Welcome to CFC!
Strategy & Tips forum is the best place to learn...I requested a thread move
Yes, I recommend at least playing Noble or Prince even if you are struggling with the game. Noble is basically neutral difficulty in terms of AI bonuses, and Prince is not much harder than Noble.
1. I seem to have issues with expansion and economy. I cant seem to keep my research high enough so I dont spend 65 turns researching a tech. What are some tips to help with this.
65 turns? What speed do you play? This question not so easy to answer in a vacuum. I will say that the best way to learn is to post a learner game over in S&T or just in this thread, which will be moved to S&T. Play along and get advice from the very beginning..play slowly.
I also recommend playing normal settings for now while learning. Playing slower speeds and larger maps changes the mechanics quite a bit and can be harder in some cases. For some reason a lot of new players think "bigger is better". But IMO I don't think that is the case. Normal speed and maps make for a very satisfying game experience.
As for expansion and economy, I will initially start out explaining that for one you very likely have some bad habits and a not so good understanding of game mechanics like worker management, whipping, specialists/great people/bulbing, and maintenance costs that hurt you a lot. We can give more pointed advice once we get a better understanding of your game at this point.
Generally you want to expand to 4 to 6 cities fairly quickly in the BCs in close proximity to your capital with trade routes setup. Additionally get trade routes with AIs as soon as you can to boost commerce. You can certainly have more cities depending on the land/map and economy and your goals.
2. Im a peaceful builder type player. I usually only have conquest on as my win con. I like the late gsme warfare. What are some good builder tips yall can give.
Best builder tip I can give you is not to build so much. I would discourage you from selecting a single victory type in game options. Keep them all on as it messes with the AI scripting. It doesn't matter if they are all on, you can win any way you like, but turning them off affects how the AIs play as well.
Im sure its been asked before and I appologize if it has. Also hows the multiplayer community now adays. Thanks for the info and I look forward to being part of this awesome community.
Don't really have an answer for you here as I haven't played MP in years - I'm not much for it anyway. I know the old Gamespy servers closed down a couple of years ago and not sure what the replaced it with ..maybe Steam. I didn't find the public servers all that great of an experience though...lots of nuts and wackos. However, there are several ways to play MP in Civ that does not require public servers. If MP is your focus, I'd recommend heading over to the MP forum here and looking for players to play Pitboss or PBEM. I'm sure there are still games going on over there.
On another note, while improving your skills in SP helps with MP, MP is a different animal with different tactics and stuff to beat humans. Still a better understanding of basic game mechanics helps tremendously.
