Question about improving the land around cities

[Phoenix Master]

I've been playing as America on civ 5 vanilla. I have six cities including my capital. My happiness and gold went way down, but I am doing a lot better now. I am not sure why this happened, but think part of it has to do with building too many farms and not enough trading posts around my cities. What I am trying to say is maybe I overdeveloped some of my cities too soon. The excess population would account for the drop in happiness and the lack of enough trading posts would account for the gold deficit. I would greatly appreciate any advice.

 

[mbbcam]

It is such a long time (many years) since I played vanilla that I don't remember anything about it. I would do yourself a favour and get the expansions. They must be pretty cheap now, and it is a much more interesting game.

 

[plus]

depends on your strategy.if u go full domination and plan to have 60+ cities,u need to control happiness,stop cities grow when less than 20 happiness in pool,trading posts are nice,in my own cities i usually dont build,but on conquered cities ai builds and i keep them

 

[mbbcam]

I vaguely remember that trade routes were not in the vanilla version of the game, and that is one very useful way to get gold. Like I said, get the expansions. BNW is a much, much better game. I would think almost everybody who visits these forums regularly is playing BNW, and they are likely to give advice based on that game. It is a stretch to remember the mechanics of a game you haven't played for five or six years.

Edit: actually, I see BNW came out in 2013, so I probably haven't played vanilla since about 2011. The complete bundle of Civ 5 costs something around $30 on Steam.

Also perhaps worth saying that to some extent it will depend on the level at which you play. Happiness will be more of a problem at higher levels, but in compensation the AI usually has more money so you can more easily sell them stuff to earn gold. But these are the challenges of the game: working out what to do to solve the problems that come up, whether they be declarations of war from neighbours, cultural pressure, slow tech progress or others.