A slight problem

[Caesar the Great]

I am a regular diety player but recently I have ran into a problem. Ever since I played an MP game in which I was slaughtered before 0 AD because the other guy had twice as many cities as I did. Generally what I do is expand, then expand, then expand. It works great! For a while. I get monarchy build warrior settler phalanx settler settler settlers you get the idea. I get wonders and temples. But I ran into a problem. I had just left my island which could only support 10 cities and I built "colonies" on surrouding islands. About when I hit 15 cities there was massive unhappiness, of course I had HG, but it was no longer helping and so I could not have the first guy in the city immeidiatly when it was built working for I needed happiness. Does anyone have a solution for this. I tried getting MC but by then I was so far "behind" the AI I couldn't stand to watch them slaughter my vet cavs with their almighty vet musketeers. This slows me a lot because my research rate SLOWS and I can't build more cities to counteract the effect . Can anyone help me?

[Smash]

You can send a unit with the settler to take care of that size 1 unhappy then proceed normally."Old" warriors can be recycled like this instead of disbanded.

[Carolus Rex]

If picking off the worker doesn't starve the city, then why not do it? After a turn or two you can rushbuild a warrior.

Carolus

[johnmcd]

I suffer from this as well. I suppose it is the weak point of the constant production of settlers. I normally just build my way out of it. If you keep going, relentlessly churning out settlers, you get to a point that you have so many cities that the fact most of them use only their home tile doesn't matter anymore. I think (I may have my dates muddled , this was a while ago) that I managed eighty cities, in a perfectionist lay out, by AD once. I tend to miss out the defence layer of construction though, to speed up settler production. I keep all my cities size one through settler production and that way if one is attacked it is wiped, not taken. When you can turn out five or six settlers a turn, every turn that is no great loss. Also, I tend to find that If I plead for my scrawny neck from whomever is threatening me I get away with it, and you can always buy off the barbs.

As I was saying though, you can build your way out of this slough of despond.

[geofelt]

After 15 cities, you have to build temples. Research mysticism to increase their effectiveness. If you can't get mikes, then you may need oracle. It expires early-maybe-, but it will get you over the hump.