I like to think I do a pretty good job specializing my cities and I don't have much of a problem deciding where to place my national wonders. I am actually getting to the point where I have played the game enough (just moved up to Prince) that I can see the land and as I plan my dot-map I get a good idea of what I am going to put in a city.

But the globe theater? I just don't feel like I maximize it's potential ever. It ends up in a city that is just struggling with happiness. I have heard of using it to draft endlessly from higher food cities but I don't tend to end up in nationhood too often. So I'm asking for some help. What in the world do I do with this wonder?

Basically you have grasped it. Built it in a city with 2+ high-yield food tiles and draft an army (riflemen is the most common). Of course, Nationhood isn't really beneficial directly to your economy but half (or more) of your army in 10 turns will come from the Globe City which you can then use to acquire land which ends up as a better "economy". Switch back from Nationhood after the war.

You can also use the Globe to slave rather than draft. The globe can be really powerful but unlike oxford and heroic epic which should be built in most games, the globe is often not worth it.

There's a very nice article by PieceOfMind. It's called Optimising the Globe Theatre Draft City (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301733).

Put it in a city with some excess food and no more than 5 food producing tiles in it's BFC. Share all other tiles to other cities. The important thing is to set the city up so that you don't give up anything for what you get. If the city could have been a massive production center, but you're not working any of the tiles because you use globe drafting instead, you haven't gained any ground.

It's often quite a good idea to just pick a marginal city, one that isn't contributing that much, and build the GT there before running nationhood. It doesn't have to have much food to regrow fast, it just needs to be able to regrow in the time it takes for one draft-cycle, i.e. switch to nationhood, draft until your happycap is stretched, switch out of nationhood and let the unhappiness disappear. For that purpose, any marginal site with some grassland and maybe a foodresource will do.

Just be careful though. Drafting an army over a stretch of turns will get you meatshields and conscripts that bulk out your army at best, so don't rely on it for your sole war producing capability

in the city with the biggest population with a red dot and smoke.

Ok all, thanks a bunch. Maybe in my next game I'll be able to test this out. I've been working on using all my national wonders more efficiently lately