Dose anyone focus on getting rid of the unhealthiness? Such as going the whole herbalism path?
Don't know how I wound up missing this thread, but I've found it now...
Me, I usually go for Herbalism right out of the gate, followed by aiming for a LE unit
other than the tribal guardian (since you can only have one of those), and then the storyteller. I tend to go for overkill on my city garrison, normally going for three of each type of unit (healer, LE, and educator), upgrading as technology allows, and maybe adding a few extra units if trouble crops up - usually extra LE units, if and when my opponents start using criminal infiltrators. My goal is to get crime and disease down into negative numbers and
keep them there, and I usually manage to do a fairly good job of it. After than, as far as units go it's hunters, enough gatherers to get all available resources hooked up, and - when they become available - dogs for border patrol. Oh, and thieves/rogues for black ops, and ambushers (and their followup units) to act as slavers. Meanwhile, I'm also interspersing various city buildings as well - priorities are production > science > food > defense, and from there on down whatever seems most necessary or beneficial. Of course, bear in mind that
all of this can be adjusted on the fly depending on circumstances - this is a fairly rough guide, not a definitive be-all-and-end-all approach.
It works reasonably well, especially when you consider that I rely heavily on the Banditry civic (for black ops warfare) and the Slavery worldview (gotta do
something with all those prisoners the black ops units capture, after all) from pretty much when they become available clear up to the middle Medieval or early Renaissance era - I don't have a hard-and-fast rule for when I drop Slavery and/or Banditry; it's more of an art than a science at this stage. Although a decent rule of thumb for when Banditry becomes redundant is when you start to have criminal units which don't require the Bandit Hideout to build - Scoundrels, I believe? (No, I don't really give up the black ops warfare. It's just too useful. Between criminal units and spies, I've subverted entire opposing empires in the past without going to a "hot" war. But I'm starting to have to watch out - it looks like the AI is starting to get some sort of a handle on this type of strategy - they're not
great at it yet, but they're starting to become a threat.)
I'm actually a bit light on offensive military units, usually. In my last four or five games, I think I've only built about a dozen offensive forces, and three of
those were aimed at eliminating barbarian and neanderthal cities. I guess I've been neglecting conventional warfare in favor of unconventional warfare.