I cannot win

[Bjorn190]

The hamlets are a great addition.. if you check your advisor that looks like a yellow $ at the top right, you will see what kinda stuff is costing you money. It could be troops, it could be (most likely) city maintenance..

If it is city maintenance you should research the "Code of Laws" tech, so that you can build Courthouses in your towns, especially those that are far away from your capitol (slavery is a fast way there)

I myself usually always overcome the costs by settling a bunch of great prophets in my capitol.. those guys give 5 gold per turn each

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Once you get over four cities focus on picking up "Code of Laws" and "Currency" to help pay for your extra cities. I read that Beyond the Sword makes it easier to play with larger empires (new tech tree setup), but the regular game and Warlords have really high city maintenance until you get those two commerce friendly techs. If you dare to skip Code of Laws (Courthouses) and Currency (+1 or more per city from the extra traderoute!), every city past your third will cost progressively more and more until your research stops dead.

 

[Big J Money]

I'm having a lot of fun reading this. Definitely be careful how much warmongering you do. Eventually you may wish to raze cities rather than capture them so not to incur the cost of running them.

=$= Big J Money =$=

 

[rabidveggie]

Well early on you'll only want to keep a conquered civs capital since the maintenance cost goes through the roof with too many distance cities. You also have to pay a lot of unit upkeep when they leave your borders, but its fairly short term. Once you've eliminated 1-2 people early it's usually best to aim for currency for the markets, and code of law for the court houses. In my current game I was all the way down to 10% science due to a huge immortal rush on two opponents, I probably could have knocked a few more opponents out, but I felt it was better to take a break, and expand naturally since I still had plenty of good land nearby. Now after only 20 or so turns I'm back up to 70% and ready to roll.

 

[Sisiutil]

Well, hold on there. Think carefully before you raze.

If there are other civs around, they'll likely settle the newly-opened territory before you can. If the city claims a key strategic location (like a choke-point), or a valuable resource, you should consider keeping it. Ditto if the city can pay for itself quickly--if it will be able to work a gem, silver, or gold tile, for example, or some fairly mature cottages.

And keeping holy cities and cities containing world wonders goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway.

I go through this cycle in many games: get the science slider high, go to war and watch it fall, build up after the war and watch it rise again. During the war you can also run the science slider in the black since you can lean on "pointy stick research"--financing research through gold captured from cities and from pillaging. (BtS also adds the opportunity, in the mid-game, to gain gold from Privateers blockading cities--essentially, piracy. Fun!)

Don't purely judge your success on the slider, either. 12 cities at 40% - 50% science can almost always out-tech 6 cities at 70% - 80%. More cities also means more opportunities to specialize them, another key to victory.

 

[Algrinon]

Six cities is good.

2 Cities with Barracks pumping units for war
1 City pumping Wonders
1 City pumping Settlers
2 Cities pumping hamlets

Get wood chooping pronto and go for catapults followed by Judism

Kill a civ fast, take cities that make sense and plunder the rest.

 

[Algrinon]

I have Angry citizens. I cannot figure out how to make them happy. My city hits 7 population and everything goes to living hell.

I founded Judism and my entire civ is Jewish.

By some miricle I am on an island by myself and I have 4 uber cities with one cranking out Wonders, 2 with bax, and my capitol pumping out settlers.

Within my religious government, how do I make this angry guy happy? He says things are too crowded.

Thanks

 

[Sisiutil]

I have Angry citizens. I cannot figure out how to make them happy. My city hits 7 population and everything goes to living hell.

I founded Judism and my entire civ is Jewish.

By some miricle I am on an island by myself and I have 4 uber cities with one cranking out Wonders, 2 with bax, and my capitol pumping out settlers.

Within my religious government, how do I make this angry guy happy? He says things are too crowded.

Thanks

My Beginners' Guide (link in my sig) explains the basics on happiness.

Cabert has written an article that goes into depth on the topic. While we're at it, he's also written an article on health.