I need some help with Civ5

[Kerosene31]

I think you are ok on prince. If you drop down a level, you just learn more bad habits. There's nothing wrong with losing on prince, just learn from your mistakes.

Some general advice:
-Watch the military adviser like your life depended on it (your Civs does!). He will give you accurate information on your strength relative to every other civ. This is vital information. If someone has a more powerful army than you, that can be bad. If they have an army that can "wipe you off the planet", that's really bad. Sometimes the AI can be bad at warfare tactics, but if they are that much bigger they will simply overrun you. No matter what victory you seek, check this screen often. It will tell you where your threats are.

-On prince, learning to manage your money is key. It took me some time to figure it out. The key is to be very selective with choosing buildings in your cities. That 1 gold maintenance cost doesn't seem like much on a monument, but that's 1 gold per turn. Over 1000 years that's $1000 gold. Of course there's nothing wrong with the culture benefit, but you have to be very careful on what you build. When in doubt, less is more. Also, look to build cities near gold/gem mines or other gold providing resources, and make sure your cities are working them.

-I'm no conquest expert, and I think it is actually a little harder than other victories (happiness and money are always hard to manage). 3 cities seems a little light. When I started out, the trap I always fell into was not starting a city which had lots of hammers. Early on your capital can provide all the units you need, but as the units get more advanced, you need some more production to get them out in time. If you are going conquest, you should be razing their cities and resettling as much as your happiness allows.

-Finally, sometimes there is just a runaway Civ. You mention France and they are often one. I just played a game on king where France had 4x the score of anyone else and when the "pointiest sticks" window came up, they had 26,000+ while everyone else was in the 4 figures. Sometimes, Civs just runaway and there's not a lot you can do other than take them out early. In this game, France is wiping out Germany and yet Germany is declaring war on me (and losing) and won't offer peace. I'm sure a Civ V expert could have done something, but sometimes the cards just fall a certain way and you don't win.

 

[Choirs]

Here's my suggestion. Start a game on a Standard Pangaea as Rome.

Found your city. Build a scout and two warriors while you tech to Writing. Take the Liberty branch and get the free settler. Buy a worker with your first 310 gold.

Then do the following in possibly varying order:

1. Build 3 more warriors.
2. Get techs to improve all your luxuries and then sell all the luxes to the AI. Don't go below 0 happy (not a hard rule... going below 0 happy for a really important burst of cash is ok).
3. Tech to Philosophy and build library->National College
4. Beeline to Iron Working and plunk a settler down on the nearest iron resource (pref. 6 iron, but you take what you can get).
5. Upgrade as many warriors as you can to legions. Ideally you want 6 legions. You can ally a CS or buy trade a lux for iron if necessary.

Feel free to buy stuff with cash as it becomes available, making sure you save enough to upgrade at least a few warriors to legion as soon as you get your iron online.

With your 6 legions, go find the nearest civ and puppet their cities. At this time, your opponent's city combat ratings should be in the 12-17 range, and legions should take them easily. Lay down trading posts on all your puppets.

When you can, add 4 seige units to your 6 legions. This is basically all the army you will need for the entire game, though you will naturally acquire more units eventually. Beeline Steel, then Rifling, then Dynamite. If you have money problems, lay down more trading posts, tech Currency/Banking/Economics, and keep conquering. Get the +happy policies from Honor and the +happy policy from Piety. Your puppets will build walls and monuments that will help with your happy problems.

Archers are not necessary. You don't even have to research the tech until after you have legions beating down. I often never build a single archer, and I win basically 100% on Immortal.

You don't have to be Rome. But for your first shot, might as well be a civ with a swordsman UU.

Thanks majorkong, I used this tactic (albeit slightly tweaked as I was Babylon on a Continents map) and won my first ever Emperor difficulty game

However, I will say where this tactic falls down a bit is if the RNG places little or worse no iron for you to build on which happened to me on my first try

Longswords before anyone else is just monstrous.