Benefits of small empires

[Mannu]

It mostly comes down to Maritime and Cultural City States.

The extra food from MCS will let you run specialists like Scientists. These will help you generate Great Scientists which is one free tech (always use for the most expensive tech on the board and keep bee-lining for something).

The extra culture from CCS will help expand your social policies. Look for anything that will boost research.

Build wonders and buildings (only!) that increase
- money, you need it to give to city states
- science, this is what you are really after right?
- great people, they're great for golden ages or bulbing techs

Also, being small helps you easily build national wonders like "Oxford University" which grants a free tech.

It sounds like you're small but you have a large army and many useless buildings. You don't want either to compete with large empires for tech.

 

[Dizzy75]

My army is five units (3 Rifles, 1 Artillery, 1 horse unit, forget if it's Knight or Cav) and my two "controlled" cities are lean - they only have market, library, granary, colosseum (required to maintain positive happiness), and one has barracks/armory. Like I said, it's 880AD, so I have a sizeable military tech lead, and plenty of science and gold per turn. If I decide to embark to another continent, I can destroy anyone on the map right now. It's just happiness that's the problem, and if the puppets keep building stupid useless stuff, gold will eventually become a problem, too.

 

[SpecialKen99]

I'm gonna give it another whirl when I get home from work. I'm going to try a single city to beeline tech and wonders (maybe one more city if really necessary), grab the SPs I want, and then build a small advanced army. When the time is right, I'll spread out my military arm and take some land (or settle). This time I can't neglect them city states though. I keep neglecting them as well as not gaining enough of a tech edge for my small army.