Barbarians are driving me crazy

[Browd]

Warriors are not the best choice for taking out barb camps. An archer with a warrior (or scout) is more effective.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I'm no expert, but I'm sure you're giving yourself a whole load of work later on. Growing cities, especially your capital is fairly fundamental to building a successful civ.

I generally don't even switch my cities into "production" until they have between 5-8 population, and then will consider building a settler.

It's amazing how different the strategies are in this game....

You are paying a big happiness penalty for growth that does not bring.in more luxuries. Every additional pop in your capital is minus one happiness. I grow it only as much as needed to produce settlers efficiently.

My goal is slow city growth, max luxuries, and if done right I go into a golden age on happiness by amassing luxuries, one or more per city founded.

I build shrines like mad and try to get a religious happiness bonus, ideally asceticism.

Then once I have the tech and social policies to support it I let my cities grow. Until I can build colliseums I avoid growth but gain happiness for every city founded.

I don't grow the capital until get trade routes up at which point I can buy food producing buildings and have developed food tiles to grow fast.

Downside is lack of units, the new cities take awhile to get them out and sometimes I get rolled by the ai because I am spread too thin, but if I can predict where the attack will be I can usually defend it.