First some general tips.
1. Know yourself and apply it to your pre-game decisions. Know how you want to play your game before you even start. Waging war as Ghandi or waging peace as Genghis Khan typically isn't the best idea. Pick a leader and a civ based on how you want your game to go. If you want to try and take over the world early, pick an Aggressive civ with a good early-game unit (and building, if applicable). If you want more of a mid-game win based on culture and expansion, plan in advance for that.
2. Experiment - don't stick to a single game plan every time. Even if you try and make everyone as happy as possible, you're going to make someone upset, or someone will decide the iron in your borders should be in his instead. Or if you're waging war, you'll come up against someone with a bigger, better army than yours, and need to keep them sated while you go pick on someone else. Learning a variety of strategies, figuring out which battles are worth fighting (literally and figuratively), and knowing what's best for which situations can be a civ-saver.
3. Be adaptable. Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it will. Be ready to change your plan based on the unexpected moves of your opponents, particularly when it comes to production and borders. Think one or two techs and/or steps in the production queue ahead, and have a contingency plan for when things go wrong. Sometimes they can work out just as well in the end if you're prepared for them. This applies to warfare as well. Maybe your favorite unit is the spearman/pikeman because you just beat someone with a bunch of mounted units in their army, but if your new opponent has mostly melee units, you'll need to switch to macemen, axemen, and crossbowman instead.
4. Be ready to make compromises and sacrifices in the short-term. This falls in line with 3 above, but know that sometimes you need to take a hit in one area to keep your overall plan going. You might like Pacifism's +100%
, but the burden on your econonmy might wreak you if you need to go to war. Losing may hurt now, but losing cities, units, and time in a war for no gain will hurt more.
5. Find a balance between perfection and overextension. Many new players tend to either build nothing but units and production and go to war with everyone, or sit in a few cities and hope the rest of the world ignores them while they go for a diplomatic/cultural/space victory. You can't have everything in all your cities, and you need to expand, but don't do so in a way that will cripple you. Set up a core network of cities that provide your civ with a strong backbone, and expand until you can just almost not handle it anymore. Don't think "I want to finish this city first" because you never will, but don't think "I don't need to work on improvements" either.
6. Specialize early, specialize often. Not every city will be good at everything. In fact, few will be. Anticipate which cities will be good at what things you need (for example, a city with lots of hills will be good at production, a coastal city at the mouth of a river will be good at commerce/culture/research) and build accordingly. Don't waste time on markets and banks in a city producing no or little gold. If you have plenty of health in a city, you can bypass an aqueduct.
7. Give your cities what they need. On the other side of the coin from 6, every city will need certain things. In particular, happiness, healthiness, and production. A city without production can't give its citizens the other things they need, and without happiness and healthiness, a city is not producing and growing as much as it should. Most cities will need a forge to boost production, and unless you have so many resources that healthiness and happiness are not a problem, they will also need a granary or a harbor for healthiness and a temple, colliseum, or market for happiness. Plan ahead and give cities these before they're sick/unhappy.
8. Plan ahead with your civics, production queues, and research. This mainly has to do with war. Don't switch to Vassalage and Theocracy right when you enter war. Switch to them beforehand so you get the bonuses for your army when you start the war as well. If you're about to research a technology that benefits one group of units (ie, melee units) but not another (ie, archery units), build the non-upgraded type first so when you switch, your army can benefit from the newer units.
9. Intelligence is key. Keep tabs on your enemies, and pay attention to their army's composition so you know what types of units to build. Get their maps, preferably without giving them yours, so you know where their borders are, what resources they have, etc. Religions help with this too.
10. Religion =
. Seriously. Try and found at least one religion during the game, and do work to have it spread at least to all your cities. Missionaries are cheap. Shrines provide good gold bonuses, and spreading your religion to other civs can provide huge long-term diplomatic bonuses. You also get free intelligence on cities with your state religion, if you have the holy city for it as well.
1. Know yourself and apply it to your pre-game decisions. Know how you want to play your game before you even start. Waging war as Ghandi or waging peace as Genghis Khan typically isn't the best idea. Pick a leader and a civ based on how you want your game to go. If you want to try and take over the world early, pick an Aggressive civ with a good early-game unit (and building, if applicable). If you want more of a mid-game win based on culture and expansion, plan in advance for that.
2. Experiment - don't stick to a single game plan every time. Even if you try and make everyone as happy as possible, you're going to make someone upset, or someone will decide the iron in your borders should be in his instead. Or if you're waging war, you'll come up against someone with a bigger, better army than yours, and need to keep them sated while you go pick on someone else. Learning a variety of strategies, figuring out which battles are worth fighting (literally and figuratively), and knowing what's best for which situations can be a civ-saver.
3. Be adaptable. Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it will. Be ready to change your plan based on the unexpected moves of your opponents, particularly when it comes to production and borders. Think one or two techs and/or steps in the production queue ahead, and have a contingency plan for when things go wrong. Sometimes they can work out just as well in the end if you're prepared for them. This applies to warfare as well. Maybe your favorite unit is the spearman/pikeman because you just beat someone with a bunch of mounted units in their army, but if your new opponent has mostly melee units, you'll need to switch to macemen, axemen, and crossbowman instead.
4. Be ready to make compromises and sacrifices in the short-term. This falls in line with 3 above, but know that sometimes you need to take a hit in one area to keep your overall plan going. You might like Pacifism's +100%
, but the burden on your econonmy might wreak you if you need to go to war. Losing may hurt now, but losing cities, units, and time in a war for no gain will hurt more.5. Find a balance between perfection and overextension. Many new players tend to either build nothing but units and production and go to war with everyone, or sit in a few cities and hope the rest of the world ignores them while they go for a diplomatic/cultural/space victory. You can't have everything in all your cities, and you need to expand, but don't do so in a way that will cripple you. Set up a core network of cities that provide your civ with a strong backbone, and expand until you can just almost not handle it anymore. Don't think "I want to finish this city first" because you never will, but don't think "I don't need to work on improvements" either.
6. Specialize early, specialize often. Not every city will be good at everything. In fact, few will be. Anticipate which cities will be good at what things you need (for example, a city with lots of hills will be good at production, a coastal city at the mouth of a river will be good at commerce/culture/research) and build accordingly. Don't waste time on markets and banks in a city producing no or little gold. If you have plenty of health in a city, you can bypass an aqueduct.
7. Give your cities what they need. On the other side of the coin from 6, every city will need certain things. In particular, happiness, healthiness, and production. A city without production can't give its citizens the other things they need, and without happiness and healthiness, a city is not producing and growing as much as it should. Most cities will need a forge to boost production, and unless you have so many resources that healthiness and happiness are not a problem, they will also need a granary or a harbor for healthiness and a temple, colliseum, or market for happiness. Plan ahead and give cities these before they're sick/unhappy.
8. Plan ahead with your civics, production queues, and research. This mainly has to do with war. Don't switch to Vassalage and Theocracy right when you enter war. Switch to them beforehand so you get the bonuses for your army when you start the war as well. If you're about to research a technology that benefits one group of units (ie, melee units) but not another (ie, archery units), build the non-upgraded type first so when you switch, your army can benefit from the newer units.
9. Intelligence is key. Keep tabs on your enemies, and pay attention to their army's composition so you know what types of units to build. Get their maps, preferably without giving them yours, so you know where their borders are, what resources they have, etc. Religions help with this too.
10. Religion =
. Seriously. Try and found at least one religion during the game, and do work to have it spread at least to all your cities. Missionaries are cheap. Shrines provide good gold bonuses, and spreading your religion to other civs can provide huge long-term diplomatic bonuses. You also get free intelligence on cities with your state religion, if you have the holy city for it as well.
) citizens. When the latter is bigger, citizens will refuse to work. Keep them satisfied by: changing your state religion to the religion which exists in your cities with unhappiness, connecting luxury resources (gold, ivory, silver, gems, furs, whales), switching to Hereditary Rule and moving military units to those cities, building buildings that increase happiness (temples, colloseums, cathedral, theaters, markets, forges)
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