A few very early observations

[woodelf]

Feel free to disagree or add on, but after 6 partial games here's what I've painstakingly learned.

1 - Watch your civics. This one has killed me. Just because you can change, it doesn't mean that you should. I've crippled 2 games by having high upkeep, which practically halted my research.

2 - Definitely don't always build what is recommended. I was just playing a game that had no free space, but I was being advised to build settlers!

3 - Watch you city growth if you don't want to start building health improvements. For my border cities I've manually stopped the food intake to stagnant to keep from needing to build costly improvements.

4 - This is one change from Civ3 that I'm not sure I like....if you are building a Wonder you can chop down trees and they add production to it. Personally I hope this changed.

5 - Pick on lesser civs at your own risk. No longer does a 3 city civ mean easy pickings. I haven't looked into the support model, but I got clocked by the Aztecs who I was doubling in victory points and had 15 less cities than I did. They were pouring units at me!

Have fun

 

[tolbox]

4 - This is one change from Civ3 that I'm not sure I like....if you are building a Wonder you can chop down trees and they add production to it. Personally I hope this changed.

having stone or marble is absolutely awesome in wonder building. stone+quarry in city radius give you 3 hammers (maybe 4, i can't remember).
For example, with stone, hanging gardens only cost 150 hammers. that's quite cheap because it gives you great leader points, culture, and the HG bonus (+1 pop in all cities,+1 health in all cities).

Have fun

I'll try!

 

[elderotter]

2 - Definitely don't always build what is recommended.
Have fun

Yeaah learned that too, ruined my first game with too many cities and too many workers. And when it recommnds buildings or militery it is reccomending top of the line stuff - it is ok to build a lesser - cheaper unit and upgrade when needed. I noticed that I had tanks but they were never reccomended to be built. Lastly the tech tree is still confusing to me - esp how tangled up it is.
Enjoy the game even when I make mistakes tho complexity means you have to get a learning curve going. Makes me think which is good.
Am a Diplo victory fan but now I need to rethink my strategy with the new more devios diplomatics.