Hi there, first time poster long time reader.

I have been playing Civ for a long time (since civ 2) but have never really gotten to -that- level (I hope people know what i mean by this, because i cant think of another way to say it). However I've been playing a lot of BTS recently and have really gotten into it. So far I am able to win Noble, but only by playing as Ghandi and taking a completely pacifist route (with some sort of horrible attempt to gain the acceptance of all AI civs) and barely scraping a cultural or space race win before the AIs decide to dominate me.

The dilemma i seem to be facing is one concerning war. Whenever I go to war as any of the leaders i have chosen, I always seem to come up short. The AIs have this tendency to build about 30x more units than me and I always seem to have a single horseman against their 10 swordsman, archers and pikemen. This simply leads to my quick defeat, and means that in any game if I stumble into a war I might as well restart.

I think i missing some sort of glaring truth that the enlightened AI posses, which allows one to build and support a massive army of units. My attempts of this have been pathetic, and result in the AI far exceeding me in the tech race and leaving me with no cash or research. On any difficulty above noble the AI seems to be able to completely out-research me as well, meaning I'm stuck having to defend against tanks while still building maceman...

What i am looking for is some tips to help my play style become more war like... i don't exactly need to be able to complete domination victory every time, but just having the ability to survive when the AI decides to declare war would be nice :S

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for the help :)

Hi there, first time poster long time reader.

I have been playing Civ for a long time (since civ 2) but have never really gotten to -that- level (I hope people know what i mean by this, because i cant think of another way to say it). However I've been playing a lot of BTS recently and have really gotten into it. So far I am able to win Noble, but only by playing as Ghandi and taking a completely pacifist route (with some sort of horrible attempt to gain the acceptance of all AI civs) and barely scraping a cultural or space race win before the AIs decide to dominate me.

The dilemma i seem to be facing is one concerning war. Whenever I go to war as any of the leaders i have chosen, I always seem to come up short. The AIs have this tendency to build about 30x more units than me and I always seem to have a single horseman against their 10 swordsman, archers and pikemen. This simply leads to my quick defeat, and means that in any game if I stumble into a war I might as well restart.

I think i missing some sort of glaring truth that the enlightened AI posses, which allows one to build and support a massive army of units. My attempts of this have been pathetic, and result in the AI far exceeding me in the tech race and leaving me with no cash or research. On any difficulty above noble the AI seems to be able to completely out-research me as well, meaning I'm stuck having to defend against tanks while still building maceman...

What i am looking for is some tips to help my play style become more war like... i don't exactly need to be able to complete domination victory every time, but just having the ability to survive when the AI decides to declare war would be nice :S

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for the help :)

Civ4 is about balance. To wage war you must have the cash to support your new empire. The easiest way to go about this is building cottages in cities with low production and units in cities with high production. Cottages are pretty low maintenece commerce just build one, assign a citizen to it and forget it. Those cities need libraries/markets and the later line of buildings of that nature. Production cities need a granary, barracks and later a forge.
If you are struggling to maintain a decent tech pace with Ghandi, try a different leader. Philosophical is a great trait, many players feel it is one of the strongest in the game, but if you don't fully understand how to leverage the Great Persons then it becomes somewhat weaker. Try playing with a financial leader using cottages. The extra early game commerce from riverside cottages can go a long way. What I would avoid doing while learning to wage war is rely on a strong UU or warlike trait. It will become a crutch that is hard to shake.
Lastly, consider stepping down a level to hone your war skills.

I generally just leave my workers on automatic, so I'm not sure about how many cottages and stuff they were building. It just occurred to me that this is probably not the smartest thing to be doing lol..

Also as for playing as Ghandi, I ended up settling with him as when i play as other civs the AIs seem to hate me and declare war on me more often. The effect of philosophy which allows me to switch religion at a whim to please everyone seems to be a huge advantage when you are afraid of war as much as i am.

Any tips on what type of units to build or how/how many to build them once I am finally able to support them? I always seem to be at the disadvantage unit wise

I generally just leave my workers on automatic, so I'm not sure about how many cottages and stuff they were building. It just occurred to me that this is probably not the smartest thing to be doing lol..

Also as for playing as Ghandi, I ended up settling with him as when i play as other civs the AIs seem to hate me and declare war on me more often. The effect of philosophy which allows me to switch religion at a whim to please everyone seems to be a huge advantage when you are afraid of war as much as i am.

Any tips on what type of units to build or how/how many to build them once I am finally able to support them? I always seem to be at the disadvantage unit wise

Automated workers is a no no.
Spiritual is the trait that allows the revolt free civics and religion changes. Philosophical doubles great Person rate.
If you build units in a steady stream the Ai is less likely to attack and even if they do you can defend yourself.

It's the same old thing that people always get wrong when they start playing, hehe. Don't let yourself be overwhelmed in the power graph.

Make sure you have a few cities with lots of hills (and some food resource to support them), cities that can produce lots of hammers. Use these cities to build units, and only units. (Build barracks, forge, etc., buildings that increase the output and the quality of the units, but other than that, only units, for these cities don't let yourself be tempted by these shiny new buildings that won't bring much to them (like a university, or a bank...)).

Check the charts, make sure you are not too far under in the power graph. You should be in the top tier, to help AI target other weaker AIs instead of you...

If you build units in a steady stream the Ai is less likely to attack and even if they do you can defend yourself.

This is the problem I have, when trying to build units in a steady steam i find it really hard to come up with enough money to stay on 100% research and keep up with everyone. Will the cottages and financial make enough of a difference to allow me to stick to this?

This is the problem I have, when trying to build units in a steady steam i find it really hard to come up with enough money to stay on 100% research and keep up with everyone. Will the cottages and financial make enough of a difference to allow me to stick to this?

If you make some good science cities, sure. Cities with enough food to support the cottage spam, hehe. There are other ways to get science (through specialists) but the good old cottage economy is easiest when struggling with other concepts, since it doesn't require much attention.

Basically, when you look at your cities, you should know, in your head, whether it's a unit-pump city, a science city or a great people farm city, or whatever. If you look at your city and you don't know if you should be building a market or a tank next... That's probably because your city lacks focus!

How many cities do you usually have?

EDIT: You don't always need to be at 100% research. If you only have 3 cities at 100% research, it's probably not as productive as many more cities at 60%. That percentage is only a percentage of the total commerce you send into research... But if you don't produce a lot of commerce to start with, even 100% of it is just not enough.

I generally have about 6-8 cities, depends on the map type and stuff... but that is a really interesting concept about having cities with a focus O_o. I generally create the cities to be as balanced as possible, building all the buildings in all of the cities. This seemed to be what the advisers were suggesting anyway. How much more of an advantage does a few specialised cities have over lots of balanced cities? (I'm guessing a lot)

Looks like my play style will get a bit of a paradigm shift next time I attempt a game, thanks for the help guys :D

I generally have about 6-8 cities, depends on the map type and stuff... but that is a really interesting concept about having cities with a focus O_o. I generally create the cities to be as balanced as possible, building all the buildings in all of the cities. This seemed to be what the advisers were suggesting anyway. How much more of an advantage does a few specialised cities have over lots of balanced cities? (I'm guessing a lot)

Looks like my play style will get a bit of a paradigm shift next time I attempt a game, thanks for the help guys :D

Most of the time you can pretty much ignore what the game recommends you to do! Believe me, once you learn to specialize your cities, things will become a lot easier. Here is a thread that will help you.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252717

Note that this thread links to even more thread about city specialization. It's a lot of reading, but probably worth it!

Yeah, I used to have this same problem with never having enough units for war. But there are a few things you can do:

Be choosier about how you construct buildings, especially in the early game. Building a library in a city with only 6 beakers is generally a waste (unless you play the city to cottage/grow into a commerce city later). Likewise, building a barracks in a city with poor production is also a waste (since you won't have the hammers to make units there later).

Once you start being more particular about what you construct, you will start finding that you frequently have run out of appropriate buildings to construct. After that point, where there seems nothing else you really need, just have the city build units. You don't really need to have a pre-planned purpose for the units; just mass military when you have nothing better to build. The units will be set aside for a rainy day, as it were, so if you do get dragged into a war or find the need to go to war, you will be 90% prepared for battle without any concious effort.

If I may recommend Sisiutil's Strategy Guide and the terrific War Academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/).

Welcome to the Forums PureStealth. :beer:

If I may recommend Sisiutil's Strategy Guide and the terrific War Academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/).

Welcome to the Forums PureStealth. :beer:

I was gonna say this. Also turn on resource bubbles(alt + r) and try to claim as many different as possible. Every city should have at least one food resource(building the extra cities is not worth it until you know what to do with them and when to build them).

Whenever I go to war as any of the leaders i have chosen, I always seem to come up short. The AIs have this tendency to build about 30x more units than me and I always seem to have a single horseman against their 10 swordsman, archers and pikemen. This simply leads to my quick defeat, and means that in any game if I stumble into a war I might as well restart.

I think i missing some sort of glaring truth that the enlightened AI posses, which allows one to build and support a massive army of units.

Couple of pointers on this:

1) In the early game, when expanding, the FIRST city to get its basic barracks and any required workers out, goes to full-time unit production. This is not always the first city settled, but rather, the one with enough hammers that it simply built its barracks quicker.

2) Some *OTHER* Prod city will be working on a more enhanced set of buildings for more efficient production, to include mainly the forge, but also at least a granary (for growth or whip-regrowth) and any happy buildings needed to balance out the happy/healthy caps. As soon as that 2nd "unit pump" is online and done with its build queue, it takes over the "unit pump" duties.

3) When the 2nd unit pump takes over unit pumping, the first unit pump rounds out its building refinements: forge, stable, etc.

4) If naval unit production is a concern (naval threats from AIs and/or barbarians), include at least one full-time coastal unit pump for triremes, et al.

5) This is where "chokepoint" strategy becomes so VERY important: the more narrow your frontier is, the fewer cities you'll have to heavily defend. The fewer cities you'll have to heavily defend, the sooner you'll be able to work on a field combat stack and a city raid stack (which will combine into a single "stack of doom" at the outset of a challenging war, where the field combat units are "stack D" to defend your city raiders from the waves and waves of units the AI will throw at you. Later these won't be needed as much and can be used more as counteroffensive units or split into pillage stacks). Bottom line is, heavily defend your frontier, which includes any coastal cities with "first line" access from AI shipping lanes. Post-astronomy that means all coastal cities, but pre-astronomy (pre-optics in Joao's case), mainly just one city back from the front line along the coast is considered "frontier". After this heavy defense is built, build offense.

6) Numbers are an AI's way of making up for the AI's lack of ability to fully leverage terrain, tactics, movement, and the seizure of opportunities, to its advantage. It also has some silly programming rules like any unit must ALWAYS worker-steal when it has the opportunity to do so (which can be a great way to slaughter a knight with a pikemen by pulling it away from its stack defender crossbowman, for example). Know the unit matchups that work best. Know how to use terrain (to include river positioning). After a while you get an instinct for what numbers of which troops will be needed against the numbers of certain types of units you see the AI fielding. And of course you do NEED to SEE those troops, so don't forget:

7) Espionage is key. Not only to assess what troops the AI has where, but also to be able to sabotage strategic resources, and to act as "siege weapons" when on offense. (City revolt missions erase defenses for 1 turn.) I've never found myself regretting having at least 10% of EP on the slider at any given time, sometimes more. Running out of EP sometimes feel more crazy desperate a situation than running out of troops. You feel naked out there without those little boosts brought on by the spies.

8) In the modern age you're more likely to be at tech parity, but it's also easier to win at tech parity. The AI's trees have all been chopped, and it will be in Emancipation if it can. Its infrastructure is often just not prepared to match anywhere near the production a human civ can crank out in terms of NUMBERS of units, due both to city size and city improvements (factories, power, etc.). And now it's your turn to have numbers on your side, and it... shall... be... glorious.

Two issues I recently ran into:

1.) When you're gearing up for a big war, SERIOUSLY consider razing the enemy cities, even if they're in really good locations. Why? Simple. You will kill your economy otherwise. You'll end up needing too many troops to hold the AI's cities, and holding them will cost you a LOT of money at first, as will building more and more troops. This will slow your science down, which -- if the war drags on too long (like, several hundred years.....), will totally cripple your tech. Chances are the AI will NOT give you enough time to get back up to speed, either, if one of the enemy leaders is aggressive and has the tech necessary to get troops to you (IE: you're playing continents, and shaka is on another continent but has Astronomy).

Razing cities will get rid of the need for too much defense, will let you fight the war faster, and thereby WIN the war faster. You can always resettle later or resettle your borders and work back inward.

2.) Don't wait too long to START your fight. I often fall into the "McClellan Trap". I build a great big grand army, then I look at my enemy and say "Well, I should really have a few more troops to be able to hold off this or that attack or take this or that city..." Fifty turns later, I'm STILL building troops and the enemy is building them too, so the cycle never ends.

Learn just how much you need in your stack to bust a city, and then build ONLY that stack and ONLY enough units to replace. This works best if you're razing enemy cities as you go. Look at it this way. At least the enemy was nice enough to save your workers time by building up all those sites where you MAY want to settle later.

--EDIT--

The only time (from now on) that I'll deviate from this approach is where (A) I'm worried anotehr AI will swoop in with its own settlers, (B) it's the enemy's capital, or (C) it's a wonder/holy city. Outside of that, I'd rather win sooner and get to rebuilding sooner. Plus, no worries about city revolts and culture flips because the city you just grabbed has 99% enemy population.

The only time (from now on) that I'll deviate from this approach is where (A) I'm worried anotehr AI will swoop in with its own settlers,

You said it... And they sure love to do this. It's like all AIs have an army of settlers nearby. This points at one of the most annoying things in the game, in my opinion, the AI feels like it has to settle every piece of worthless junk there is. Even when you beat them to a good spot, if they have nowhere to go with the incoming settler, they'll just pop a random city nearby with no resources whatsoever.

When I clear land by razing cities, I don't see why Fred from Germany from the other side of the world comes up and pops cities there. It's not like this is the New World, come on. That's just stupid. When I plan to raze cities, I usually have a few settlers ready to resettle in some better locations to fill up land...

Specialization is big. In my current game, one of my cities gets 2 trade. And it's at size 15 or so. One from the city square, and one from a horse. And I honestly don't need any more. So, I don't build a library or market there. But that city can just constantly build units.

What that does is that city saves the hammers it would otherwise spend on libraries, universities, and markets, and can now afford to build units for my empire. I have 2 cities like that (although my other production city is coastal, so it gets trade, and I do want to build some libraries and such there).

That lets me have 3 cities which get a sum total of maybe 10 hammers a turn, working tons of cottages each. Okay, they each have probably 1-2 hills to get some shields, until time comes to whip those away. But they don't build units. Okay, in a break before I researched for universities, some of them built a couple. And when gearing up for war, they can get maybe 1 knight each to my production city's 5 or 10, but in general, they don't build units.

Other keys is make sure your border cities have a few good defensive units, including variety. Just putting 4 longbows in a town is nice, but it can be much more effective to have 2 longbows, a crossbow, and a pikeman, to be able to protect from what they throw at you (more useful in case someone comes with one unit wandering, you have someone to pick them off).

Thanks guys this has all been really helpful, I've taken the advice given to heart and it has completely changed the way I play (I even had a functional GP city with globe theater denying unhappiness, I wouldn't have even considered doing something like that before D: )

The combat side of things is going pretty well too, I have been able to get to similar power levels to the AI now (at least to the non aggressive ones anyway) and I've even found that I am being attacked less! (I'm guessing this has something to do with the AI's not wanting to risk a fight against someone with a larger power ratio?). Even considering moving up a difficulty... (I'm a bit worried about this though, the AI gets bonus research and all sorts of stuff!? hope i can keep up lol)

My two or three cents:

1. After I build my initial Worker-Warrior-Settler, I tend to build a barracks while hooking up copper/iron and then spamming military units. It serves two purposes. If you want to attack anybody then you've got a decent force with you, and the aggressive AIs tend to leave you alone if you have a large army.

2. Those junk locations in your civilization's borders can be utilized. If there are hills then mine them and use it to build units. If there are jungles they can be chopped and possibly cottaged. Even if there aren't resources in the city's BFC doesn't mean you can't use it.

3. Never attack a protective civ. Unless if you are POSITIVE you can defeat those CG II/III Archers.

...and I've even found that I am being attacked less! (I'm guessing this has something to do with the AI's not wanting to risk a fight against someone with a larger power ratio?). Even considering moving up a difficulty... (I'm a bit worried about this though, the AI gets bonus research and all sorts of stuff!? hope i can keep up lol)

The "noble" difficulty level is the one that is the most equal AI/human-wise. As in, at this level, the human and the AI have the same tech rate and production costs and bla bla, you're almost on the same level. Anything below Noble and you have some advantages, anything over Noble and the AI has some advantages.

And indeed, if you have a good standing army (you seem to have compared yourself to AIs using the "power" chart), AIs will tend to attack other AIs. You usually need to be in the top tier of civilizations in terms of power in order to deflect most attacks.

If you decide to attack someone and take cities, bring a lot of units, and a significant portion of these should be siege weapons (catapults, trebuchets, cannons, artillery...), to first, reduce the defense of the cities (using "bombard"), and second attack the city to reduce the health of the defenders, before wasting your units on the city... That's why you need to bring lots of siege weapons, you sacrifice, or lose at least one, or a couple, every time you're in the process of capturing a city.

Alternatively, if you're willing to spend the resources on it, invest in espionage and bring along two spies. First spy knocks out the city's walls, second spy incites city to revolt. This will effectively remove the city's defenses (except tile defenses like being built on a hill or forest), and THEN you send in your siege weapons.

I tried this last game and it's quite useful IN THE SHORT TERM. It does make your war a lot more expensive, though. In the future, I may use only one spy to take out city walls while I'm building up my army or while my army is en route. Chances are the AI won't build up new walls fast enough if you time the sabotage correctly. Plus, I think it's cheaper than inciting revolt.


A separate consideration for switching to a wartime economy is being willing to drop your tech to near 0% for the $$$ boost. You'll need the extra money to pay for your units (yes, even under Monarchy) and/or espionage. Again, speed is the key here. You don't want this to last forever. And don't be afraid to "Run in the red" once you've taken a few cities and pillaged some resources if it'll help your tech rate. The reason for all this is that, while you'll be probably beating the pants off of the ONE AI, everyone ELSE will still be teching up normally.

On city razing I always do so on a bad location obviously, but in a good spot I'll *only* do that if there is no likelihood the build spot is going to get grabbed by some other AI.

Learned that the hard way having to fight twice for the same three city spots.

That's a good point. It will kick up the costs of your war, thuogh, both in terms of time and in terms of resources spent. You'll have to pay for defenders to hold the city in what is essentially hostile territory, and will have to spend the extra time ramping up to build said defenders. Plus there's teh city maintenance costs.

But, if the alternative is to let the AI grab the land, then yeah, take the city and deal with the costs.

I have played both the Zulu and Mongols lately using a war economy on Emperor.

The main thing is to reach codes of law and Currency asap. Even writing allows scientists.

If you can take a holy city through war this will help pay for your economy. You will need the shrine!!

Pyramid is a god send when running an economy at 0% science. Esp when you have caste system and merchants.

You can run at -10-15 gold a turn as long as you are continually razing AI cities or pillaging land. COl and currency really are key to the recovery!!!

Downside to all this war is diplomatic hits. If you are the strongest force on the map should this matter?

Your ECONOMY is the most important thing in Civ. By economy, I mean the number of hammers, beakers, and gold you're producing - and to a smaller extent culture, espionage points (EP), and great person points (GPP). A strong economy relative to the AI will get you 80% of the way there. The last 20% is focusing on a victory condition.

Good production lets you build more and tech more. To get better production:

Make sure your citizens are working productive tiles, which means you have to make sure you have enough workers.
Improve efficiency through buildings. For example, the forge increases hammer production. Courthouses save you money every turn. But only build buildings you NEED, which brings me to the next point ...
Specialize your cities. At the very least, some should be geared towards commerce, and some towards production. In commerce cities, build lots of cottages, and build only buildings that increase commerce, beaker, and gold output. In production cities, build mines and workshops as food allows, and build only hammer multiplying buildings. Then pump out UNITS until you don't need anymore. Note that before specializing you should build the essentials - granary, courthouse, forge, etc. And build health and happiness buildings as needed.
Use the whip to essentially convert food to hammers. This is an extremely powerful and versatile tool! In your situation, if you have a 5 cities, whipping twice in each city nets you 10 units. If you have a crappy city with at least one food resource, you can whip it continuously for many, many units. Be careful not to crash your economy though.


About war: You want to fight only when you can complete your objectives quickly. Even if you don't want to fight, learn to anticipate when the AI will attack you. Try to avoid war through diplomacy and deterrence, but if you know someone will attack you, have a counter stack ready. Allow the enemy to come to you, and wipe them out until they will sign a peace treaty. You may have to go and capture an enemy city or two before asking for peace. If you're really caught by surprise, whip out some units. If ever you're at war but not on the offensive, try to get a peace treaty - you may have to give something up though. With experience in diplomacy, you can generally avoid any nasty surprises, and often use it to your advantage.

When you DO want to go to war, and you're not already dominating the AI civ, you need to go into full war production mode (unless the AI is on a distant continent or something). That means EVERY city needs to contribute what it can IMMEDIATELY. Drop what you're doing (or whip it to completion), and focus on units. You also probably want to change civics. Don't stop producing units until you're sure you have victory in your grasp. Well, make sure you don't go into negative income at 100% gold production though.

7) Espionage is key. Not only to assess what troops the AI has where, but also to be able to sabotage strategic resources, and to act as "siege weapons" when on offense. (City revolt missions erase defenses for 1 turn.) I've never found myself regretting having at least 10% of EP on the slider at any given time, sometimes more. Running out of EP sometimes feel more crazy desperate a situation than running out of troops. You feel naked out there without those little boosts brought on by the spies.

I'm a little confused about this espionage thing, the few times i have experimented with spies myself i only seem to get a couple of useless options so I'm not really sure on the full benefits... I've seen the AI steal technologies from me using it and all sorts of things, but all i seem to be able to use it for is to see enemy cities or to see what the AI is researching. Is there a way to increase the amount of espionage options available or to activate espionage in a different way?

I'm a little confused about this espionage thing, the few times i have experimented with spies myself i only seem to get a couple of useless options so I'm not really sure on the full benefits... I've seen the AI steal technologies from me using it and all sorts of things, but all i seem to be able to use it for is to see enemy cities or to see what the AI is researching. Is there a way to increase the amount of espionage options available or to activate espionage in a different way?

There's an espionage screen (upper right corner icons, you'll find it) where you can distribute your espionage points to different leaders. If you focus most of your points on one person, you might get enough to steal techs from them. In the same screen, you can see, for each leader (when you select them), how many points you have on them, and how many points you need to do various actions on them, only the options for which you have enough points will show up when you activate a spy in a city (the amount of points also varies depending on the city in which you're doing your spying attempt...).

Of course, it's easier to get a lot of spy points early on if you do something that will increase your spy points, like build the great wall and get a Great Spy. I don't usually use spies much except to station them in my cities to prevent getting spy attacks myself (if an enemy spy tries something in your city, it has less chance of success if you have one of your own spies stationed there). Stealing techs is easier at the beginning of the game if you are playing with that possibility in mind. Later technologies require a crapload of espionage points...

The downside of focusing your points on only one guy is that you might lose demographic information on other people, and they will have an easier time doing spy stuff on you.

Also, espionage is similar to science, culture, and gold -- you can allocate more or less resources to producing it. For example, if you go into a hardcore wartime economy (IE: drop science to, say, 10%), you may want to kick up espionage to, say, 20%.

In the espionage screen, also remember that you can allocate MULTIPLE points across the various leaders. So, if you have five enemy AIs and don't want to ONLY spend all your points on one AI, you can give him, say, four points and the other AIs each get one. That'll mean your one enemy is getting 50% of your total espionage points produced, while the other four get 1/8 each. You get the point.

Espionage missions CAN be really useful if you build up enough points.

The thing to bear in mind is that, like any other resource in CIV IV, espionage points CAN translate into other resources. For example, if you build up enough, you can spend them to steal an enemy tech. Or you can use it to steal gold (usually not much, though -- the AI always seems broke). You can also use them to seed culture (which I find useless), or to incite a revolt (which, as mentioned, drops a city's culture defenses for one turn). I've taken to using them to knock down city walls, which, combined with a large enough stack of siege weapons, pretty much lets me destroy ALL defenses (Except tile defenses) quick enough.

Thanks for the info guys, its really helpful :)

Also I've noticed that people are able to attach save games to their messages and so I have (hopefully) uploaded a save to this one.. I'm playing on prince difficulty using information i learnt here (though my military production is still rather low, it was great at first and allowed me to destroy 2 other civs but I'm having trouble getting food to the production cities)

If anyone wants to check it out and then see where they could help me further that would be awesome

My 2c:
-Are you tech trading? That helps keep up with the AI's in the tech race.
-Agree with the specialisation - at least one city with high hammers should pump out units the entire game and should very rarely build buildings.
-Don't automate your workers. You need to manage a good balance of farms and cottages in your commerce cities.
-Watch the power graph. Barracks, units and military techs contribute to your power. AI's will jump on you if your graph is too much lower than theirs.
-Use the whip.
-Use the chop.
-Balance your expansion so your research doesn't crash - expanding to 5+ cities in the early game will send your economy in a downward spiral.

Kublai Khan will jump on you even when it means attacking your infantry with cuirassiers, at not a very high numerical advantage. A few ugly devastating counterattacks later, he offers up 200 gold to make his bad mistake go away.

My first win on prince difficulty :)