In
Civ I and II, my favourite strategy was not to build anything in the
cities until I had build the
Adam Smith wonder. That way, 1) I could plow ever
penny into research, with no
building maintenance to pay and 2) my cities would always top out at 8
population and I wouldn't have to worry about keeping them
happy. Once I built Adam Smith's
stock exchange (or whatever it was), I'd build all the buildings that cost $1 to
maintain (and therefore made
free by the Adam Smith wonder). Eventually those cities would top out at like 12 or something, and I'd start wasting some
serious money to
expand them further. However, by that time, I'd have such a
nice economy that it really wasn't such a big deal to drop
cathedrals and
stadiums in every city (besides, things like
Women's Sufferage and
Cure for Cancer sure help a lot). This strategy does not seem to work in
Civilizaton CTP. I don't remember what the deal is with
Test of Time.
As soon as I had
railroads, I'd pave every inch of inhabited land with them.
One final
dirty trick: when you have every city of note building
caravans to pump
shields into the wonder you're building, sometimes you'll end up with extra caravans and no more wonders to build. No prob. Stack them up outside your most
productive city and put them to
sleep. Nothing quite so much fun as finishing a wonder in one turn on caravans alone.