Civilization – Can AI win in any way other than dominance

A few options:

1. The most obvious solution is to increase the production of the city. A few ways to do it are:
   • Build a few production-increasing buildings before you build your long building.
   • Purchase production-increasing buildings with gold.
   • Increase the production yield of the city's tiles by improving them with workers, or build factories using great engineers (though great engineers can be used in a different way, see below). Marble is especially useful, as any city which has a worker on improved marble gets a 25% production boost, though only for wonders.
   • Shoot for technologies or social policies that increase production. For example Steam Power increases production from lumber mills, so if you have a lot of those around your city this technology could really give it a boost; Railroad will allow you to connect cities by railroad which increases production; and the Order social policy will increase all production for building by 25%.
   • Redirect the civilian allocation to increase production. You can just use the radio button under the "civilian allocation focus" to let the computer choose the best allocation, or you can do it yourself manually. It means that you should put civilians inside tiles / buildings that have the most impact on production. If you're desperate for production you can de-allocate a citizen altogether: each unemployed citizen produces 1 production per turn.
2. Chop down trees around the city. Chopping down trees gives a small boost towards the currently in-progress building. You can even chop trees in an area outside your territory, it still gives some production (though less, and it gets further decreased with distance) to your closest city.
3. The great engineer can speed up buildings and wonders. When you use his ability it gives a tremendous boost to the current in-progress structure, often making it complete just one turn after you use his ability. Very powerful, don't waste it on anything which isn't worth it. Notice that if you build something ridiculously difficult it will probably not get down to 1 turn.

Note: if it's particularly the courthouse which is giving you trouble, consider getting the Police State social policy, under the Autocracy tree, which makes occupied cities produce only half the unhappiness value.

This page has a number of interesting tidbits that aren't easily discoverable, including the one you mentioned above about Greece. Nothing else about civ leader specific abilities though.

You can skip the intro movie by hitting Escape; however, the game loads data in the background while the movie is playing, and therefore the movie won't actually stop until background loading is complete.

To access predefined maps, such as the Mesopotamia map that was part of some special editions, choose Mods and then Single Player. You can now select among all installed maps by clicking on the map button.

To show the movement range of a selected unit and the path it would take when ordered to move, either press "M" or hold down the right mouse button while moving the mouse cursor over the map.

The maximum radius within which a city can allocate workers is three hexagons in any direction.

Marble speeds production of all wonders by 25% in the city that works the quarry.

Greece has the special ability that moving units through the territory of city states never degrades influence with them.

Railroads not only give the usual gold & movement bonuses for roads, but also +50% production for cities connected to the capital. Harbors act as railroad connections as soon as the technology is available. The exact movement bonuses for roads & railroads are unknown.

Units count towards a supply limit defined by your cities and population, shown on the military overview. The exact effect of reaching that limit is unknown.

Units have a maintenance cost (aka upkeep) in gold which depends on your total number of units, and is summarized in the economic overview. The actual formula for unit maintenance is as yet unknown, and may or may not be related to the unit supply limit.

If you have no gold left and are running a deficit in excess of 5 GP per turn, units will begin to be forcibly disbanded to save on maintenance costs.

Razing a city takes one turn per population point, and begins only after you end your turn. So if you choose to raze a conquered city, you can still enter the city screen and cancel the razing. The city will then be annexed -- you cannot turn it into a puppet state anymore.

Pacts of Cooperation make the AI friendlier and more receptive to other deals. Pacts of Secrecy against another player do the same but with the added condition that neither player must cooperate with the target player.

Being allied with a city state grants you an automatic view of all tiles they can see. There is no other form of map trading; the only way to explore a major civilization's territory is to sign Open Borders and scout it with your units.

The manual once mentions that hotkeys are documented in the readme file, but they are actually listed in the manual itself on page 207. You should still have a look at the readme file ("Read Me .pdf" in your Civ5 installation folder) as it has some other useful information, such as the location of the editable Civ5 initialization file.

Looking for the real-time clock? Remember this is a Steam game -- if you have the misleadingly named "Steam Community In-Game" enabled in your Steam settings, you can simply hit Shift+Tab and get a big fat clock in the top-left corner, along with other Steam UI.