The tools of the trade

#26 - However, in particular cases, it can pay off to build earlier Wonders of the World. For example, if you find yourself in a small island, you'll benefit a lot from Lighthouse for speeding up the maritime discoveries. Also, if one of your cities is really good at Trade, the Colossus will boost your technology rate. Even better if you later combine it with the Copernicus' Observatory, some good trade routes, a Library+University and a Marketplace+Bank (in this case it will compensate to build the improvements).

#27 - After discovering Writing and Trade, you should go for Navigation. Don't waste your time and money building Trireme units unless there is another continent quite close to yours. Instead, wait for the ability of building Sail units (with Navigation) to start the maritime discoveries.

#28 - Don't be greedy when you find a hut in your own continent - if barbarians are inside, they can really annoy you, destroying your units or even capturing or destroying unprepared cities. If the hut is close to one of your cities, wait until it is properly defended, before entering the hut. Besides, move away any vulnerable units, like Caravans, Diplomats and Settlers.

#29 - Take a regular control at the number of turns you need to discover a new technology. The Trade Advisor (F5) will give you this important information. The lower the number, the better. Try to reach a rate of one new technology for every 6 turns. To achieve it, reduce the Tax Rate to the minimum but allow your treasury to grow at least one coin per turn.

#30 - Once you start building Diplomat units, send them to the civs you have made contact with and establish embassies. Don't do this if you are at war with them, however, because your Diplomats might get killed.

#31 - Once you start building Caravan units, send them to foreign cities - the farther the better. However, don't worry if cities are too close or in the same continent. Later, you will find better trade routes and the best ones will be kept.

#32 - Focus on getting the most of your territory and adjust to its size. If it fits 15 cities, go for it. If it can only hold 5 cities, that's enough as well.

#33 - When there's no room or ideal spots for cities (I'm not considering city sprawling), it's time to focus on development. Start by linking all your cities by road. Avoid building roads in mountain squares (it's too time consuming) and prefer grassland, plains, deserts and tundras. When needed, don't hesitate to build them on swamps, jungle, forest and arctic.

#34 - Don't build cities in other land masses unless you really feel the need to do it (e.g. when your continent is exceptionally small).

#35 - Sooner or later you will be attacked. It can be a sneak attack or war may be formally declared. Even if you want to remain peaceful, take the opportunity to inflict serious damage in your enemy. Don't waste time (and units) attacking units out in the open. Go for the cities - choose a city, maybe one which is closer to your empire or an important city like the capital or one containing a Wonder of the World.

#36 - Please note that if you haved changed your government to Republic you will be forced to accept peace no matter what the terms. So, if you want to continue the war, don't accept the meeting.

#37 - If you are unsure wether or not you are capable of capturing an enemy city with the available units, don't be afraid of using a Diplomat to check the city - pay attention to how many and which type of units are defending the city. This will give an idea of how many units you will lose in the process.

#38 - When you have an embassy, you can check how much money a civilization possesses. If they have more than 50 coins and you are stronger, try your luck and ask for tribute. Sometimes, they are quite generous!

#39 - Sometimes, a civilization will contact you asking if you want to join them on a crusade to rid the world of another civ. Don't let them manipulate you. Decline the offer but be alert so you can take advantage of the war going on.

#40 - Other times, a civilization will contact you demanding you to cancel a peace treaty with a civilization which is their enemy. Don't let them manipulate you as well.

#41 - Sooner or later one of your cities will be under an imminent attack. It can be barbarians or other civs. Keep in mind that the best defense is the attack. So, don't wait for the next turn, don't rely on your Phalanx, Musketeers, Riflemen or Mechanized Infantry. Instead, defend by hitting first. That's why Catapults are so important early on.

#42 - Don't build Barracks. If you do, you'll pay maintenance each turn and they will get obsolete when you'll reach certain technologies like Gunpowder and Combustion. If you do things right, you won't need that 50% extra power that Barracks give to your units.

#43 - If you are facing a tough opponent and you really feel that Barracks could give you the edge, you don't have to build them in every city. Choose a city that is highly productive and well connected by roads or railroads to all the others. Build the Barracks there and start pumping Veteran units to every other city. Just don't forget to reassign them to the new city once they reach their final destination.

#44 - Don't build Granaries. Besides paying for maintenance every turn, they will make your cities grow too fast bringing together an array of problems related to big cities, like citizen's unhappiness, need for extra infrastructures (Aqueduct, Mass Transit,...), etc.

#45 - Control your cities' population. Allow them to grow but not too quickly. When it becomes clear that a city will soon fall into disorder, instead of building an improvement to pacify its people, considerer building a Settler unit. This will reduce the population of the city by 1 point and will bring you time to prepare for a more global solution (like building a Wonder of the World which affects happiness).

#46 - If possible, manage your cities so that they have similar sizes. It's much better to have 6 cities ranging from sizes 4 to 6 than having one city with size 10 and 5 cities with size 2.

#47 - The two key indicators in Sid Meier's Civilization are the technology advance rate and the production of units/improvements rate. To rule a healthy civilization, you should focus on speeding the discovery of new technologies and running productive cities, so that you can easily produce what you need (especially military units) in just a few turns.

#48 - Instant advice states: "Make peace with your stronger neighbours. Isolate and conquer your weaker opponents" (maybe not exactly by this words). I say you should do the opposite. Don't allow stronger neighbours - crush them or at least make them weaker. However, sometimes it is clever to let patethic civilizations to live. Not only can they block other civilizations from expanding but you can profit by means of trade and demanding for tribute.

#49 - When you choose city sites, try to have at least one coastal city in each coast. For example, if you own an entire continent, you should have at least one port city located in the North Coast, another in the East Coast, and so on.

#50 - It's a good idea to follow Settler units from other civs. Whenever they found a new city, it will be undefended for some turns. Take this wonderful opportunity to destroy the city, get some cash and perhaps a new technology. But the best thing is that you keep them from expanding.

#51 - Don't worry if you want to remain at peace with the civ who owned the destroyed or captured city. Since no unit was lost, they will not consider it to be a declaration of war. In fact, in the next meeting, they will offer a new peace treaty. Yes, that's right. Not only you destroy a city and you take some of their cash and you can steal a new technology, but you remain at peace and can even ask for tribute!

#52 - Consider building a city in the spot where the other civ once built the destroyed city. If it looked like a good location for them it might as well be good for you. Besides, they will probably return to build a city in the same site so you'd better occupy it.

Gundus said:

When a city has reached its natural size and it's above Size 10 I usually sell off the Aqueduct. You will earn 120 gold and save maintenance cost.

Click to expand...

The game has disasters to give you a little incentive to keep buildings that you might otherwise sell off.

Barracks prevent pirates.
Granary prevents famine.
Temple prevents volcano. (OK, so you may need the 2 content faces.)
Aqueduct prevents fire and plague.

I've always wished there was one more incentive.
The courthouse does nothing for you in Democracy. So as an incentive, it would make sense if:
Courthouse prevents government collapse in the event of civil disorder.

Sadly, it doesn't work that way.

#53 - While linking your cities in a road network, if you don't have bridge building yet, you can found a city on a river to act as a bridge.

#54 - Be wary of the tips given here. Many are situational or non-optimal. Just because it works, doesn't mean that something else isn't better.
#55 - All acquired techs count towards cost of next tech, with the exception of the techs you start with. Plan ahead and don't tech or trade for unneeded tech. Techs traded from another civ isn't free when it makes it cost more to tech what you actually need.
#56 - Caravans are awesome to store production to build expensive buildings fast when available. Just change back and forth from building a wonder and what you're interested in.
#57 - Given lots of luck (either through luck, save/load or knowledge of how RNG works), all techs/units you need apart from settlers and possibly boats to get to other continents, can be gotten from huts, for really quick wins for any victory condition within 2000-3000 BC. Comparing effort with others doesn't make sense unless you play with the same restrictions.
#58 - Railroads is the number one tech. Rail between your cities to be able to defend everywhere with only a few units, and to move settlers and offensive units quickly to where you need them. To boot you get extra food and production.
#59 - Republic/Democracy enables you to tech a lot faster, and get you more tax to buy more production. Use fast gov change trick to be able to declare war when needed, and avoid talking to civilizations you don't want peace with yet. There's many ways to be able to wage war just fine in either of these governments.
#60 - Gettings lots of cities makes you a lot more powerful. Only effects to stop you are corruption and happiness issues. Corruption penalties are fixed with democracy and happiness bonuses can be countered fairly easily at least until the point where you start getting angry (red) citizens. You may want to stop building more cities when you get there. (You can have up to 36 cities on Emperor before you get angry ones)
#61 - Government change can only happen at given turns. If you know when you can change in a turn, or even within a single turn if you save after revolution and then load. Great way to not waste time as anarchist, and to be able to declare war as republic/democrat.
#62 - Early military activity waste production and time better used for expanding your territory. If you play without loading/saving (which is likely more fun), you need some military for security, but keep it minimal. If not loading/saving, and you do have space to expand, you likely want to prioritize expansion and blocking off opponents until railroads and then wage war when you can overpower them easily without counting on lucky strikes with a few units.
#63 - Unless you run out of luck being attacked by barbarians, you can avoid war for a long time by expanding so quick that the AI think your civ is large and dangerous (even without a single military unit). Just make sure to meet the other civs with a settler so you can declare peace before it finds your empty cities. For a close to optimal game, you can manage this all the way to RailRoads and then rail and get some units that can travel anywhere for protection where you need it.

humbe said:

#60 - Gettings lots of cities makes you a lot more powerful. Only effects to stop you are corruption and happiness issues. Corruption penalties are fixed with democracy and happiness bonuses can be countered fairly easily at least until the point where you start getting angry (red) citizens. You may want to stop building more cities when you get there. (You can have up to 36 cities on Emperor before you get angry ones)

Click to expand...

There was a thread somewhere around here with the born-content cutoffs (game difficulty versus # of cities). I think it was posted by Valen but am not sure. Is anyone able to dig it up?

Valen said:

The courthouse does nothing for you in Democracy. So as an incentive, it would make sense if:
Courthouse prevents government collapse in the event of civil disorder.

Sadly, it doesn't work that way.

Click to expand...

Maybe it would make more sense if it prevented earthquakes. (For the same reason Temple prevents volcano; i.e., humans in CIV can rewrite the laws of nature with higher concepts).

#64

I started to think if there's any situation when you might actually want to let your city fall into civil disorder.

Let's assume it's early in game, before industrialization.Your government is Republic. You have city with high production and little trade. You build as many chariots in your city as you can, before the unit upkeep is as high as your production capacity allows. City with 2 coal mines can build at least 10 chariots. Then you move the chariots away from the city to attack your enemies. Now you get civil disorder since the units outside city cause unhappiness. But you just ignore the disorder and let the mayor flee in panic, because all you lose is few trade arrows.