I played on Emperor and then Immortal before the patch, and on Immortal post-patch. I don’t micromanage at all, let alone use exploits. I limit my empire size to between 3-10 cities, and my puppets are quickly annexed. I build TP’s only on desert tiles, and don’t limit city growth due to happiness concerns. In other words, I seemingly have a very ragged game. And yet I pretty much win all the time… which makes me think that it would be helpful to state what results your chosen strategies tend to yield. I usually win the space race between the early 19th and early 20th centuries.
I start with a scout, followed by either monument-library-NC if going that route, or alternating settler builds with warriors, workers and monuments if my neighbors seem close and threatening enough to make a REX approach the wiser one. (The AI is very aggressive n Immortal). I have begun experimenting stealing workers from CS, but don’t yet know if they’re worth the diplo hit, given how flimsy my early military is.
Regardless of which approach I take, my cities are all built around resources, and I will spread them thinly if need be to get a monopoly on a luxury. The second city is often built to snatch the resources I’m most likely to risk losing to a nearby civ. Gathering resources is at the core of my strategy, as I then sell them to pay for Maritimes and RA’s. (I have focused increasingly on RA’s as I overcome my laziness in initiating these deals, and like alpaca sell both strategic and luxury resources.)
My third city is built to secure iron if it’s around, unless I’ve determined that I can survive with horses. Even chariots, used skillfully, can foil an early AI invasion post-patch. Once I settle my core (3-6 cities) I pump population in all of them, while building monument-library-market and coliseum when needed (and sometimes a little later). The land improvements are anything but TP’s, since I opt for farms. I don’t specialize, but avoid heavy builds in light-hammer cities, just buying improvements instead. The goal is to jack science via population and RA’s.
This means research targets are civil service (pop), astronomy (trade, aiming for 600 AD) and fertilizer (pop), with military detours as needed.
With regard to Social Policies, I experimented with Liberty just before the patch, but have now returned to Tradition. At Immortal I take Aristocracy and Oligarchy, stop off at Piety only if not ready for Patronage, then stay there until Rationalism opens up.
As time passes, I build every possible financial institution. Almost always have public schools in all my cities (size 8+) and sometimes research labs. Workshops go up asap for the sake of efficiency, as do factories later on.
Culture takes a back seat to gold and science, and it’s a long time after monuments before I try to add any additional ones. If I do, it’s usually either a Wonder or a Cultural CS, unless I have nothing else to build in a city. I sometimes try for Stonehenge, and sometimes snag it. (Significantly less Wonder building is the biggest difference for me comparing Immortal to lower levels. At lower levels I target Chichen Itza and the Taj Mahal. Wonders help to make up for the relative dearth of RA's.
The overall effect of this approach is that I am always doing a lot of different stuff, and my game is limited only by civ size (which I do to add drama). Likewise I annex cities just because I hate not controlling puppets. I make the best of it, but don’t consider it optimal. And again, this approach works consistently for me.
In dealing with the AI, I often instigate wars with bribes, and maintain a small military that’s as current as possible. When figuring on war, I do the obvious and try to out-tech them militarily.
After reading the earlier threads, I now see a value in building a coliseum earlier in my core cities, if not first – I can then sell my luxuries sooner. For the same reason, if I capped most of my cities at 4 (without a circus), then I could have some bigger cities not having to spend gold on additional happiness buildings. To the more numbers-oriented players: is the size-4 approach of capping here to grow there based solely on the gold savings from less building maintenance?
And one more question: why would the patch decrease the desirability of early monuments - stalling SPs?