This way your happiness is much more manageable. 10 or so, to make sure your Economic and Happiness buildings are in place before growing too big.

Spend some turns at 'Avoid/Prevent Growth' (check box in City Management screen) once your cities get to pop.

Learn about the various City-State offerings and choose your Allies based on your current needs (food bonus at start of game, culture bonus to grow quickly once established, military bonus if you're in a war).

Science can really help you research useful technologies and get ahead a lot faster.

Science - Try to prioritize buildings that give you science.

Don't build every building in every city -be selective, build for specialization (1 city builds military, 1 city generates cash, 1 city generates research, etc.).

When automated, the workers may build too many unneeded things on tiles like farms which results in a higher gold cost every turn.

Automation - It is never a good idea to automate your workers or scouts, the AI is not good a t building or avoiding barbarian encampments, so it is better to manually direct them every turn.

This way you won't accidentally run into barbarians and lose your scout.

Be careful scouting - When scouting and exploring the land, try to move your scout 1 step at a time in areas you think there may be enemies.

Start small (1 or 2 cities until they reach population 5-ish), focus on settling your cities near Resources (Strategic & Luxury),.

Thanks to Rob and our site staff for these tips. Here are some Civilization V Strategy & Tips and Tricks.

France civ 5 strategy