Looking for some tips to improve game play

[TrentL]

I'm a long time CASUAL Civ player, Love the game, but I generally play on Prince... and I find its hit or miss I generally win my games (Normally through Science) I generally play on maps with a ton of islands (Because I like Naval Warfare, and the AI leaves me alone)

This last game I played on a continent (Forget the map type) basically one huge continent with some islands, as the Mongols, I'm about to Lose to Gandi who is racing towards a science victory with Greece racing with him, I was doing very well with the Mongol unique unit (Which is CRAZY powerful LOVE THEM) but then Greece out Tech'd me and made my guys obselete so I had to hunker down and change my game from war to expanding, improving culture etc, I went from 5-6 place in the game (Max Civ's on a Large map) to a solid 4th overall, but 3rd in Science.

It helped that I founded a religion quickly, and enhanced it to improve the distance by 30% and became the dominant religion (which I chose Tithe quite by accident) and that was a HUGE help because up until late game, I was by far the richest person, making 150 gold a turn, I was later dwarfed by Gandhi and Alexander though.

I really enjoyed the game though sometimes I wish the ancient years didn't go by so fast, I play on Epic because Marathon takes too long to create units... and well... and this seems stupid, but the "Clock" doesn't change so it seems silly that lets just say on Marathon its the year 2000, and some civs are still using camel archers...

Anyway... to my questions....

I"m looking to improve my game, I've gone through some of the strategic documents (like the trade routes one) and it boggled my brain, so ones like that are a bit much.

My trouble area's are:

Happiness: I can never get enough often I get crippled by it. Last game I went from a strong position to -20 happiness when one ally did a sneak attack and crippled all the luxury trade he was giving me...

Trade Routes: I never really think about them... I generally connect my cities to move my armies around not for money... so often cities have 2-3 connections so I can deploy my military quickly if one of my borders gets attacked... bad idea or good idea?

Tile improvements: I generally follow what the PC suggests to me, and sometimes leave my workers on Auto (But they won't overwrite) Is there some base strategy that could improve here?

City Placements: I tend to space my cities out so they can get the full affect of the area around them, the PC seems to tend to build cities almost ontop of each other, so while my empires have large holes in the "Area of control" the PC's don't. Am I doing it wrong? I think I recently read that you should place Cities with 6 spaces between them (7 apart) though I'm not sure how to count tiles on Civ5 like you could in the old 2D versions.

Wonders: I generally race pretty hard for certain Wonders (Pyramids and Stonehenge) sometimes I try for the great wall, but that is almost always built before by someone else. Are there wonders that are a must get or ones to avoid?

Science: I'm moderately willy nilly on science I don't have clear plans for how to research I sort of .. be-line to the early level bonus (Iron for Rome, Horses for Mongols etc) I'm guessing this is a solid part of improving my game.

Religion: This last game was the first time I really got into playing G&K (Bought it Cyber Monday) and it really changed the game, I got my religon early and enhanced it quickly, and being beside Greece which did that PC City Crawl, my 30% range increase quickly overtook his cities and put insane pressure on his neighbours etc, and Islam became the dominant religion which caused HUGE bonuses in money (Tithe) I'm thinking there is more to learn here, I think there are clear cut "BEST" choices.

In general I think I'm a medium player nothing special but I'd really like to get up to increasing to King or Emperor.

I guess to simplify this down, what are some things you need to know to get to King?

My play style generally is:

1. Build wide not tall (Wide empires have better chances at getting late game resources like Aluminum, Oil, Uranium)

2. Turtle early (I find taking over cities early game SO tedious) This may be an issue.

3. Be everyone's friend (generally leads to someone backstabbing me)

I have never won a game by war, its generally always science (It seems the easiest way to win)

 

[TrentL]

Just noticed in another thread about MadDjin's video's so I'm going to check those out

 

[Browd]

A bunch of good questions. Keeping in mind your desire to move up to King, I'll tackle a few and others will certainly chime in.

My trouble area's are:

Happiness: I can never get enough often I get crippled by it. Last game I went from a strong position to -20 happiness when one ally did a sneak attack and crippled all the luxury trade he was giving me...

Lux-for-lux trades (I presume that is what you are describing) can be great for happiness, but beware of over-concentrating your lux trades with a neighbor -- selling your lux to him for gold and gpt and buying a lux from a more distant party may be more reliable; if he breaks the trade with a DOW, you can resell your extra lux to someone else for gold to help you defend from his DOW. Also useful: circuses, coliseums and other happiness buildings in your cities, friending mercantile CSs, and good happiness beliefs for your religion (more on that below). Going moderately unhappy during your expansion phase (when you don't want your cities growing too quickly anyway) is not a bad thing. But, mostly you need to manage your expansion and generally avoid letting your cities' populations exceed the happiness you can generate in those cities (remember that each city creates 3 unhappiness and each population point is one additional unhappy--Meritocracy will shave off 1+ unhappy, but everything else (until later in the game) needs to come from your base happiness (based on difficulty level), unique luxuries, happy buildings and religion.

Trade Routes: I never really think about them... I generally connect my cities to move my armies around not for money... so often cities have 2-3 connections so I can deploy my military quickly if one of my borders gets attacked... bad idea or good idea?

Maybe bad, maybe good. Depends on how much of a threat your neighbors are, how many extra road segments you are building and how much trade route income you are earning. Investing in extra road segments for strategic reasons can be useful, but you can't go overboard -- positive gpt is critical to game success. Above all else, do not build roads too early--they will kill your gpt. Hard to give much more guidance than that.

Tile improvements: I generally follow what the PC suggests to me, and sometimes leave my workers on Auto (But they won't overwrite) Is there some base strategy that could improve here?

Don't automate your workers, period. The computer generally makes poor choices. Get your lux and strategics on line ASAP, improve riverside grassland tiles for farms, also farm riverside hills that don't have lux or strategic resources.

City Placements: I tend to space my cities out so they can get the full affect of the area around them, the PC seems to tend to build cities almost ontop of each other, so while my empires have large holes in the "Area of control" the PC's don't. Am I doing it wrong? I think I recently read that you should place Cities with 6 spaces between them (7 apart) though I'm not sure how to count tiles on Civ5 like you could in the old 2D versions.

Spacing cities that far apart makes me repeat my earlier statement -- don't build roads too early. Cities that far apart shouldn't have roads until they reach 6+ pop. Cities that far apart are also harder to defend (too much room for the AI to camp out between cities to heal and make you defend multiple cities at the same time; preferable is for cities to have enough overlap that the AI's massed forces can be attacked from multiple cities on the same turn). Since you say you like to go wide, you want to be filling in the gaps sooner rather than later--otherwise the AI will do it for you, which is infuriating.

Wonders: I generally race pretty hard for certain Wonders (Pyramids and Stonehenge) sometimes I try for the great wall, but that is almost always built before by someone else. Are there wonders that are a must get or ones to avoid?

No wonders are "got to have"; they are all "nice to have." Pyramids are good for a wide strategy (relatively easy to get and not much more costly than hard-building two workers). For a wide strategy, Stonehenge may be a waste of hammers. Build 3 settlers, found 3 cities and build 3 shrines, all in the time it takes to build Stonehenge. Couple that with a nice faith-giving pantheon belief and/or a couple of temples and you are golden. Great Wall is OK, I guess, for a defensive strategy, but I never build it. For science, Great Library and Oracle are good (extra science from the GL (plus a free Library) and both give Great Scientist points. GL gets progressively harder to get as you rise in difficulty, but very obtainable on King. Oracle is always attainable if you don't dawdle around getting to Philosophy.

Science: I'm moderately willy nilly on science I don't have clear plans for how to research I sort of .. be-line to the early level bonus (Iron for Rome, Horses for Mongols etc) I'm guessing this is a solid part of improving my game.

Probably. The difficulty in a wide strategy is deciding when to pause to get libraries in all your cities and build the National College (critical in a tall game, and really helpful in a wide game). You also want to get to Education sooner rather than later, so you can get universities in all your small cities and start working those specialists. On King, you should have the luxury of delaying Construction and Iron Working until after researching Philosophy (and maybe after researching Education). If you have a UU that depends on Iron Working (e.g., Roman Legions, Iroquois Mohawks, etc.), then you might consider popping IW as the Great Library's free tech; otherwise, you should probably pop Philosophy.

Religion: This last game was the first time I really got into playing G&K (Bought it Cyber Monday) and it really changed the game, I got my religon early and enhanced it quickly, and being beside Greece which did that PC City Crawl, my 30% range increase quickly overtook his cities and put insane pressure on his neighbours etc, and Islam became the dominant religion which caused HUGE bonuses in money (Tithe) I'm thinking there is more to learn here, I think there are clear cut "BEST" choices.

There are some choices that work better more often than others (and tithe + Itinerant preachers is a great example of a powerhouse--if you get spread started early). Religion is one of the best ways to manage happiness, so layering in at least one happiness belief is really advisable.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Just noticed in another thread about MadDjin's video's so I'm going to check those out

Do that. His last (Mayan) LP was about wide empire.

In addition to what Browd said:

Research-wise: at first you should get the techs that allow improving luxury resources (and strategics) and some defense (archers are good for prince, however you will need Construction to upgrade them to composite bowmen later). If you're not much of a warmonger, you should not invest heavily in military units (3 archers are more than enough), but focus on infrastructure. Build monuments and libraries in all cities and National College in capital asap. After that depends on victory condition. It's hard to give specific advice without seeing what you're doing. If you have a save game or screenshots you would like to discuss, you're welcome to post them.
The only sure thing is, that if you really want to improve your skills, you need stop automating anything. And that's something is worth repeating. Not workers, not scouts, not citizens, nothing. For two reasons. First, you will do a much better job than computer. Second, by manually controlling different aspects you will actually be forced to think about choices you make and understand them, rather than pressing the button on autopilot. I recommend everybody who tends to follow AI suggestions to turn them off completely. Another extreme advice would be playing without wonders. At least for awhile. Yes, they're nice and all. And even obtainable. But people get used to rely on them and then struggle climbing up in difficulties. You can win on any level without building a single wonder.

Religion is very situational. If you manage to spread your religion, Tithe is always a solid pick. Although if you plan to go really wide, you probably should chose happiness boosting beliefs, like Pagodas and Ceremonial Burial. Desert start almost automatically means Desert Folklore, lots of stone/marble - Stone Circle etc. So the answer is no, there are no best choices. There are best choices for given map, civ and victory type.

 

[Light Cleric]

Happiness: I can never get enough often I get crippled by it. Last game I went from a strong position to -20 happiness when one ally did a sneak attack and crippled all the luxury trade he was giving me...

It's perfectly normal to go unhappy in the early-game(I often end up there when I sell my luxuries to buy more Settlers). Try to manage your population from getting to the point where you have to buy luxuries from neighbors until you can get enough happiness of your own. If you go Tradition, prioritize Monarchy because it's fantastic for managing happiness.

Trade Routes: I never really think about them... I generally connect my cities to move my armies around not for money... so often cities have 2-3 connections so I can deploy my military quickly if one of my borders gets attacked... bad idea or good idea?

I'm bad at remembering to build roads sometimes so you're not alone.

Tile improvements: I generally follow what the PC suggests to me, and sometimes leave my workers on Auto (But they won't overwrite) Is there some base strategy that could improve here?

Turn off automated workers, the AI is dumb. I generally farm rivers, mine hills, and Trading Post jungles.

City Placements: I tend to space my cities out so they can get the full affect of the area around them, the PC seems to tend to build cities almost ontop of each other, so while my empires have large holes in the "Area of control" the PC's don't. Am I doing it wrong? I think I recently read that you should place Cities with 6 spaces between them (7 apart) though I'm not sure how to count tiles on Civ5 like you could in the old 2D versions.

A bigger concern is placing your cities in a place where they are defensible. The AI places cities like that because they're really really bad at evaluating city locations and just drop them wherever. The only rule of thumb is that if you're spamming a lot of cities, place them with 3 tiles of space apart. Also if you press G that turns the grid on and make it easier to count.

juxtapose519 created this flowchart for Vanilla but I think the AI has actually lapsed back into this lately.

Wonders: I generally race pretty hard for certain Wonders (Pyramids and Stonehenge) sometimes I try for the great wall, but that is almost always built before by someone else. Are there wonders that are a must get or ones to avoid?

If you want a specific wonder, you need to evaluate if your surroundings will allow you to get it quickly. The Pyramids aren't a bad choice, but on high difficulties I've found it to be a very high risk because the AI seems to build it much more often than in Vanilla and you might have ended up going Masonry and blowing a bunch of hammers for nothing.

Also, while the main benefit of some wonders occurs when you build them, one of the best ways to acquire them is kill people and take their stuff.

Science: I'm moderately willy nilly on science I don't have clear plans for how to research I sort of .. be-line to the early level bonus (Iron for Rome, Horses for Mongols etc) I'm guessing this is a solid part of improving my game.

Beelining a tech can be dangerous if you neglect your actual science on the way. For example, Beelining Iron Working can really screw you later on without an actual research base to back it up.

Religion: This last game was the first time I really got into playing G&K (Bought it Cyber Monday) and it really changed the game, I got my religon early and enhanced it quickly, and being beside Greece which did that PC City Crawl, my 30% range increase quickly overtook his cities and put insane pressure on his neighbours etc, and Islam became the dominant religion which caused HUGE bonuses in money (Tithe) I'm thinking there is more to learn here, I think there are clear cut "BEST" choices.

Tithe is indeed a very powerful belief but there really isn't a "best".

1. Build wide not tall (Wide empires have better chances at getting late game resources like Aluminum, Oil, Uranium)

2. Turtle early (I find taking over cities early game SO tedious) This may be an issue.

3. Be everyone's friend (generally leads to someone backstabbing me)

I have never won a game by war, its generally always science (It seems the easiest way to win)

1)Going tall is a very legitimate strategy with Tradition.
2)Turtling early works out but you can also do some pretty early warmongering with Composite Bows/Swords. I wouldn't try to rush with just regular Archers on higher difficulties anymore though, that doesn't work out in G&K.
3)Trying to be everyone's friend can get you screwed because you might end up being friends with someone who your neighbors hate and they'll beat you up for it.

 

[TrentL]

Thanks so much for the answers and suggestions.

I get its hard to give advice without me providing saves / screen shots I'll note that for next time.

From here I can see the following advice:

1) Stop Automation
2) Sell Luxuries (I watched MadDjinn's first episode) I had no idea you could do it.
3) Don't be scared to do some war mongering early.

I'll play another game at Prince using some of the above to get better at manually managing as one city is pretty rough going with a WIDE build and managing it all will be interesting for me.

 

[Light Cleric]

When your play your next game, save the initial start(before you do anything else). We might be able to play through and show a better way to have played the game.

The Ai buys luxuries for 240 gold if it likes you/is neutral and a little bit less for Gold Per Turn(it's like 20g + 7 GPT). The less it likes you the less it will pay you for them so that's a good indication of whether or not someone is mad at you.

 

[Jelster]

In addition to the excellent advice given above, I would also suggest you get your build order sorted.

Scout, Monument, worker, archer is my normal set up.

Decide on the Wonders you MUST have before hand, and beeline them.

I play at this level but tend to focus on culture. Work the AI, sell those lux's and organise your social policies. I always lean towards birth rights when picking my pantheon, expanding my borders ASAP is essential IMHO.

But some sound advice above....

 

[lithium97]

nice post, it's never too late to improve game play. These comments are all fine.

My only comment here is, on higher levels like Immortal, turtling early is bad unless you have a Civ that benefits from it, like India or Ethiopia. Neighboring AI usually bulds up a ridiculous army if I let them. If I am on Contients or Pangea, I try to take out or cripple my nearest neighbor as soon as possible using horses and archers, so long as they have luxuries that are not duplicates of my own, to offset the happiness hit from the extra cities. Sometimes I sell luxuries early in the game to afford extra armies.

Also when building cities, I tend to build cities closer to look for additional luxiries first, especially if the area is between my capital and my neighbor. I like to build cities "behind" my capital (eg- away from my neighbors) later in the game.

Finally (for now) I like to leave barbarians alone unless a CS is looking for me to destroy them. Especially if that CS has a luxury I don't have.

 

[The Pilgrim]

2)Turtling early works out but you can also do some pretty early warmongering with Composite Bows/Swords. I wouldn't try to rush with just regular Archers on higher difficulties anymore though, that doesn't work out in G&K.

Archers rush is perfectly viable up to emperor. On immortal was viable pre-patch. Not so much now.

on higher levels like Immortal, turtling early is bad unless you have a Civ that benefits from it, like India or Ethiopia. Neighboring AI usually bulds up a ridiculous army if I let them.

AI builds up a ridiculous army regardless your civ. Turtling up means you gain tech lead which allows more advanced units, so you don't really need too much of them. If you're sitting on defense without military at all praying not to be DoWed, then yes, it's a bad idea.

 

[loki75]

My only comment here is, on higher levels like Immortal, turtling early is bad unless you have a Civ that benefits from it, like India or Ethiopia. Neighboring AI usually bulds up a ridiculous army if I let them.

It's good to have a strategy on immortal, so turtling means you are going for a science victory. As a general rule for me, you need by turn 100: 4 cities, National College, Education, and at least 5 composite bowmen (or the money to upgrade existing archers). My main concern on immortal or deity is unhapiness, because I favor food for science.
On deity, they do have an absurdly high number of units, but as long as you play defensively, it's bearable.

 

[TrentL]

woah ... slow down I'm working on King Not Immortal!!

So I restarted like a 100 times last night pay attention to starting locations random Civs (Tryign to get one that I haven't won with for Achievements) and I find I almost ALWAYS moved my Settler to to the top of a hill near a river, after watching MadDjinn this seemed like a decent move getting the bonus defence.

The game I played last night until way too late (ugh... I can't wait for the Microsoft Surface Pro so I can play on the bus (And probably lose my job)) I started selling off my Lux's (Something completely new) as well as selling off my GPT in emergencies.

I don't have a screen shot but my closest neighbour (And who I plan on taking out) is Rome, and they DoWed me and I was caught flat footed, we were friends, though I was that jerk friend who sold him my Lux's for all his gold and all his GPT, when I then sold to someone else... and forced him to go -10 gold per turn (Slow down his expansion)

Anyway I can see selling off Lux's really helps, when he came it helped me buy a Composite Bowman, as well as a set of walls. Which repelled his large warrior / archer / catapult force.

So just doing that has changed the way I used to play which is great, I am finding it cumbersome to manually control each cities population. I'm working towards founding my own religion and managed to get Stonehenge as well as chose "Religious Idols" where my Capital has 3 gold mines, and my 2nd city has 2, so this is really speeding up my culture and my religion, from there I'll probably take either Tithe or Ceremonial Burial. (I honestly find Happiness MUCH harder to control in Wide / Warmongering than Money especially now that I can sell off Lux's and GPT etc)

As for Follower beliefs I'm not 100% sure yet, I'll try and figure out how to take a screen shot of my current situation and post it. (As well as the save game)

 

[TrentL]

Some other questions:

Where can I get information on controlling "Specialists" I generally don't use them due to my previous "Automation" unless the AI chose them when I say "Max Production"

ICS - I see this alot (I know its Infinite City Sprawl or something like that) but I'm not sure how one accomplishes this... from screen shots it seems that Alexander does ICS in every game I play... is there an advantage?

Generating Great People: I know that specialists help but how do you force a city to generate the Great Person you wanted, MadDjinn in Episode 4 (I think) shows how he is cascading Great Scientists but never bothers to explain how he got all these cities to build great scientists.

Lastly on Great People:

Sacrifice them to Science / Wonder or build tile improvement.... Does building the Tile improvement destroy the bonus? For instance if I use a great engineer to build his tile improvement on a place with OIL do I still get the oil?

Generally I never use Great People to improve Tiles unless I have junky tiles (Tundra / Desert) that I'm not using.

I also notice that MadDjinn is pretty liberal with his starting warrior and moving around as required, with that and his scout. But in 99% of my games the Barbarians get so close to my starting city that my worker is paralyzed (This is generally before the Granary is built... (Scout -> Monument -> Grainery / Shrine depending).. are Barbarians aggressive on King or something?

 

[budweiser]

TrentL, if a AI civ is in -GPT it means they have a lot of men and are going to attack someone soon, maybe you. Watch out.

Great People are an important part of the game and you want to make lots of them. Try to grow your cap as big as you can and then you can assign citizens to specialist slots inside your cities. This will produce great people. An easy way is to wait until you get a university and then put in 2 scientists. Other buildings and Freedom Opener will speed up GP production, garden, National Epic, etc.

 

[Light Cleric]

Some other questions:

Where can I get information on controlling "Specialists" I generally don't use them due to my previous "Automation" unless the AI chose them when I say "Max Production"

ICS - I see this alot (I know its Infinite City Sprawl or something like that) but I'm not sure how one accomplishes this... from screen shots it seems that Alexander does ICS in every game I play... is there an advantage?

Generating Great People: I know that specialists help but how do you force a city to generate the Great Person you wanted, MadDjinn in Episode 4 (I think) shows how he is cascading Great Scientists but never bothers to explain how he got all these cities to build great scientists.

Lastly on Great People:

Sacrifice them to Science / Wonder or build tile improvement.... Does building the Tile improvement destroy the bonus? For instance if I use a great engineer to build his tile improvement on a place with OIL do I still get the oil?

Generally I never use Great People to improve Tiles unless I have junky tiles (Tundra / Desert) that I'm not using.

I also notice that MadDjinn is pretty liberal with his starting warrior and moving around as required, with that and his scout. But in 99% of my games the Barbarians get so close to my starting city that my worker is paralyzed (This is generally before the Granary is built... (Scout -> Monument -> Grainery / Shrine depending).. are Barbarians aggressive on King or something?

Great People improvements connect Strategic resources like Oil, Coal etc. but do NOT connect Luxuries(unless this changed last patch) so that's something to be aware of.

Barbarians have become more aggressive this recent patch because of a bugfix that prevented them from acting the same turn they spawned. The only change is your combat bonus vs Barbarians goes down by 10% per difficulty level(at Deity you get none) while the AI always has +60%(and still loses civilians all the time).

I won't comment on ICS because I don't care for it at all outside of a very small number of civs. Also, the AI effectively ignores the Happiness system because they get insane bonuses, so you will set a lot of civs just spam as many cities as they can. Some are more likely to do it than others but honestly after this patch it seems like they ALL do it.

 

[Browd]

Some other questions:

Where can I get information on controlling "Specialists" I generally don't use them due to my previous "Automation" unless the AI chose them when I say "Max Production"

In City View, there's a section on the right where the specialist buildings are listed (amphitheater, market, university, etc.) and you can manually assign specialists there. Keep an eye on food and growth though; you need to feed those specialists (2 food, like every other citizen).

ICS - I see this alot (I know its Infinite City Sprawl or something like that) but I'm not sure how one accomplishes this... from screen shots it seems that Alexander does ICS in every game I play... is there an advantage?

Not an advantage so much as a different play style. Super-wide/ICS pretty much rules out a culture victory as policy costs skyrocket, and its not particularly helpful for science victory (since you usually want to slam through Rationalism and other helpful policies ASAP and you can usually generate more science with a few tall cities and a bunch of puppets than from an ICS empire), but can be great for domination or its side-kick, diplomatic.

Generating Great People: I know that specialists help but how do you force a city to generate the Great Person you wanted, MadDjinn in Episode 4 (I think) shows how he is cascading Great Scientists but never bothers to explain how he got all these cities to build great scientists.

Make sure the specialist slots you are working generate primarily the types of great person points you want (e.g., for Great Scientists, work university, public school and research lab slots) and avoid (or at least minimize) use of other GP slots (artists, merchants and engineers), since they work off the same GP counter.

Lastly on Great People:

Sacrifice them to Science / Wonder or build tile improvement.... Does building the Tile improvement destroy the bonus? For instance if I use a great engineer to build his tile improvement on a place with OIL do I still get the oil?

Generally I never use Great People to improve Tiles unless I have junky tiles (Tundra / Desert) that I'm not using.

Lots of debate over tile improvement vs. retain for bonus, but if you are going the tile improvement route:

1. A GP tile improvement will connect an underlying strategic resource (horse, iron, coal, oil, aluminum, uranium) to your trading network, so that resource is available for use and/or trading. But, you only get the unimproved yield from that resource (i.e., you don't get as-if-mined yield) plus the GP tile improvement yield (beakers, culture, faith, whatever). A GP tile improvement will not connect a luxury resource; never drop a GP on a luxury tile.

2. You only get that yield if you assign a citizen to work that tile, and you have to feed that citizen (as with specialists). So, best tiles for improvements that you want to work continuously are tiles that provide at least 2 food (grasslands) or, even better, extra food (wheat, cows, etc.). Tile improvements that you might want to only work intermittently (like holy sites for faith) can go on trash tiles.

I also notice that MadDjinn is pretty liberal with his starting warrior and moving around as required, with that and his scout. But in 99% of my games the Barbarians get so close to my starting city that my worker is paralyzed (This is generally before the Granary is built... (Scout -> Monument -> Grainery / Shrine depending).. are Barbarians aggressive on King or something?

Barbs should be no worse on King than on higher difficulties, unless you've enabled Raging Barbarians. Until you have a worker to protect, your city should be able to handle any barb incursions, leaving your warrior free to explore. Once you have a worker, someone needs to protect the nest, so get your warrior back home or build/buy a warrior or, even better, an archer.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Sacrifice them to Science / Wonder or build tile improvement.... Does building the Tile improvement destroy the bonus? For instance if I use a great engineer to build his tile improvement on a place with OIL do I still get the oil?

Generally I never use Great People to improve Tiles unless I have junky tiles (Tundra / Desert) that I'm not using.

• Academies (great scientist improvement) are worthwhile if you can build them very early. Before turn 150 or so. After that GS are better be used to bulb techs. But not immediately, only when your empire generates maximum science.
• Engineers are usually spent on rushing wonders.
• Prophets - depends on your beliefs can be used either for holy sites (whatever they're called) or spreading religion.
• Generals are attached to military force to increase its strength and sometimes for citadels to help out with defense/offense.
• In the same manner great admirals are attached to navy (in case you use one) and also have the ability to enter the ocean without Astronomy. So if you play on e.g. continents and get GAd quickly, you can send him over the seas to meet distant civs.
• Artists are the key for culture victory, they construct landmarks. In addition they are useful in any game for golden ages.
• Merchants... Well, I don't see a reason whatsoever to generate them no matter what circumstances are. But if this misfortune happens, you should send them to CS to gain some cash and influence.

I also notice that MadDjinn is pretty liberal with his starting warrior and moving around as required, with that and his scout. But in 99% of my games the Barbarians get so close to my starting city that my worker is paralyzed (This is generally before the Granary is built... (Scout -> Monument -> Grainery / Shrine depending).. are Barbarians aggressive on King or something?

Barbarians become more aggressive with each new patch lately. His LP was recorded before the last big one.
Basically you have several choices. You can scout with your starting warrior for a little while and then bring him home to protect the worker. Or you can keep exploring and build/buy an archer. Or you can ignore both and bombard the barbs with city and let worker improve those tiles they can't reach. Barbs can be an annoyance, however they are not such a huge issue and are not supposed to completely paralyze your worker. Use terrain to your favor. Keep in mind, that they lose all moving points once they cross the river, or step onto rough terrain, or that city itself provides Zone of Control. Small nuances improve your game significantly. When you're watching MadDjinn's videos pay attention to how he's using those concepts.

 

[The Pilgrim]

A GP tile improvement will not connect a luxury resource; never drop a GP on a luxury tile.

Unless you have more copies of the luxury than you can sell and it's a good tile food-wise, like cotton and sugar.

 

[Browd]

Fair enough, but I would regard that as "Tile Improvement Plan C" and only if there's truly no one to sell the lux to (like I have 7 cotton tiles and only 6 other living civs--2 of whom have their own cotton source).

 

[The Pilgrim]

It's not uncommon though. Cotton and sugar (and ivory, to be honest) quite often are coming in 6 packs. And especially now, when AI are wiped out all the time, not once I find myself having too many luxes and too few trading partners.