use governors in your cities and level them up as you go. it adds another level of strategy that i like. and maybe more importantly, it seems to really fix some things under the hood with the game as well, and it runs the way that i had expected it would from the start. its not perfect, but its a lot better. really, its basically a really big patch that you have to pay for that makes it a fine game. should have included all of this from the start. if you own the base game, and want to get the most out of it, i really recommend it.
but even 