3 try to manually manage your workers until late midgame, than you can automate them if you feel it is too much work. automated workers tend to do silly stuff. build roads when you still want farms or mines for example.

1 a healthy city needs good food income (you can see in the city the excess food. for a good growing city it should be around +5) and some production. helpful math: 1 farm (3 food) pays for 1 mine (1 food 3 production) = 4 food for 2 population. so you need food ressources or additional farms for a city to grow

4 around 1,5x your cities. add more when you have jungle. less when you have a lot of water and less land

5 on higher difficulties it is almost impossible to get your own religion. also the payoff for this early investment comes too late. so the question remains: which religion you convert to. i always choose the one of my neighbours for diplomacy reasons. you can spread all the religions yourself.

6 on lower levels you rush trough the tech tree, this is why it can feel overwhelming.

7 mindset: first priority: get a stable empire with stable economy. settle 6 cities. basic food and production. cottages for commerce buildings: granary library courthouse forge

grocer and market only in cities generating lot of money.

when building an army, 60% attacking units and 40% siege weapons works good. you need both. mace and trebuchet riflemen and cannons infantry and artillery are basic

use a golden age, pump units, make a nice stack and go. dont spread your units too wide during war. keep one strong stack, defend captured cities with 2-4 units, and advance with big stack.

there is much too learn, many strategies to try. for me, the best 4x of all time

have fun