Feedback on my current game

[Dundis]

Hello Civfanatics!

First time poster, long time reader here.
I've recently gotten back into the game after a longer period of not playing it and as I recall the reason I quit a few
months ago was the transition to the higher difficulties, and my lack of success in coping with it

Anyway, I've done some reading here now and especially about city specalizing (spelling?) and decided to try it out.
Now I play on Noble (on Warlords) as that is the stage of difficulty where you really need to start make an effort to
actually win, and I seem to remember this is the difficulty that gave me trouble before.

I play Catherine of Spain and I've decided to leave barbarians out of this game to be able to focus on other aspects
rather than getting slaughtered by 2000BC by their hordes of Axemen

I think I kinda got the hang of specializing a city and so far (1 AD) it seems I have one commercial city
(with some nice production as well), one production city and two kind of hybrid cities. I've uploaded the save below
because what I want from you are feedback to help me evolve as a player.

What have I done good? What have I done wrong? Is there something I've missed out on during these first 4000 years or so?

What about Saladin? Let him live as long as possible and let him develop his lands and then wipe him out?
Maybe try and see if I get the Buddhist shrine and make some money off of him before he dies?
I was thinking of securing that Iron Deposit and then go at him with a deadly wave of Swordmen, thoughts?

Looking forward to see what you think, cheers!

 

[Jet]

- keep building cities (and units and workers to go with them) until science drops to 50%. start with gold/rice/cows. you don't need to fill the tundra with cities but you can build some fishing villages to run specialists.
- build twice as many military units. You don't really need that many, only for barbs and Saladin is unlikely to attack, but it's good practice.
- keep little or no money in the bank. you won't have a good use for it.
- fewer monasteries. not an important building.
- only one stable. city specialization.
- work food tiles and grow cities to happy cap unless you have an urgent and immediate need to work other tiles
- work the other gold mine, it's too valueable to skip
- generate great people. start early and keep it going. hire a priest in Madrid, then fire him when he generates a great prophet for your shrine. Build a library in Cordoba and keep one or two scientists hired.
- Saladin: learn optics, meet other civs, then take him over

 

[Dundis]

Thank you very much Jet, will check into that stuff

A question just popped up as well: What about forests near my cities? I know they produce for my city, but how
important is it to let a few of them be? Will there be enough + buildings available early enough to counter
the or is that not even an issue at this difficulty? Maybe keep whipping or halting the growth when I reach the health-cap?

 

[mice]

First comment is that you are Isabella, not Catherine, unless you have decided to be Catherine of Spain. Catherine is Russian in this game. Small point. Not important.

I think it all looks pretty good. You wont be able to tech trade with Saladin becasue there's only the two of you. He needs other civs . So Jet's advice to get optics for Caravels to meet other civs is good. Do that as well as keeping on developing and you should be fine.

As soon as you can build catapults, build plenty of them. They dont obsolete soon, and they will help your maces slam Saladin when the time comes.