Gods and Kings breaking the game?

[Sentry The Defiant]

In Vanilla Civ 5 no matter who I played I had no problem creating a balanced economy/science research, even with all the cities connected costing huge amounts of gold due to roads.

Since I've got G&K, I can't do anything at the start. Whenever I start, I quickly run into happiness and gold problems and usually I start losing gold every turn by the time I attempt to get a 2nd or 3rd city and start building roads to them, and at the very start I've seen the scoreboard pop up saying that Undiscovered Civs have 5-6 techs while I'm still researching my 3rd.

When I played on the current difficulty settings(Prince) in the Vanilla game I had no problem with making my Civ the top 3, now I'm always circling the drain and just attempting to stay afloat by not losing money or have my citizens going unhappy.

Does G&K change other Civ AI? Or make them get unfair advantages earlier or at lower difficulties? I'

[Twelvefield]

G&K does make some AI and diplomacy changes, as well as game rule changes. You have to adapt your strategy a fair amount. Use religion and culture to augment happiness and/or gold, and pick Civs that enhance those issues as well. Be careful building roads, as too many will choke your economy.

Other than that, you could try an easier difficulty until you get the hang of the new system.

[Cato]

At Prince difficulty the AI does not get any advantages. G&K simply tweaks the Economy & Tech tree - you must learn to balance your unit and building expenditure a little better whilst balancing your growth happiness. As Twelvefield advised use religion and culture to stabilise your kingdom.

Also try focusing on building a steady economy and building friendships early game whilst you learn. If you rush military development you may either bankrupt yourself or nerf your scientific prowess. :-P

[Sentry The Defiant]

Thanks for the reply, I'm having a terrible time attempting to adapt. I can hardly see how to offset some of these difficulties I'm having. 300 faith is hard to get early on and I start getting passed by the AI as soon as 50 turns and I'm not attempting to build a military to start con questing early on, I mean building one or two archers or warriors for barbarian defense sending me into a deficit.

[Matthew]

The AI has been enhanced overall and many players claim they have had to drop a difficulty level from their former comfort level. i.e., emperor players now play at king, prince now at warlord, etc.

As for happiness and gold, once you understand the new systems it is significantly easier to get both. Look out for mercantile city-state quests, which can boost you to allied status giving you potentially 11 happiness.

Pick up gold bonuses on religion, like tithe, and it really helps gold per turn with the potential of 60+ gold per turn from religion alone. Religion also has potential for massive happiness boosts.

Most capitals start with a second copy of a luxury resource. Get in the habit of trading it off for 20 gold and 7 gold per turn, or some other combination. It should be enough to hold you over until you start getting markets and such up and running.

You may also consider getting in the habit of prioritizing either Stonehenge or Hagia Sophia. Either should help you stay competitive with religion. Also note that you don't even need a pantheon formed to start a religion with the free Great Prophet from Hagia Sophia, so you can technically ignore shrines/temples until much later and still get a religion.

Also look out for natural wonders that give faith. They are random, but dedicating a worker to a faith natural wonder for a while really helps boost faith generation.

Actually, it is a poor strategy to rely upon shrines/temples for faith and if you cannot supplement them with world wonders, natural wonders, Civ-specific traits, or religious city-states, it is better to ignore religion. Still build shrines/temples later on for the faith generation for great people, but no need to prioritize them.

A lot of random tips off the top of my head, but perhaps some of these will help

[Synavix]

For me, I've been running with at least 2 straight happiness perks from religion and (if needed early on) setting a couple of my non-capital cities from default focus to +gold focus, and that's served me extremely well. Late game when you're rolling through and capture a lot of cities, the small amount of +gold from religion doesn't help as much as the HUGE pool of happiness you can get from each city if played correctly. I was having difficulty at first, but after messing around with happiness based religions I've been able to conquer to my hearts content without ever falling into a happiness deficit for more than a couple turns (and only then if I get too greedy early on).

Depending on how lucky I get early on, I actually try to rush a pantheon to get them while they're cheap and attempt to get my religion enhanced first when planning a large empire. If you have a lot of cities around your capital and can get the it spreading early, it's very difficlt to stop, and you can passively "infiltrate" enemy cities that border you quite easily.

I've also been messing around with rushing the patronage tree. I used to dislike it (and more often than not I would simply wipe out city states to prevent another civ from a diplomatic victory), but if you can finish the tree first you're pretty much set for the rest of the game on allies. A single 1000g gift (plus any random quests you complete) will hold all but one or two states for quite a while, and the bonuses are VERY much worth it. Only time I would probably not go this route is if I was going for a quick military conquest and planned to just roll over everything, then I'd probably go for Honor.