How do the AI's do it?

Is it the typical 'The AI gets to cheat a little' like in most games?

What I mean is While i'll be struggling to produce buildings to reduce production times on units (I usually get starts with little/no production no matter what map type/layout) so i'm FORCED to build workshops/etc to speed up my production so every archer doesn't take 37 turns to make. So then i finally start to build my 'army' and then either I start going bankrupt even with only a few units, or my citizens become unhappy (5 or more) which forces me to alter my building focus to gold/happiness.. stunting my ability to make units to defend myself, or assault my neighbors.

While I watch my AI neighbors with the SAME situations (production or lackthereof being minimal) forming massive armies but somehow havign 1000-16000 gold and never less than 4 happiness in thier civs.

They don't have any specific luxuries that I don't, and everything is roughly even on stratrec's (basically everyone on my games seems to be almost perfectly evenly matched)

And yet their coffers are never empty, their people are always happy, and they're mustering of units is always 10 + at any given time.

All while I'm trying to build enough to defend myself with 15 + turn units (production time) pissy citizens, and rarely any gold in my coffer after the first 100 turns.

And somehow they always end up with more advanced units while I'm using say.. cannons, they have infantry.


I usually try to play for the domination victory and this is how I usually start.

Archery, scout, make my warriors explore and adopt the entire 'honor tree'

Mining, Worker, then make archer to defend workers from the city.

after that it devolves into focusing on unit-based research and production buildings until units take 10 or less turns to make.

I'm asking because I don't understand how I can be focusing on my military yet every other civ (save a few ) will end up 1-2 unit-types ahead of me, with 3 times my units (Though mine still usually win in the end) no happiness/or treasury backlash and in fact usually quite the opposite.. despite having no more/less of the same resources than me and no greater tile-advantage either.

Or am I just doing it wrong?

Raiketsu ,the AI get's more bonuses according to difficulty level. From what I read, you seem to be playing at too high a difficulty for now, until you learn more things about winning via domination. Domination can be a very difficult victory condition to go for, and so if you are trying for it, you may need to decrease the difficulty more than you otherwise would.

If you ask me, you're focusing too much on your military.

Growth and science will give you a superior military. I would not go for Honor first, choose a policy that's going to give you a foundation for future domination. Early war is harder because of the warmonger penalties. It's better to build up and then shift into conquest mode when you're ready.

I wouldn't recommend full Honor for most warmongering situations. A powerful empire has a powerful economy. Full Honor is interesting for super strong civs like Mongolia and Zulu, but in most cases it's far better to balance a strong army with a bunch of free buildings, or faster workers, or more faith.

What's your approach with city states? They can be a piñata of free workers and XP (logistics range crossbows are easily attainable without even opening Honor) or an alternate source of luxuries when you've ostracised yourself by burning everything. A little Patronage can go a long way.

Basically, Honor works best when you think of it as a warrior cult within a society organised by kings, consuls or clerics. A culture that knows nothing but warfare is going to struggle to fund it's belligerence

i always wait fot these kinds of situations.when the ai outproduce units it digs to economy which kills ai science yield per turn.i usually wage war on such civ even if its stronger military.basically if u war right than 1 unit of yours will equal 3 of the ai