When you're storming an enemy's territory, is it better to just put a settler in your stack of units and build a new city immediately after razing a city?
For me, It would have to depend on my attacking force versus his defending force in the cities that generate those high culture
If I think I can take out/capture those high culture cities, Ill keep the city in question. I wont raze it just because of the culture or population issues. Unless of course the terrain in the BFC are crappy
Maybe if it had a wonder in it, but how do you tell what wonders are in a city before its yours?
In my games, I always have a paperpad right next to the keyboard. I jot down lots of information, including: who built wonders. You can also find out if there are wonders in a city by pressing the F10 button, but that only applies if it's a Top 5 City
(which it usually is)
Is it better to build a fairly large defensive force (5-6 units) in every city early on so that if a war does come, you don't have to stop what you're doing to react to the enemies? Usually I just focus on research, expansion, and commerce early on and if someone declares war on me I scramble to crank out units with Universal Suffrage hurrying them in whatever cities need defense. But seems like that's what caused me to get behind in other areas.
You dont want to "build a fairly large defensive force [early]" because the (military)technological jumps from one to another is pretty fast
Instead of training 6 warriors early, why not wait till archery, and build 3-4 archers? or 2-3 axemen? Get those settlers out asap
The AI doesnt attack you THAT early, just because of your lack of military units. Especially at that difficulty
But what about post archery/BW?
You should have a city dedicated to producing military units now, and they should be the ones training units for ALL of your cities
These should be pumping out units, all the time. The only other thing you build here is a granary, a barracks, forge and a courthouse