Beginning of the game - The beginning of the game is the hardest part. The enemy is better than you, you don't know where anything is on the map, and must expand rapidly.
When you are first starting your game, restart the game until you get some extra technology like pottery or other technologies or if you get an extra settler.
When you have some of these save your game. Now going exploring around so you know where some things are and where the closest civilization is.
Go back and load you game. Find a good location for you capitol. It must be within one or two squares and it should have some hills, grassland, and access to the coast.
Check your tax rate. Build one defense unit and a second to explore. Then build settlers to create a second city.
City Placement - When creating your cities, put them close together to help out in defense of your empire. You don't want your city radii to overlap too much. Don't go searching for the perfect place for your cities, just put them somewhere based on the distance from other cities.
Also, you want to build cities spreading towards any other civs on your continent so you can stop them from taking too much land.
Early goals - As soon as you have masonry, build the great pyramids. Your cities will grow faster than ever. Another wonder you might want to get early is the great library, which requires literacy, this is only helpful if you are a beginner or on a hard level, otherwise you will be leading in science anyway.
In the first years of your civilization, your technological goals should be masonry, literacy, currency and invention. When you get invention, build leonardo's workshop to improve your units.
Negotiation - As you meet other civilizations, you must negotiate with them. When you first meet others, you should probably give them what they want and sign a peace treaty. The early part of the game is still about settlers and new cities. You should attempt to get an embassy as soon as you can build diplomats. Give in to their requests unless they are too much.
Eventually they will get greedy and ask for too much. Most of the time, you don't want to attack your enemy first. If they have allies and you attack them, their allies will declare war on you. Entice them to attack you if you want war. Demand tributes and force them to withdraw their troops.
Attack strategy - When trying to take a city in early times, send in the strong slow units, but leave an empty square between them and the city. Use faster units to attack the city and when it is weak enough, move in the slower and stronger units. Also, have some good defense units waiting to fortify the city when it is taken.
Another way to take the city is to get a few engineers together and build a railroad to the city. Start them all on it so its finished the same turn you start it. Then you can send in your units and still have full attack strength. Later, when you have spies and nuclear weapons, there is a different tactic you can use.
Send a spy near to their city. Save your game. Then try to plant a nuclear device. If your spy is captured or their is an international incident the load the game. Now try moving the spy into the city from a different direction.
There is normally at least one direction that it will work in. Make sure you have some howitzers and mechanical infantry nearby but far enough away that they aren't destroyed by the blast. Now send some of the mech. inf. and howitzers around the city. Partisans can only appear on open squares! Move a howitzer into the city.
Any partisans next to the city should by attacked by a howitzer from withing the city. Send the mech. inf. into the city to defend it. I have one warning for this attack- they will probably retaliate with nuclear missiles. Build SDI Defenses in all the close cities and the large important cities.
As soon as a city is taken you should build city walls. In special cases, SDI defenses or coastal fortresses could be needed. Then build defense units. For more great attack strategies, see taking over the world.
Government - I only use four governments when I play: Despotism, Monarchy, Fundamentalism, and Republic. I use despotism because you start with it. After you build the wonders above your goal should be to discover monarchy.
Monarchy is better than despotism and you can get it quickly. The next government to research is fundamentalism. There are no unhappy people, virtually free unit support, and those old temples and cathedrals are giving you money. The only downfall is the technology drop.
I just put science at 70 or 80% and change the old entertainers into scientists. With the money from temples, you can put science rate up to 80%. Occasionally, I change to republic. I put my luxury rate up to 50 or 60%.
Then I go through my cities and try to put all the cities into "I love the king day" while keeping a food surplus in them. In republic, if a city is in "I love the king day" and has a food surplus, it gains a person every turn.
After a few years of extreme population increase. I change back to fundamentalism.
Wonders - There are 28 wonders in this game. The best ones and their technologies are listed here: Pyramids & Masonry, Leonardo's Workshop & Invention, Darwin's Voyage & Railroad,
Adam Smith's Trading Company & Economics, United Nations & Communism, SETI Program & Computers, and Apollo Program & Space Flight. I explained the first two of these wonders earlier.
Darwin's Voyage gives you free technologies, which makes it a great one to build. The trading company saves you hundreds of gold per turn and is worth buying if someone else is about to finish it before you.
The United Nations is great to have. You can keep peace easily. If someone is about to attack you, you can talk to them and that will remind them about the "accursed United Nations wrapped around your little finger".
If you are losing a war, you can try to talk with the enemy and they will be forced to offer peace. Then you can change to it or any government.
The SETI Program effectively increases your science output by 50%. The Apollo Program allows you to start building your spaceship. The wonders that increase you happiness and science output more are also pretty good and so is the Hoover Dam,
but I don't think they're worth buying to prevent others from getting them. The seven above are almost vital to successful victory. Another great wonder is the Eiffel Tower. This is especially good in the harder difficulty levels, because it increases others attitude towards you.
When you are about two technologies from being able to build the wonder. Start on another wonder. When you can build the one you want, switch to it. Now you have already gained a few turns on your wonder.
Another great way to help your wonders is to build caravans and frieghts in other cities. You can send them to the city building the wonder and they will help build it. In this way, you are using multiple cities' production power to produce your wonder.
Technologies - Some of the most imporant technologies to aim for are the ones for the wonders above and the ones in the following list: Currency, Philosphy, Sanitation, Explosives, Economics, Refrigeration, Espionage, Minitiarization, Computers, Mobile Warfare, Space Flight, Superconductor, and Stealth.
These are important because of the units, wonders, and improvements they allow. Philosphy has special importance because the first one to get it gains a free technology.
Expansion - You should continue to build settlers and engineers and colonize until your continent is full of cities. Then you can send some over sees and concentrate on your land some more.
I suggest building one settler to improve land and then a second to go colonize. After every two units or improvements, you should build a new settler in your city.
Land Maintanance - When improving land, you should first mine hills, then irrigate some land and then connect the cities with roads. Later you will want to irrigate and farm your cities and change the roads to rails.
Wait until your continent is full and every city has farmed land, mined hills, and is connected to a rail system. Then you can go to your cities and fill every square with railroads. Then transform everything but hills, trees, and resources into grassland.
Population - You want to have a high population to increase production, science, and taxes. You can increase your population by using the republic trick I told earlier and some other things.
Farmed land and a supermarket helps your population too, especially with land transformed to grassland. Also, start building aqueducts when your cities reach size six and build sewer systems when your cities reach size ten.
If you are using the republic with the population rising speedily, you should build those at size five and nine instead of six and ten, respectively. You should also try to keep at least a two food surplus in your cities and have granaries or the pyramids.
Trade - Trade is very important and so is your tax rate. When you discover trade, you should probably build caravans in most of your cities. It is better to send them to another civilization or at least to another continent. It's even better if you do both.
Roads and railroads help your trade level and should eventually cover every city radii. You can also build superhighways to improve your trade. Another thing to do is when a city has a food surplus of five or more, change a farmer into a taxman, scientist, or entertainer.
This is especially important in the republic, because if half the people of the city are happy then you gain a population point every turn. In fundamentalism, you don't need entertainers, but you should still have scientists to improve the poor science rate.
In some times, taxmen are more important than the others. Also remember that in republic and democracy, squares with trade get double the trade the would get.
Espionage - Espionage is very important. It is a technology that you will want to have. Spies can plant nuclear devices, steal technology, and revolt cities. If someone creates a city inside my empire, I always subvert it to my side. I don't want any other cities in my empire.
They are also great when at war to revolt cities, especially with the money you get in fundamentalism from tithes. Spies are also helpful when moving troops through enemy territory. Zones of Control make moving your troops hard, but with enough spies, engineers, or freights it is easy.
They ignore zones of control. You can move them to a space that normal troops can't goto. Then the troop can move there because you already occupy the space.
Goody Boxes - The goody boxes are the little huts all over the map. They can give you barbarians, a unit, money, technology, a city, or settlers. You can take full advantage of them by exploring early in the game to reach as many as you can.
Before you look in one, save your game. That way, you can look in it a few times until you get something good. A good way to expand and become technologically advanced is to continue getting "scrolls of ancient wisdom" and "wandering nomads." The nomads help you expand rapidly.
Strategy - You want to build an empire. Then you want to expand it, and get rich. You want to increase your population and build lots of city improvements. Get good technologies and eventually build the spaceship. I suggest trying to avoid wars, because they are very long and expensive.
Keeping peace and only occasionally having some small battles to take cities and end the war. I would suggest getting a strong ally also. You just want to be ready to build the Apollo Program in the mid 1900s and then have enough production to build a spaceship.
You also have to defend your empire and be ready to take out anyone's capitol if their ship building is ahead of yours.
Winning - The end of the game is pretty hard. You have two choices. You can take over the world or you can build a spaceship. If you have a good number of cities and can build howitzers or steal robotics from someone to build them, then taking over the world is a good idea. If you have lots of shields, then you can easily build a large spaceship to win.
The Spaceship - You should lower your science rate all the way after you have everything you need for a space ship and stealth. You can put all your luxuries into taxes. Then you will have enough money to buy most of your space ship. Assuming you can build the Apollo Program by the 1980s, then you must build the spaceship and defend your capitol.
You can take your time and build the largest spaceship possible because it isn't too hard to kill the enemy's capitol with spies and nuclear devices.
That means putting lots of mechanical infantry, figthers, spies, and SDI defense in your capitol. You also must be prepared if another civilization has a spaceship which is to land before yours. I suggest sending over some spies and troops. Make sure you have enough troops to take out 4 or 5 cities because the government could escape multiple times.
Create a nuclear blast in the capitol with the spy and then move in some of the troops. If the government escapes do this to each capitol until they don't escape. You just destroyed their space ship and now you don't care about what happens to the city, although I suggest defending it.
Be careful to make sure all your cities have SDI defense before your attack because the enemy will probably counter with nuclear weapons. If you have United Nations, you might be able to create peace right after taking the capitol. Another thing to do in the endgame is build plenty of defense.
When the other civilizations realize that your space ship will land first, you must be prepared to defend your empire. Make sure you have plenty of spies, fighters, mechanical infantry, and SDI Defense.
You also need armor, bombers, howitzers, and battleships to counter-attack the enemies.
Taking over the World - The first things you need to take over the world is robotics(howitzer), battleships, spies, the Manhattan Project, and the United Nations.
The UN will allow you to take a no-risk attack. You will want to take on the medium strength civilizations before going after the few superpowers you are sure to have.
First, take any cities they have that aren't on their home continent using spies to create revolts in their cities. The money can be provided from fundamentalism.
You can cut the science rate and raise the taxes because you can steal whatever more technology you need.
If they are in democracy, this won't be possible. In this case, attack them with battleships and howitzers(below). After you take a city or two, they will change governments because it is very hard to wage war with democracy.
Then you can continue to revolt their cities.
After their faraway cities are gone, revolt a city on their home continent. Send a lot of troops over to this city on transports, including spies and howitzers.
Put a battleship and a transport full of howitzers and armors outside each of their coastal cities. When you have prepared, attack the coastal cities with the battleships. Two battleships can destroy all of a city's defenses if it doesn't have a coastal fortress.
Then land the howitzers and take the coastal cities. Use your spies to investigate their cities.
Use any extra howitzers you have and the ones from your city to attack the weakest defended cities. Then move some spies up next to one of their stronger cities. Save your game.
Then use the spy to plant a nuclear device. If it fails, reload the game and try again until it works. Do this to many cities. Move troops into these cities.
After every city you take, they will want to talk to you. After you've taken all you think you can, agree to this talk. They will be forced to offer you a peace treaty, which you should accept.
You just took probably at least 10 of their cities, and now they can't counterattack because of the peace treaty. Bring your howitzers to a city with barracks.
Keep them there one turn so they are refilled with hitpoints. Then break the treaty and attack them again. After taking out the medium powers, use the same strategy to take out the superpowers.
When you are about to take them over, build the Apollo Program. The Apollo Program allows you to see the whole map, so you can find any cities that you haven't discovered yet.
This is a very good way to win the game. I was able to take out 46 cities from 6 different civilizations in 45 years on Deity level so it works well. One civilization had 23 cities, which was 10 more than I had when I started this attack.
Good Luck
