Hey. Looking for tips for PvP. I know that PvP is absolutely not suited for the game whatsoever and there's a lot of luck involved in determining who has the most advantages, but aside from that, I'm wondering if anyone has some wisdom to share.

From my experience people will always invade. So you'd probably have to have a strong military too. Any tips or secrets or things that you took a long time to learn you think I might not know about?

I'm a decent player with decent knowledge so I'm just looking for more kind of unknown or underrated stuff.

How many cities should I make before I start invading? I normally do 3 and sometimes get a couple more down a little later.

Should I take city states? I like keeping them for trading but then other people take them. Is it better to take them myself?

Sometimes people double their military strength multiple times in consecutive turns and I'm not too sure how that's done. (Ik promotions but DOUBLING it is insane).

My tactic has been to have a small amount of units (4-6) with lots of promotions to try and take everything. Is this a good tactic?

What's your build order? I normally go slinger (to boost archery, settler, settler and then another slinger to help with barb camps. I normally play as simón for the extra movement so I don't need scouts.

I don't have DLC. So, just standard game.

Thanks for any and all replies.