How do you stop a strike?

Research Collective Bargaining. Just kidding.
Look at your total gold in the upper left. It's probably at zero, and has a red negative value. That means you're bankrupt and still losing money. When this happens, your people strike and you involuntarily sell off units to pay for upkeep. You'll need to increase your income.
There are many things you can do to prevent this. Start with the manual. Then poke around these forums. Good luck!
 
As units disband, the strike will subside. then you have to get your workers building cottages and get your cities growing. Courthouses and markets will help stem the tide of upkeep, and will, at some point let you start researching again.

The best course is prevention--raze cities unless you score a wonder, Holy city or key resource that you went to war for in the first place...
 
Before the strike occured, you should have researched Pottery and had your Workers build Cottages on several tiles in the cities' workable areas (the "fat cross"). Then go into the city screen and assign citizens to work them. Cottages earn more money the longer they're worked and are crucial to your economy. The best tiles for cottages tend to be grasslands along rivers and floodplains, since they produce enough food so the citizen working the tile is fed (each citizen requires two food).

Also, try to found a city or two near some lucrative resources such as gold, silver, or gems. These provide income and also happiness.

During the strike, the only solution is micromanagement.
  • Go into each and every city and painstakingly reassign citizens to tiles until the most lucrative are being worked.
  • Have your workers do NOTHING but build cottages and mines on the resources I listed above. Then make sure they're being worked by citizens.
  • Change build orders in your best commerce cities to commerce multipliers (markets, grocers, banks).
  • Reduce city maintenance. If you don't have courthouses, build those, especially in the cities furthest from your capital. Consider moving your capital if it is not centrally located. Build Forbidden Palace and Versailles in distant cities if you have a far-flung empire.
  • If you have the shrine for your State Religion, build missionaries and spread your religion far and wide (the shrine provides 1 gold per turn for every city with the religion).
  • Are you at war? End it. See if your enemy will give you gold instead of techs in exchange for peace.
  • Select your own military units to disband rather than letting the computer do it for you. Each military unit requires maintenance costs. Get rid of the weakest and most obsolete units first. Also, your core cities rarely need more than one or two units if they're surrounded by other cities and are not coastal.
  • Do you have military units outside your borders? Recall them. Military units also have supply costs, and these are higher if your units are away from their home territory.
  • Have a look at your civics. Some are more expensive than others, some provide more income or costs savings. Change them if necessary.

I hope this helps!
 
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