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I hope this helps; i have a bit of experience in this area.
think of electricity as a river. Voltage is the speed of the river and amperage is the width of the river. Any thickness wire can carry any voltage rating, but only a vertain amount of amps. A very thin wire can only handle a very small amperage where a large wire can handle a lot more. Pretty simple, right?
Now, your alternator is like that device you probably saw in science class that when you put your hand on it your hair sticks up. The device has a peice of rubber spinning and some copper brushes that "take voltage from it" (it is more technical then that but this description will do for this post); the faster it spins the more voltage it produces. Your alternator works in very much the same way except it is designed to create a lot of amperage while leaveing the voltage at a fairly constant 13.8 volts.
This amperage is then distributed to every peice of electronics in your car plus your battery.
When your stereo is turned up it needs more of those amps to fill its need. When you run out of sufficient amperage the most noticible thing is lights dimming but actually everything 'dims' a little, even the sparks sent to the spark plugs is weaker.
I don't know honda car specifics very well but because a civic is an economy car I am guessing the alternators are not very strong. And PIAA lights definetly exceed your cars expected wattage level for headlights (Watts = Volts * Amps) so they are taking more then their share of amperage from your alternator.
A thicker wire would only help if your current wires were burning up or melting. And (as someone else said above) a bigger belt would do nothing.
If you take your alternator off of the car you can open it up and change the copper brushes. This will yeild a signifigant difference. Or if you don't feel comfortable taking it apart, some auto places could probably do it for you for a small fee. Either way it is going to be much cheaper then a new alternator.
Hope this helps a bit more. Feel free to ask about anything that confuses you. Good luck.
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