Looking to play at Emporor Level

[Dinner]

If my neighbors are defending with three units per city then I'm going to be taking some free cities.

[rah]

Yes, please be my neighbor in an MP game. At three a city, that civ will be part of my empire in no time at all.

[Blaupanzer]

AI cities close enough to the border that I can see the garrison that have three unitis literally make me salivate. If I have open borders, I will search his cities for that big "ambush SOD" that he mus have waiting for me to take the bait. If I don't find that I give myself five turns to reorganize my military, then start collecting cities. Some of my interior cities have only 3 (2 defenders, 1 attacker) but I use more units on all borders, at least before the invasion. Trust no one and keep sufficient reserves.

[Ming]

I've been known to under guard a city or two on an opponents border... while keeping a STRONG stack nearby just out of their view in my territory... Just tempting them to invade me. They move their SOD into my territory, I destroy it and quickly attack their civ before they can build a ton more units. Works like a charm against those aggressive civs.

[Blaupanzer]

I use the ambush SOD method too. Works great against the AI. Don't know how useful it would be against humans however. One would think MP players would suspect this behavior. Ming?

[Ming]

While they may suspect it... greed is sometimes an evil thing.
One way to "sell it" in MP is to declare war on the person on the other side of your border, and either through private discussion/agreement with the person that it's not a real war, or by simply defending your borders with that person and not actually moving any units at them. The human player "thinks" that maybe you stretched yourself a little thin in your current non real war, and doesn't realize that you haven't. Obviously, this only work if you have closed borders with the person, so that he can't have scouting units in your territory to verify where your major stacks of units are

[rah]

Yeah, but a spy or two can negate that. Fortunately in MP alpha isn't an early priority to most.