What should I do post-expansion?

[painkiller]

After a fast expansion I always get stuck. Mostly I concentrate on producing baracks and then units so that I can go to war ASAP. The downside to this strategy is that I always get behind in the techrace. This is true when playing on Emperor and above because it's Emperor where the game becomes harder...

Sometimes I focus on libraries + marketplaces but this strategy makes an early war impossible. Sure, techs and gold are plenty but what about millitary power... Sure I try to balance my game but then I don't get anything. An average army with an average science/gold output...

Can anyone help me on improving my game?

 

[Azimuth]

Use resources more. You can trade them for technology even.

 

[digitalgoodtime]

I seem to have the same problem, to buy tech you must have marketplaces and banks, to stay alive you must have barracks and units and to get culture you have to have everything else.... I thought I had a good game going on emp, but I now fear a culture defeat...

Oh back to topic, the ai won't trade even for Iron Horses etc for tech they still want gpt : (

 

[bluebox]

going along the war path can yield everything else. after peaceful expansion, i further expand aggressively! my calculation is easy: if the ai gets a 80% bonus on emperor, i need at least 125% food, shield, and gold income of the leading ai to keep up with her. my rule is: keep on expanding until you got more cities and territory than everybody else.

I wait until then before I broadly improve my cities and work towards a victory condition. of course, there are always some exceptions from the rule - the temple to expand a city to get a resource and the barracks in a core city to get veteran units. but you don't even need barracks in all of your cities to go to war successfully. Maybe you can even conquer the Great Library or some other Wonder - SunTzu's is quite nice.

the tech lag can be delayed if - through early exploration - you get to know a lot of civs and bring yourself in the position of a tech broker. you keep your money until you can buy a tech that someone else doesn't have, then sell it to the third party for more techs and so on. exploration and frequent diplo-screen checks are due.