Souns like an intriguing but great strategy... Taking small hits to prevent large clashes. On what difficulty level do you play that way? How do you eventually win?
Hey, darkpanda. Thanks for saying hi, always a pleasure and privilege.
I play on emperor / 7 civs. It's definitely a different play style I have, but kind of fun. For example, to deal with sea barbarians in the early game, I build a cluster of cities around my starting point (hopefully the barbarians will not first-of-all reach my capital). I produce a lot of settlers and a couple diplomats in the early game. When barbarians come, if they firstly reach a city that is still size 1, I try to move settlers in and "build" it to size 2. The barbarian legion walks into the undefended city and takes it. On the next turn, I might use a diplomat to buy the city back (and also get the barbarian legion and diplomat as part of the deal). Or, if I can wait a turn (depends on road layout, how far the barb. legion will get when he moves out of the city) I will bribe the barbarian legion when he leaves the city he just captured, hopefully pick him up as a NONE unit, then either buy my original city back (I have a few turns to wait if needed) or use my new "bribed barbarian" legion to ATTACK my city which is only defended by the barbarian diplomat at this point, and earns the 100 gold for the ransom. So blah blah blah, I just use it as an example of the "give and take" you were talking about -- tactics and tricks that are a little unusual, but play into my overall strategy.
For example, it plays into my early-game strategy in the following way: expand quickly with settlers, don't even build roads, and build on plains in the beginning if possible because it's a quick "irrigation" improvement (grasslands also irrigate on city-build, but you can't take advantage of it until advancing out of despotism). Try to build each of your first few cities within range of TWO good shield-producing squares, such as forest (it's okay if city radii overlap). As soon as a city reaches size 2, have it build settlers at 4-5 production per turn. Buy to complete settlers, and keep tax rate around 100% until almost 3000 BC as you expand into 5-6 cities. Don't open any huts! Too unpredictable and even if you rule-out barbarians spawning by building a city within 3 distance-units of the hut, you still might get "crap tech" that will mess everything up.
Once you have 5-6 cities, switch to 100% science and start using your settlers to irrigate, build roads, and even continue expanding; but try to get Republic by 2500 BC and switch to it immediately. With no military to support, there is no reason not to switch to Republic/Democracy as soon as possible. Meanwhile, you may have encountered enemy civs; just offer them whatever tribute they want, you can usually stay ahead of them on science. If the enemy civ fortifies a unit right against your city, it's annoying, but on the other hand it's "free protection" (from barbarians etc). Just work around the inconvenience by using diplomatic units to shuttle your own units (settlers) around the zones of control. Get Republic and keep expanding to about 10-12 cities, and at this point there's a balance between building temples and letting your Republic cities grow to size 3 (to use WLTKD) or, keep your cities at size 1-2 and don't even bother with temples (unless a particularly unhappy city), but shoot straight for trade and religion.
One of my goal posts is that if you have 10-12 cities and Bach's cathedral by 1500 BC, you are "on par". After that, focus on growing your cities (irrigation and WLTKD, markets, banks, temples, cathedrals) and very importantly, trade routes. When you are ready to switch into full science mode, try to build libraries and pick up Isaac's, and then you can blow through the technology in the latter BC years and pick up railroad, but actually electronics, and Computers (SETI) are not that far away, and then it's even possible to go all the way to Robotics in the BC years. (As I converged on my present play style, at first it was exhilarating to me just to get Railroad in the BC years, but then I kept pushing it further, towards Computers or even Robotics.)
Once you have all that tech, originally I would try to build wonders such as Hoover Dam, Women's suffrage; but actually you are so close to winning the game, it's not worth it to even spend on those wonders. Over the entire game, the wonders I build are: Bach's, Michelangelo's (if possible), Isaac's (if possible), Magellan's (if possible), then straight to SETI and Apollo. That's it...
Once you build Apollo, you can either go space race or conquer the world with artillery. Since I'm usually still in early AD at this point, I will load enough transports up with enough artillery to conquer the world (as revealed by Apollo), then send all the transports out and switch to building the spaceship. Building the spaceship will usually make everyone declare war (if they're not already at war with me), and then I roll over them with the artillery.. He-he-he.
Battleships are another thing I used to get distracted by, but now I consider steel not even a requirement on the road to victory. You're so close to victory at that point (and battleships are so expensive), just ignore it. Advanced flight (bombers) are fun, though.
I play by a pretty strict set of personal rules.. I never allow two ships in the same sea square. I never change what I'm building after clicking "buy" (no staggered building nor military units on the cheap). I never switch what I'm building (a wonder) after adding shields to it with a caravan. No fast settlers.. if I accidentally awaken a settler from his task, I press space-bar to make him waste a turn. I do use diplomats, but since I think they're a little over-powered, I never bribe enemy cities unless it was originally my own city (I do bribe units though). What else... No luck manipulation -- LoL -- thanks to you Darkpanda, one of my personal rules is I'm forbidden from accessing the city view. Of course you can't avoid it if you build something in the city.
Regarding save/re-load, if I'm playing a "legit" game by my own standards I won't even do that. And if I'm playing a game that I'm not gonna beat any of my own records, I won't worry about a setback. But if I've got a really great game going and something happens, maybe I can't resist save-load.. but my goal is to play three "legit" games (random non-customized starting world) in a row on Emperor and beat them. So far my record is only two in a row, so I'm still working on that.. LoL.
Okay, well, I've rambled on too long. But thanks for your interest.
what game are you playing?
