Tips before expanding your empire

You just got a settler in your capital and you think its about time for a second city to live on. But, this can lead to some problems, but can have good out comes. Why is it important to not rush as much as possible and expand to your next city?

Tip #1: Your advisor council

The first thing I always do is before training a settler, talk with your advisors first. The only advisor who really talks about expanding is you economic advisor, as she tells you if its best to expand or upgrade and build units in buildings in the cities you already have to work with. It is also best to wait until your city grows to a certain population, as cities with higher populations can produce everything quicker with good production.

Tip #2: Happiness

Happiness is pointed out to be the most important element in your civilization. Happiness effects the following:

• Population growth
  
• Unit combat strength (every point of unhappiness effects this by 2% per point.)
  
• If unhappiness gets out of control (by that i mean very high unhappiness,) you wont be able to build things as fast as you could, or even build more cities until the issue is resolved.
  
  It is also very important to know that if you found a city or trade for a city, it takes away 3-4 of your happiness points. If you have under 3-4 happiness points and you want to start another city, its best to put it near luxury resources or resources that are required for the city to build the buildings that increase your happiness. An example of this is the circus, so its best to settle near elephants and horse resources so that it can be built. If at all possible, its also best to settler near rivers.

Tip #3: Researching later technologies (aka science.)

Like I said earlier, expanding a city can have good and bad out comes. And science happens to be one of the bad ones that I absolutely hate in Civilization V. Every city you find increases the science cost for all technologies that haven't been researached by 2%. It's best to build libraries and all the scientific buildings without losing too much gold per turn due to the building maintenace, otherwise it is a possibility that you can fall behind in a science victory, meaning everybody can be an era ahead of you if this gets out of control.

Tip #4: Culture

This is usually the main problem i have in every game, and so does everybody else: increasing the cost of policies. This usually can be very bad if your trying to expand using the policy trees, such as "Liberty." Because the tree contains tile improvement, culture increase, and even getting settlers trained faster and a free settler outside the capital. Although this negative outcome isnt important for a cultural victory in Brave New World (because you need tourism for cultural victory) policies are still going to be needed as a very helpful tool for the other victories too.

Tip #5: Relations

Civilizations may talk to you if your expanding near their lands. If this does happen, you will be told not to expand near them for a while, and if you continue to expand without their warning, it can grow worse and lead to a bad relation.

Ending

That is it for now. This guide will be updated if you people share your tips in the comments or if I come up with more helpful tips. If you notice any errors in the guide, i will fix them if i get a chance. I also take most requests for guides, so suggest the next guide you want me to do in the comments!

[DJ Spicy Deluxe]

"Civilizations may talk to you if your expanding near their lands. If this does happen, you will be told not to expand near them for a while, and if you continue to expand without their warning, it can grow worse and lead to a bad relation." they will almost always declare war on you when they tell you that your new cities are too close. around 8/10 times they attack

[MagicMalex]

Ty

[John Dee]

thank you, but a bit misleading in science you've developped. The solution could be to develop it, but the advisor is always happy and is never advising you other players have started in a new era, and you 're becoming obsolete in the technology field.

[Baseball player]

Very helpful