Questions about Colonization

I just took up playing Colonization and I'm doing okay but I feel like I definitely need to improve. In the last game I played I was expanding very slowly, by the late 1600's I had only five towns - a two around size 9, a size 5, a size 3 and a size 1 I had just settled. After doing some exploring I discovered that the Dutch already had close to 10 cities and most of them were good size. Not sure where I'm going wrong there. Maybe not specializing my cities enough to have some for growth and some for production of goods?

Secondly, the AI was absolutely crushing me in attaining founding fathers. I had only two while the Dutch and English racked up tons of them. Not sure where I'm going wrong here either - I usually don't bother with liberty bell production because for the early game I concentrate on expansion and improving my cities.

Any thoughts on how to improve my play?

Explore early with seasoned scouts to pick up the all free cash available and to build up Explorer points. Trade with the natives and with Europe to get Trade points. Build Churches to get Religion points. Use Statesmen to get Political points. Finally go to war with the other Europeans to get Military points and to prevent them from grabbing all the Founding Fathers.

I moved to an easier difficulty level, started a new game, and played a good 6 or so hours tonight and I can say I've made a vast improvement. My cities are buzzing with trade, I'm at a relatively equal expansion pace with the French who are my biggest competitors at this point, and I'm starting to expand out into specialized cities.

My one complaint so far is that it's a little dull. I haven't had to fight anyone (Although Montezuma HATES me), and there's only war going on between the Spanish and the English. Nothing happened on that front except for one English town getting sacked. I'm not seeing the major battles with the Indians and each other that I was expecting.

That'll be a factor of the difficulty level - the Indians take it easy on newbies

But of course there's no reason you can't start your own wars.

Weird thing is I don't remember having this much trouble getting acclamated to the original Colonization, I was able to just pick up and play.

You may have already figured this out in your next game, but based on your original post, it seems like you aren't building churches and /or sending missionaries to tribes. A total population of only 18 on the entire map by the late 1600's seems to suggest this. You should have that many in the early 1500's.

Build and staff churches ASAP and you'll start to get a lot more people immigrating. That is what made the biggest difference in the game for me as a beginner (and I'm still learning stuff...) Having a good sized population is what makes all the other stuff (trade, wars etc) more possible.

Problem I had was sort of a negative feedback loop - I couldn't really spare the people to be a missionary but without the missionaries I couldn't get the converts. I have started a new game since then and sent out missionaries aggressively (I got a massive amount of treasure early on which helped immensely). I have two or three cities that have a primarily convert population. I'm doing a lot better in this game.