Tomoyo said:
...and are addicted to wonders...
I was too...
Having my arse kicked hard at REGENT a few times was an effective therapy for wonder addiction.
Some (good? hope so) advice from me:
1) As a non-player character has swiftly suggested here
avoid building wonders, unless you have a leader to spend. Wait for the AS to build them, then "obtain" them.
2) For the most part of the game, your cities cannot grow past size 12. That's why putting cities too much spaced apart results in a waste of precious, uncorrupted tiles. Build cities with 12 max tiles available and let the other overlap with other cities you build.
3) Don't build improvements in corrupted cities, since the gold, shield or beaker outcome would be wasted anyway.
4) Go out of Despotism ASAP. It has a penalty in food, gold and shields.
5) Have at least 1.5 workers per city. Let them improve tiles. Until you get out of Despotism, irrigate the plains and mine the grasslands. If you irrigate a grassland, the Despotism penalty will nullify the gain in food (unless there's a food bonus resource).
6) Since you hate long posts, i'll finish it here
Cities "closer together" can be a bad thing depending on how close were talking about. Building roads for roads sake and not to improve the best squares or connect cities is a waste of precious worker time. Its hard to go wrong with more trading though.
