Late Conquest

[DreamSlave2112]

I read alot about expanding early on and that's great, but here is an advantage to waiting until you are in the modern era and even better if your opponents are still around mid-industrial.
Well, I began when I got rails and they were still in Mideval times.
I am currently cleaning up Pangea, having taken out the Greeks, Aztecs, Iroquois, French, Germans, Babylonians, Zulus, (not in that order) and The Russians are near the begging point. England and Rome are next just because they're small. Yeah, I'm a fascist bully.
The beauty of this is that even though they are bigger and stronger, their cities are larger and their radii more improved, sparing you the tediousness of imroving squares.

[vmxa1]

If you are playing levels where you are an age ahead of the AI, move up to the next level.

If you are that far ahead why are you getting to the Modern Age? It should be rare to have games play into the modern age.

At higher levels trying to capture and hold metros is a good way to have them flip back. Better to raze them or capture and sell off structures and then abandon.

[DreamSlave2112]

as for being an age ahead, i did try to move up to the next level and was surpassed far more quickly than I thought, so I thought I'd need some more practice.
plus i like to clobber the competition .

oh, a drawback to waiting till later, they have better weapons. i had to build a navy to blockade their ally, India and keep their ships from reaching my shores, but it IS fun and in the end, that is all that counts.