Any tips for Civ4: Beyond the Sword?

[Crilly]

I've played civ 4 a lot and I recently bought Beyond the Sword. And I'm terrible. Keep getting my ass handed to me on warlord. My closest neighbours with a similiar sized population and city count to my own somehow seem to pump out HUGE amounts of units, about 3 times what I can manage. They then declare war and kill me off reasonably quickly. A few times I've knicked one of their cities thats not too well defended but they soon move their mass army to retake it, only delaying the inevitable.

So any ideas?

 

[nin9abadga]

who are you next door to? some of them like shaka and boudica are reknowned nutbags and will start on anyone and everyone. brief tips:

> don't neglect your military but it's not necessarily the numbers you've got but how advanced they are, check your power rating - if you see it dropping make some troops!
> specialise your cities, commerce to speed your research, production to produce your stuff and gp farms to produce your gp's
> have enough workers

civfanatics is an excellent resource (better than me!) for tips and strategies, i learnt a lot from here, especially the example games.

edit: i play at warlord and noble as i'm not very good and warlord is more forgiving of my mistakes. i tend to find on the higher levels that you need a set strategy early on as to how you want to win, otherwise you're doomed to failure. i tend to either lose interest or forget what i'm doing! if you can get into that mindset at the start then all is good.