In retrospect, I'd have learned to play a little differently than I did. As an impatient type, jumped right in after a swift look at the tutorial. After playing and eventually winning some close (LOL!) games with absolutely no real regard nor even understanding beyond brute-force military, I jumped right into Deity games. Early on, looking back in retrospect, I had a way of making a game needlessly close without knowing why.
My understanding of government types and trade were the most glaring errors, primarily brought on by myopic vision about production at the moment. Since I valued producing things above all else (mainly for battle), I never even considered science advancement as a means to have a big jump several hundred years down the road. It was always 'lets get by at the moment', and figure the rest later.
Until very recently, I even poopooed Democracy and Republic, especially when fighting a major war, mainly because of those 'stupid' trade arrows that you get instead of free-support and more shields.
Also, failure to understand gov't types and relative civ sizes cause me to delay transitions too long.
Eventually, I set a few goals, like achieve a good stable democracy by 1900, then by 1776. Now it's a lot earlier.
One of my personal recent refinements has been to transition to Republic as soon as possible, and make it work.
Another series of goals was achieving at sustained advancements every game turn, sooner and sooner in the game. Game conditions can naturally influence that dramatically, but preparing for and sustaining large sealifts of caravans before RR, esp. in hostile waters, is a challenge.
At one time, I even poo-pooed the idea of what I see people call the Super Science City (SSC) concept. Getting trade routes and pumping that SSC up was a defining goal at one point... and overcoming my reluctance to build the Colossus. Shoot, even getting over my short-sighted tightwaddedness to rush-buy one of those 'worthless' universities in my SSC was a hurdle until I played the OCC concept.
Once I saw how easy the AI got advances from the Great Library, the GL became essential early on. Not until relatively recently have I discovered it is not the make-or-break wonder I used to assume. With large Republican cities and caravans, the GL is now nothing more than an idle curiosity to build if I have piles of extra caravans.
And one of my final goals/developments was (and still is) in giving the enemy knowledge that will accelerate my tech development, but not hurt me by allowing the enemy to close a gap too rapidly.
Specific Suggestions Summary:
1. Governments. Understand and experiment, and know how to transistion and exploit each, including happiness control. Try having a revolution at different points
and when you come out of anarchy, you can re-select any available form of gov't as often as you want on that same turn. See what the net-effect on science, taxes, and happiness is under Monarchy, Republic, Communism, Fundamentalism, and even Democracy. It will take some experience to get a good feel of which type is best in a given situation, and often there is no 'absolute' right answer.
2. Learn an use the SSC, and supporting cities for the SSC (eg, caravans/freight for trade/wonder building). The SSC is overwhelmingly powerful if you pick the right city location and govern in Republic/Democracy. This will offset the huge advantage the AI has on the human at deity level.
3. Understand happiness, and how to deal with those issues (assuming deity now)
luxuries rate, elvis, multiple scientists/taxmen, government type, city improvements, wonders (MC & JSB, but also Colossus & trade in Republic/Democracy). Learn to fight with minimal forces, and using maneuver.
4. Understand trade: trade route value, trade bonuses, effect on happiness (Republic/Democracy mainly), effect on science (esp. Fundamentalism). Know how to maximize the economic power of your empire in any given gov't
e.g., when/how to grow
as well as what is needed to keep growth going, and why it stops during different phases. Understanding the 'real' effects of city improvements on happiness computations is important for deciding what to build and when.
5. Do without the Great Library
concentrate on SSC
how to make it pump out more science
plus dips to steal tech gaps, and/or Marco Polo (or embassies) to trade for tech gaps.
6. Play offensively
press expansion and hut-popping early on. Get writing and use Dips to get units and defend sprawling cities from those Raging Hordes. Make it a point to maneuver and bribe barbs near AI cities so you get "Nones". Actively hunt for barbs on land, sea, and in enemy territory. Pick off barbs along the coasts with dips & ships. Be sure to play Raging Hordes so you get 150 gold for barb leader kills
this will usually self-fund a bribed-barb army, or at least partially fund it. Be sure and get Leonardo's Workshop for upgrades, and SunTzu's for easy vet status.
7. Read the guides of others. I never knew sites like this existed on the Internet at first, and those guides will doubtless accelerate your learning curve. Some of those guides would have helped me a lot, and now I'm still learning new approaches from the experts.
8. Don't be afraid of playing at Deity level when you understand governments and happiness fairly well. In the end, human intellect is the overwhelming and deciding factor, and even deity advantages begin to seem inadequate for the poor AI.
9. Play games when you never break a treaty (record is 'spotless'). As I realized the shortcomings of the AI a long time ago, I began playing that way (a voluntary advantage for the AI) and now I sometimes read about things that give others fits that are simply never issues for me (in terms of sneak attacks, diplomacy, etc).
