Everyone attacking me

[UnforcedError]

I wasn't the stronged militarily, but I have a hard time having a bigger military without it consuming my entire budget when I play Germany.

Bismarck has actually excellent traits (better then Rosie on noble I guess). Without a sample game it's a bit hard to give any advice, but I'd recommend you stick to the basics:
1. stay away from the two early religions. Tech the necessary techs you will need to improve your resource tiles (prioritize food). Build a worker early (preferably first build).
2. Prioritize techs that will net you better units (especially BW and AH). Tech the Wheel to hook up second city. Settle bronze and / or horse asap. If you see neither, tech archery (if low on commerce and IW would take too long).
3. Expand. Chop / whip workers, settlers, units. Improve tiles quickly. Working unimproved tiles is a safe way to crash your economy. Rather whip a worker.
4. Beeline techs that give you a stronger economy. (Pottery, Writing, Alpha, Currency, Monarchy, if low on happy). Set up early trade routes with other civs (open borders and resource trades will also give you a diplo bonus with the AIs long term). Try to specialize at least one unit producing city (later you will need more).
The AI is programmed NOT to declare war before it can build at least two attack units (warriors and archery units don't count, so they need at least spears + axes).

With this tactics you should easily outexpand the AI on noble. Or just eliminiate them one by one.

I apologize if I managed to state the obvious here, however something in your posts made me feel you're either focusing too much on early religions or on early wonders. There's nothing wrong with wonderbuilding with Bismarck on noble, but believe me: you don't necessary need things like Stonehenge or the Great Wall. You need basic military, workers and settlers.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Maintain a force that give you a power rating in the midst of the local AI. No bully other than Monti will attack you. As for monti, if he is not Friendly, then he will attack your warrior defended city with his archer, regardles of that you also have tanks 5 tiles away and best he can field is a mace.

I think this is a good rule of thumb, to maintain a force proportionate to that of your enemies. But there are some caveats, which you should be wary of and chief among these is:
Power rating is a poor measure of actual military strength.

An AI with a high power rating may simply have a large domestic presence in terms of cities or population.

The AI is also a lacking field commander, and much of their power comes from units that will never leave the cities they defend.

Code diving has proven power rating to be only a minute factor in the selection of a war target. Your army should be an authoritative presence asserting dominion over your rivals, rather than a peace keeping force which will tax your economy.

High level players will generate their armies in a flurry, whipping and using other speedy methods to martial an army in a matter of turns. They can safely disregard power rating, and use their potential army to gauge their position against the AI.

 

[Sian]

I play with espionage off myself... I assume if its on that BUG only shows you what you know via espionage.

be aware that the "no espionage" is more broken than a crate of venetian glass tossed off matterhorn

 

[Quibblesome]

be aware that the "no espionage" is more broken than a crate of venetian glass tossed off matterhorn

How so?

 

[s.bernbaum]

I think that Sian was referring to what happens if you turn espionage off. The espionage points get converted to culture points. To make up for this, the culture levels that you have to achieve for each city expansion go up. However, the changes are not proportionate. Therefore, it takes many more culture points for each expansion than the increase from the espionage to culture conversion provides, making each expansion of a city's culture influence delayed, relative to what it is if espionage is not disabled.

 

[Quibblesome]

Oh so that explains why sometimes I need 10 and sometimes 20 culture points to pop the first border. Whether I am running with espionage on or off. So its more difficult with it off or more easy?

I've never really enjoyed espionage, hence I turn it off but maybe I just don't understand it well enough to love it.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Sadly the ability to disable espionage was sort of a hack job by the developers, so it's not recommended.

Usually you can ignore espionage altogether and sort of let it take care of itself, by building courthouses and jails. But using spies is the fun part of espionage (unless you are on the receiving end of course!) and it gives you some unique options to steal technologies, incite revolts (remove city defensive bonuses for 1 turn), and numerous others.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I'm no fan of the BTS espionage system either. However, I enjoy the culture game, both culture victories and flipping my neighbors' cities. So, I leave espionage on, in order to not mess up the culture aspect of the game. I just apply the espionage points to see what the AIs are researching and also use it to run counterespionage missions to make it more likely that they cannot use espionage against me. There is a lot more to espionage but I don't use it. If you search the forum, you can find threads where it is discussed in depth.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The AI often doesn't do the best things with their spy points, so it's nice to abuse the ones they don't.

 

[Pisskop]

Go to the farmed out city with as many spys as farms(+3. 1 for the city, 2 extra). Put them in place, and on the same turn salt the fields(or blow them up...stupid explosive farm). Then hit the city with anger(or sick if the unimproved tiles are poor breadwinners)! 1 pop cities aye.