as many updates as you can muster please
here's a couple tips to get started on:
it's important to get a couple cities sort of quickly, but each city you add decreases your empire's happiness. too much unhappiness and your productivity drops, too much more and rebels start spawning in your territory. so it's useful to figure out what resources will add happiness to your empire, and have your workers develop that (once you have the required technology). a lot of times if you have workers automated they'll do that on their own.
things that boost science (library is the first one you can build) are pretty useful. the easiest way to get a victory when you're new to the game is getting a huge tech advantage, then rolling over everyone's musketmen with your army of tanks. that shouldn't be tough to do on chieftain.
once you get more than one city make sure to connect it to your capital via roads.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npHDxSvwCE0