going to be maintaining a decent research rate in the face of a Giga-empire. The other danger is accidentally winning in another way before achieving the UHV. You will finish with something like 20% of the land area, and will likely be pretty close to a domination victory. You will also have to be careful about culture, as its certainly possible to achieve a cultural victory before 1940.
UHV
(1) Control Rome, Greece, France by 1870.
(2) Control Russia, Scandinavia, and England by 1940.
(3) Be the first to finish the tech tree.
Note that "Russia" is european russia. Basically, everything to the Urals + 1-2 more tiles.
Opening moves
While settling Berlin on the spot looks decent, I actually prefer going East one tile and founding Posen. The importance of being on a river cannot be overestimated in BTS, especially since you will get a lot of use out of levees. Further, this will give Mainz and your capitol more room, and these will be two of your best cities. Send your two other settlers towards Russia. I founded Reval on the Baltic and Landau on the Black Sea (2 tiles south of the wheat and one tile east of the iron). This will help keep Russia contained, and mean you'll have to deal with General Winter far less. It also will open Moscow to early assault, which will help force them to collapse. Defend Posen with a longbow and send the other two longbows after your settlers.
Mainz is going to flip to you almost immediately, so don't bother attacking them. Instead, take your axemen and swordsmen and send them down towards Mediolanum. When Mainz flips, grab its axeman and send him south too. Whether you want to keep or raze Mediolanum is up to you, but its going to be boxed in by Rome, Marseilles, and Mainz, and in danger of revolt until you can capture Marseilles from the french. Regardless, after Mediolanum falls, heal up and send your troops (all of them) towards Rome, leaving no defense behind. You should have enough to capture Rome, possibly with some reinforcements built back home. Rome is an incredibly important acquisition - you can build the shrine there for income (allowing 90-100% research for the early game), and it has the Colosseum and great production squares.
During this time, peace with your neighbors is the optimal strategy. Try to cultivate Isabella, Ragnar, and Elizabeth, although Elizabeth is usually frigid and unwilling to be helpful. Keeping Peter happy is a good idea, but not usually possible. Be nice to France until you're ready to strike, then be ruthless.
France
After Rome is yours, get ready to attack Marseilles. You'll notice that with the fall of Mediolanum french culture spills across the top of the Italian peninsula. This is actually useful to you, as it means they'll send workers there to improve the land. Build catapults, axemen, and swordsmen in Posen and Mainz and stage them on the stone near Mainz. Have Rome build a defensive unit after it comes out of revolt so you can take all your remaining units with you. When you're ready, DOW france and march on marseilles. 2-3 catapults with 5-6 total axemen/swordsmen should be more than sufficient. And make sure you grab all those conveniently vulnerable workers on your way to Marseilles. The reason to move the catapults and some melee units from the north is (1) you won't have to cross teh river, (2) you'll get a nice forested hill to sit on while besieging, (3) you'll cut off Marseilles from the rest of france by sitting on their road, preventing reinforcements.
Once you have Marseilles, you'll also have exhausted most of the french forces not dedicated to defense. If they'll give away tech for peace, make peace (for the moment), but keep producing units for a push on Paris. After you take Paris you can make peace temporarily (possibly again).
The Future
By about this time you should also be starting to garrison 2-3 troops (preferably longbow/crossbow/pikeman if available - upgrading to muskets as appropriate) in Landau and Reval, as Peter will start getting antsy. Build walls/castles and sit tight - you'll want to deal with him after the rest of France and Greece are yours.
The rest of the game basically plays itself at this point. Finish taking france, grab Greece and Constantinople. Always refuse Congress requests, and strong garrisons in Reval and Landau should hold off the Russians and the Vikings. The Turks never DOWed me, so a smaller garrison in Constantinople is probably acceptable.
I'd take Russia out first. They're more annoying than the other two, less likely to like you, and you can develop that land to help with your tech race (see below). Keep most of their cities, though I razed two that were just within the region of european russia. I'd follow up with the vikings, and save England for last. In Scandinavia I'd raze about 1/2 of the cities - they build far too close together. And with how many cities you're going to have at that point, razing a city you've just conquered is actually a net-positive for stability. Between Russia and Scandinavia, I'd take a break from military production to pump out some workers and develop the Russian land (likely poorly done and sparsely done by the Russians) before getting into your next war.
There are three good reasons for saving england till last: (1) they'll have techs you can steal (see below), (2) you'll want bombers to soften up their cities before invading, (3) they tend to settle all their GP in London, so by all means give them time to generate more. You may also want to take out Amsterdam. Especially if Spain looks likely to do so. Keep the Spanish in Spain, you'll be happier that way. And keep Spain happy. Your empire will be big enough without adding the Iberian Peninsula to it.
Technology
One thing to keep in mind is tech trading. Always extort techs if you can. Making peace with France for a tech is always worth it. Tech trading stops being worthwhile during the early Industrial Age because the computer wants so many techs per tech they give up. Remember you're going to outproduce virtually everyone, so you should be able to win any military conflicts. (You'll also out-tech russia, which will help a lot).
Make sure you cottage a lot of those grasslands. I turned Reval into a cottage farm, leaving only a few forests to lumbermill later. Chopping the forests let me build up my infrastructure, and the cottages were invaluable in staying near the top in the tech race. As you conquer russia, turn most of its grassland cities into cottage farms. Similarly, Scandinavia should be turned into a windmill/cottage land. This will counter the negative effect being a giga-empire will have on your tech rate.
Finally, prioritize espionage buildings after research and cash buildings. You will eventually generate over 1000 espionage points/turn without any commerce investment, and when you're generating about 300-500 per turn you can supplement your research with tech stealing. Focus your espionage on one opponent - i found that England was the most advanced, followed by the Vikings. I stole 4-5 techs from England over the course of the game, including flight, artillery, and democracy. This will cement your tech lead and give you a jumpstart towards finishing the tech race. Most of the advanced civs are also on your kill list, so they won't actually be able to beat you to finishing the tech tree.
As to which techs to go for, I'd let military concerns and important wonders determine the path. Also, levees and factories (assembly plant) are a huge priority. I didn't actually prioritize Industrialism, but I didn't let it sit forever either.
Civics/Religion
You'll get Christianity early, adopt it as your state religion. Isabella will ask you to do this after just a few turns, so waiting for that will give you a slight relations boost with Spain. I'd also switch to monarchy/vassalage/slavery/organized religion at the beginning. Later, you'll want to switch to Occupation. Any other changes can wait until you have Cristo Redemptor, at which point you'll probably want representation, free speech or nationhood, emancipation, and possibly free religion. Do not adopt Bureaucracy, you have far too many cities.
Supporting your giga-empire
In addition to lots of cottages, you'll also want to build or acquire both the Spiral Miniaret and the University of Sankore. Build christian buildings everywhere. Add the Sistine Chapel for good border control. In fact, your production is so amazing, you can probably build *every* wonder that becomes available during the game. Remember to be careful about accidentally winning a cultural victory. (For a similar reason, you'll likely have your choice of corporations - while sid's sushi company and creative construction are almost certainly *better* for you than the non-culture producing equivalents in terms of hammer/food production (marginally, and because of resources available), you might want to take the ones that *don't* produce culture. I grabbed the culture producers to maximize hammers/food... and i won a cultural victory instead).
Also note that your land has few happiness resources. You'll get Dye in France, gems and furs in Russia, and silver in Scandinavia. Cultivate India (on respawn) and the Khmer as trading partners, and you'll probably desire their health resources eventually too. Eventually Spain and Portugal will also be good providers of these resources.
Endgame
I had the 1870 condition done by ~1500 and the 1940 condition done by 1890. After that its just an end-run down the tech tree. Pop golden ages as often as you can manage. You'll probably want to swap Occupation for Viceroyalty at some point - i had 3 vassals (Portugal, Turkey, India) by the end of the game, and had had Portugal since sometime around 1300 or 1400.
Update for BTS 1.180 (Monarch)
by Pacifist Changes include Frankfurt (instead of Mainz); Venice instead of Milan and both Rome and Venice are more strongly fortified.
I think it's better to found the following cities at the 3rd move (when Frankfurt becomes your capital, so that it will combat the combined French and Dutch cultural pressures):
1. Reval (right on the flip zone for Russia)
2. Danzig (one block north of start), being on the coast gets more food (pig and fish) and you'll have your production from Budapest later anyway). Your culture should be enough to prevent Kalmar from being built (a good patch of forest is now inaccessible to the Vikings). Plus it will be a great port to build the trading company.
3. Wait one more turn and then found Faustindorff (where Kiev is supposed to be): you'll be thankful later because you'll encompass the uranium in your big cross, besides depleting the Russians of one more iron, pig, wheat and horse. It's also a jumping point to invade Greece.
1 move after each city is founded you want to whip a monument, because it'll be some time before Christianity spreads from Frankfurt. With the above you'll hem the Russians and Vikings in and have the 2nd largest empire without really trying to be initially.
The first area to attack should be Athens, then Constantinople, then Turkey (raze Sogut to get some living space). Russia will definitely attack at some point but do not venture into Russian land until after industrialism and tanks are available (it'll be much easier). With the new Christian brotherhood you'll be on good terms with France most of the middle ages, and that's fine, because you want your economy to expand and buffer your stability once you go on the conquering rampage that will drive your expansion stability to 1 star (I was never below a stable all game even after controlling all the required UHV territories). If you see some French troops around Venice you need to send yours to capture Rome ASAP; let the French troops take the brunt and swoop in. I collapsed France in 20 short years in the 1700's with tanks, infantry and cannons.
Be really careful who you sign defensive pacts with. Spain and Britain are good bets initially because that will be a deterrent on France declaring war on you. Later you can invade at will (in fact all of Europe was under my control in 1850 except for Britain). I had Arabia, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands as my vassals so happiness wasn't an issue. With nukes I can probably go for a domination win, while I had 3 or 4 cities that built all the modern cultural wonders. If you switch to universal suffrage later you can probably build a spaceship in 10 years.
How to take out the Dutch from the start (BTS 1.181)
Send settlers with a swordsman each towards Faustindorff and Reval as usual. (Faustindoff needs to be founded a move after the settler gets there because otherwise it'll flip to Russia otherwise.) Switch to HR/Slavery/OR/vassalage. Send all others (I mean all) units NW towards future Dutch spawn site. Found Copenhagen (good site with 2 pigs, a cow and being on the coast, and close enough for the invasion) AFTER Frankfurt becomes your capital. Chop some trees for a catapult in Frankfurt while Copenhagen whips one, promote both to 20% collateral damage. Send all troops east of future Amsterdam. You can try switching to Christianity but make sure your catapults are in place before the Dutch appear. You'll sacrifice 1, at most 2, catapults and all your other troops should kill the Dutch easily (start with longbowmen against crossbowmen, then axemen against pikemen). Get 2 free workers from Dutch settlers. Once their land units are gone, feel free to make peace with Willem; he'll eventually die. Found Utrecht soon and get some culture going. Send your war veterans east to garrison Reval and Faustindoff to deter any Russian aggression. Fill out the interior of your empire with either Danzig or Warsaw, and get one more city in the Balkans for early access to conquer Rome. The advantages of this approach are 1. You get 2 good seaports (Copenhagen/Utrecht). 2. Copenhagen and Reval apparently are both in the Viking zone you need to control by 1870. 3. You don't have to worry about Amsterdam's culture taking out the marble or cow any more. 4. No trading partner for your neighbors (i.e. slower diffusion of techs such as Divine Right).
New changes to BTS 1.183
Now that it's much harder to kill the Dutch from the start, and no tech brokering means you can't trade for your techs easily, it's actually crucial to keep the Dutch around. Let Frankfurt be your capital, found Reval and Faustindorf as above, and use Danzig (1 NE of start on the river) as your other port city. Your one other city should be either Budapest or thereabouts. Emphasize culture in your capital, but one of the first things you should build in Frankfurt is a courthouse. Assign a spy and eventually you'll get a great spy. Use him to steal guilds, engineering and whatever techs the Dutch will research. Build an early trireme and reach Mali, and you should be able to trade for Divine Right easily (not as easy as before, but still better than stealing it from the Dutch). Give some gold to everybody you see and try to open borders to maximize your trade. The problem of Greece can be easily solved if you take advantage of destroying Turkey's armies early, but not too early. They tend to spread out their armies back to the Middle East after Istanbul is conquered, so all you need to do is have enough troops to get Istanbul, Athens and be sure to raze Sogut (because of its culture). Hagia Sophia is the best thing that could happen to you before steam power.
It's very easy to get to the New World first, just research: sailing, meditation, compass (while you steal guilds), optics and voila, you get conquerors. Build New Orleans and and Montevideo and you've just crippled both France and Spain. Don't worry about England as America will inevitably flip their cities, and maybe they'll vassalize to you after they fight the British for a while.
More generic advices
3rd time I played as Germany and 3rd time it just collapsed... have no idea how to do UHV without becoming unstable. Went with police state, nationalism, emancipation, state property, and free religion near end, got up to the Urals with the rest of European cities all having courthouses, jails, intelligence centers, and security bureaus while having 4 vassals and in a golden age and still collapsed, wtf...
The methodology is around as follows:
1) settle and develop as much as possible in Europe before Nationalism. Avoid conquering cities before Nationalism. Try to build as many wonders as possible and bechome a tech leader.
2) switch to Occupation, and conquer France (Greece, Italy - if anything).
3) build panzers and conquer Russia. Here you can still be in the stable zone. If needed, give away some cities in Greece/Italy to Turkey to improve stability.
4) discover composites and computers. You will pass around 4 golden ages by this time, and your cities will be building gold/science at this time. Upgrade panzers to modern armor, build up some bombers.
5) Around 1930 invade Sweden and England, and capture them in a few moves. Have resource to start golden age now, to survive some extra moves.
This way I won the game, completing tech tree in 1937 and conquering UK in 1935. Conquest of Sweden in 1905 was a mistake, caused extra instability, and made me to reload due to collapse :-(
The Palace wonders (Forbidden Palace, Summer Palace) also greatly help with your stability. Building these will go a long way toward keeping your empire together.
Some additional advice by Leibniz:
Stability need not be a huge problem, even for the German giga-empire. The biggest challenges come from holding on to France and Russia, both outside of your normal expansion limits.
Remember that you don't need to hold on to every city you capture. Although you take a hit for razing cities, in the long term its easier to raze a few excess cities than to try paying the price in city upkeep and expansion stability by having only marginally useful cities outside your expansion zone.
You only really need one city to hold France for the UHV and five is enough, with some culture pumping from Sistine Chapel or culture spending, to hold Russia.
I found that its best to hold Paris and Bourdeaux (because its a good launch pad into England and to the Atlantic), razing useless Cherbourg, and hold onto Moscow in Russia, plus one Russian city by the Urals, one to the north, one by the Caucuses and one other depending on where you have a gap.
Its also wise to hit Moscow and maybe one other city, then sit back and wait for Russia to collapse and then conquor the independents piecemiel, thus bypassing a long, difficult campaign against General Winter.
There are a couple of side benefits to this strategy. Because of your persistent instability, expansion wise, some conquored civs have a habit of respawning. This strategy means that, if they do, they'll be a lot weaker than they'd otherwise be and easier to reconquor or safer to let sit. You'll also find that having fewer but more productive (and thus richer) mega-cities helps with your economic stablility rating, ofsetting some of your expansion weaknesses.
At the end of my last game, I had only one star in "Expansion" in the stability ratings, but still slternated between stable and solid, because of a five-star economy.
BTS 1.187 Comments
by aprog
From 1.187, the German UHV is possibly made easier by a higher tolerance for ahistorical expansion; thanks to a macro-economy, I was able to complete Germany's UHVs without ever dipping below Stable. I did give away unprofitable cities -- including granting the British Isles their independence after completing that UHV in 1940!
I followed the strategy below to achieve a victory in Monarch difficulty; they haven't been tested at Emperor level yet.
Macro-Economy
Germany can have the most staggeringly powerful economy I've witnessed in RFC -- even better than the Americans when they're on a roll.
The key to achieving this macro-economy, in my opinion, is to go for big cities with plentiful space, resources and improvements. For this reason, I recommend Serfdom instead of Slavery; you can donate away Iron and Copper to be able to build Warriors to keep the peace thanks to Hereditary Rule.
Opening Moves
1st Turn: Don't found any cities. Adopt Hereditary Rule, Vassalage, Serfdom and Organized Religion on the first turn. Then, on the third turn, adopt Christianity. Voila! You now have the Civics that should power you through most of the early/mid-game. Once you have established your main cities and built most of the improvements, you may consider switching to Theocracy; the extra XP always helps.
2nd Turn: Frankfurt should flip as your capital. Now found Danzig (1NE from the Berlin start).
3rd Turn: Convert to Christianity.
4th+: Wait until turn 209 before founding Reval and Faustindorf/Kiev (usually one turn after the Settlers get to the sites); if you found them on turn 208, they'll ask to flip to the Russians, which might start a war.
Further Expansion
Budapest (I prefer 1S of the Deer) is an awesome city site that will be your production captial once you get it an Iron Works; it can get a production of over 300 
towards the end game!
Rome: you'll want to capture Rome sooner rather than later; since it now starts with some fairly tough Longbowmen, Trebuchets come highly recommended.
Venice: I usually raze Venice; between Marseilles, Budapest and Rome, it doesn't cover anything except a few hill tiles, and I prefer those other cities to flourish -- even if it might be a while before I conquer Marseilles from the French.
Hamburg: competes too much with Frankfurt and Amsterdam; not recommended.
Aarhus/Copenhagen/Denmark area: These city sites are low on production and not on rivers, so I never really bother colonising up here. The Dutch and Vikings will... so the only real motivation to do so before them would be to save Frankfurt some culture pressure, but I frankly don't think it's really worth it. When war comes, just raze the cities there and Frankfurt will blossom fully.
Constantinople & Athens: Unless you put these before Rome, taking these before the Turks spawn is a mixed bag because you'll be building Trebuchets instead of improving your economy -- and the subsequent consequence of a war with the Turks (which will almost inevitably break out) might be draining. On the other hand, the Hagia Sophia is a great Wonder to back up the macro-economy strategy, and if the Byzantines built any other Wonders, you'll probably have those, too!
Wonders
These may be challenging to obtain, but can go a long way towards consolidating your economy.
Notre Dame: in Monarch, it's usually possible to tech Engineering from the start and build Notre Dame. It may not be so easy in Emperor; a judiciously used Great Spy (if you make a Courthouse in Frankfurt at the start) can steal it, however. Needless to say, +2 
will free up a lot of troops from peace-keeping duties in your cities when you want to go on the offensive.
Spinal Minaret: you'll need Divine Right for this, which you can obtain from Mali. An awesome prop for your economy.
University of Sangkore: it's easy to get to Paper quickly, at least in Monarch, and this is another Wonder that will do wonders for consolidating your tech lead.
In Closing
Stability may be your greatest concern, depending on how you play, but at least in 1.187 Monarch, I had no problems; thanks to my insanely powerful macro-economy, I was always positive even if every other stability criterion was negative. The tech lead I developed against everyone else was simply absurd, and once I got to Industrialization, the mass of Warriors I'd been using as a peace-keeping force in my cities was upgraded for free to a mass of City-Raiding Infantry once they were freed up by a switch to Nationhood/Police State. Throw in some Panzers and each war was utterly one-sided. Completing the UHVs was no challenge whatsoever.
Emperor may prove this strategy, lacking, however. To be continued...
