I am playing as Russia. quite decent so far, but I think their bonus might not be much good, if I didn't set the map to have tons of resources. And even then, probably it isn't worth much.
I am playing on the second lowest difficulty and so far, it is easier than civ 4. At least, on my continent.
I settled in the north, building slowly and quietly. Then japan start plotting against Iroquois. At the beginning I accepted secret pacts just to improve relations with him ( actually, I accepted them from both parties, just to stop them from annoying me). I finally decide to militarize heavily and please the Japanese who were asking me to attack the Iroquois , since military advisor basically said that they had no army. After I turn both the 2 enemy cities in a puppet state, japan gets angry at me. So , since I have my army ready, I attack him too. Both of them had a couple of units, warriors mainly, while I had spearmen, cavalry and archers.
Now I am alone in my continent, with 4 city states. What do I do with all that land? I don't want to deal with lower happiness and higher cultural costs from having more cities. Should I attack the city states? they are much more well defended than the enemy players. Is it worth the trouble to attack them?
maybe I should have picked an higher difficulty even if it is my first game in civ 5.