The rate that my playing skill increases has crawled to a halt

I am a first time post-er, loooong time player, and I am no longer improving at playing Civ1.

Weird feeling, my skills have plataued after years of getting better all the time. I win (or come runner up) more often than I lose on King (which suits me fine) but I seem to have reached a 'false ceiling' in my ability to adapt.

Working out new features, like how to maximise return on caravans, has kept me slowly improving for too long and now that I've worked out most things...

I need to change my belief that all my choices already are the best choices.
Does anybody else feel like this?

I usually play quite defensive. My abilitly to manage production, growth and science within my cities needs work. So is my best way forward to take trial & error risks? or?...

Also I always feel that I'm under-capatalizing on their weaknesses while under-addressing mine.

Like they are always on the front foot and my only advantage is that they only have a computer's level worth of AI.

Hello and welcome to this community!

I think that what you feel is quite natural because after many years of playing you tend to do a lot of routines, you do many things in a kind of automatic way without questioning yourself.

I suggest you to take a look to some of the threads you can find here and if possible to find other sources of info on the game.
By doing that you will get to know some strategies and tricks (not cheats) that other people have developed and quite probably you will find something totally new to you that you will want to try.

Hello Terry Teo!
Perhaps you might find some new approach in this summary of strategies; though for seasoned player it may be "basic stuff".

Hello and welcome to this community, Terry Teo -
You can try another goal here:

2014 CiV1 - THE SPACE RACE CONQUEST (Ver. 3)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526175

Thanks guys. Yes there was some stuff in the summary of strategies I had shied away from and things like the 'Presidents Day Sale' I didn't realise was a thing I was missing out on

I understand this feeling very well.