How do they do that?...

[mzprox]

I mean the Ai, and what they do is spanning cities and units well above my capabilities.

I lost my first game on king difficulty after defeating many invasion armies, finally they managed to overrun my empire attacking me in the back.

I noticed that building units in this game is taking too long, yet the Ai has no problem to rebuild her army in no time.

In my current game Russia has like 20 cities, the last 3 She built are on my continent and they almost have no land and no real value.. Yet they have no problem running their empire. I really would like to take a look into their cities somehow.. (hopefully we will get back espionage in an expansion)

In the current game I have 6 cities, I built most of those wonders which help manage happines, I think i have a good lead in research (around 300 rp at the end of the renaisanse era), but I don't really have units.. I always have something better to do . 90% of my military is gift from a city state.

Anyone knows what are the AI bonuses for the difficulty levels?

[ColdPhoenix]

On King level I think the AI civs have a bonus to production and so that'll help them push out more units.

[MxM]

In addition to bonuses, imagine economy from 20 cites. They may run their empire at -50 happiness, but right now there is no penalty to economy, so they have 100+ income and can simply buy units they need.

[mzprox]

Yes, I read about this as a powerful "strategy". You can ignore any happiness, not building buildings, selling all the luxury resources, spanning trade posts everywhere, and using the gold to buy units, science will be high anyway since it mostly depends on population. and after a point it doesn't matter if you have -15 or -150 unhappiness...

[Proteus_MST]

In addition to bonuses, imagine economy from 20 cites. They may run their empire at -50 happiness, but right now there is no penalty to economy, so they have 100+ income and can simply buy units they need.

I have to say that this seems to be incorrect...
while it isn´t documented within the civilopedia or the manual, I have observed a sharp drop in my income as soon as the happiness in my empire drops below 0.
It is usually around 20 and more gold/turn and enough, to give me extreme problems if, for example during/after a war, my population becomes unhappy due to the large number of civs that I conquered.

It happens everytime my happiness drops to < 0, so there must definitely be a connection (making it difficult for me, to get out of this situation)

(and if it weren´t for this economic effect, I wouldn´t care too much about unhapiness as well, but as it is, happiness < 0 almost always leads to a deficit in my economy)

[pdxsean]

I have to say that this seems to be incorrect...
while it isn´t documented within the civilopedia or the manual, I have observed a sharp drop in my income as soon as the happiness in my empire drops below 0.

Interesting. I'm currently involved in a war where I am going through and razing each city as I take it over. So my happiness is fluctuating between +2 and -4 depending on the stage of razing I am in. My income on the other hand has stayed steady the whole time, in the +30-35 range. Now, admittedly, my happiness is positive 7 turns out of 10, it's just those three turns while I'm burning down Asoka's cities that it is negative. Perhaps there's a cumulative effect, or maybe a "Kick in after five turns" toggle somewhere.

I wonder if it also has to do with the time frame? I'm in the late Renaissance and in my experience the economy does a real paradigm shift in the late Industrial age.

[Proteus_MST]

I don´t think that it has something to do with the timeframe...
I fought a war in the early medieval age and I had this effect and I recently fought a war during the late renaissance
and had (well, rather have) this effect as well,
before the war I had a rather stable income of 20-30 gold/turn...
afterwards (with 5 cities conquered and -20 happiness) it were -30
(fortunately this time I kept a monetary buffer of ~2k gold, to prevent an economic collapse...and I also found out that a golden age [caused by me sacrificing a gret general] also gets me out of the deficit, giving me an income of >60 / turn)

Maybe the map size or timeframe has something to do with it...I play huge maps with marathon timeframe (as I already prefered in Civ IV) and my city setup is rather wide spaced (due to the fract that it is a huge continent and there is a certain competition with the AI players concerning access to important resources and due to the fact that the 2 empires against which I waged war hadn´t their cities next to my empire)
At the moment I don´t even know which component of my income drops due to the unhappiness...I suspect it is the trade income...have to check the numbers, next time my happiness goes positive again

[pdxsean]

Those great generals are really nice for golden ages, and what better time for a golden age than an invasion?

I was planning on watching my income as my happiness continues to drop (I've liberated a maritime city state so I'm in a modest pop boom) but I've just built the Taj Mahal so I have an 18 turn golden age to wait through first. Oh, the problems...

How many turns total are the marathon games? 1000? I like the Epic and plan to switch to Marathon in time.

Either way, I'll keep unhappiness in mind when there is economic turmoil. So many things can throw your income into the toilet, I'm finding it's imperative to have a nice reserve before invading. Or, really, before doing anything.

[Proteus_MST]

...

How many turns total are the marathon games? 1000? I like the Epic and plan to switch to Marathon in time.
...

Well, double this number...
it is >= 2000 turns (~1900 turns remaining it says the first time I can remember checking, but I don´t know how far into the game I was at that time...could as well be 2500 turns in total)
with building times of 30-50 turns (for example for a knight) being not unusual
and building times of > 100 for a colosseum (especially in times of happiness < -10 ) are to be expected

[MxM]

before the war I had a rather stable income of 20-30 gold/turn...
afterwards (with 5 cities conquered and -20 happiness) it were -30

This is most probably from paying maintenance in the conquered sites. There is no penalty in gold for being unhappy, as far as I know. You can check your detailed finances by hovering above the total gold on top of the screen, before and after you conquered the cities, and you will see that your income will increase, but expenses for buildings will increase even more if the cities are not good. This is known behavior and I am more or less sure that what you observe.