I'm not the greatest strategist..

[Blademun]

Ok, here is a shot of it then. This is my current status.

[Blademun]

There was one more advantage to takeing the Arabs/greeks on. It gave me access to my next weak neighbor, germany, that controlled a VERY important chokepoint. Of course I declared war and gained my chokepoint *look at map* and a city on the other continent along the coast ontop of a needed luxury.

I cannot belive how important this city has been. Munich..it lets my navy finnaly pass into that ocean seperateing the continents into 2/3's. It gives me access to all my hated enemys on the 1/3 continent. I may not get the resources and money I could had I took viking-land. I did gain a strategic port of call.

[Mace]

That's a really interesting map, is it computer generated?

Looks like at least large size too, maybe huge.

I have found that if you don't take out a couple of civs fairly early, you could be in for a tough road later.

With that size map though, you're kind of limited. You would have to (early on) decide on some strategic borders and settle on them for a while. That western chokepoint (Munich?) would be one of them; I would have REXed out that far if possible.

In the north, all of that mixmatch between you and the Egyptians I would make all Turk. Sometimes I like buffer states but not later in the game unless Egypt was super powerful.

The comment above about "trimming" the hedge (a/k/a Oscillation War) is a good one. Early and mid game, if you can cut down your powerful opponents and make them weaker then do it, it will save your you-know-what later in the game, especially on higher difficulty levels.

Trim them down, make them vassal states; you don't have to take all of their cities, just enough to make sure they never challenge you for #1 again.

Just some comments from me. Again, that's a really interesting game map!

[Blademun]

Its Large, I decided against Huge since I am not that good a REXer.

Thanks for your advice btw. The very first Civ I knocked down was not by choice. The arabs declare war about the same time I got Iron...

Ha ha.

Anyway, The germans obviously got that chokepoint area first, and held it for a long time.

The nice thing about having everyone furious at you..you can pick and choose wars as you wish..they almost alway have someone within your border (near that point) just demand they remove them. They'll declare war, garanteed, even if I have a army and a half of tanks waiting right on their border.

About the Map..oh Its nice, computer generated too. LoL. Its Pangea, Warm, dry, 5 billion. I was going for a Tatoonie and got me a Green Mile...It makes life hard since you have sooo many borders..but I solved that...

[Mace]

that's a pretty nice Stack of Death ya have there..
heheh

You seem to have trimmed down the Vikings pretty well too, based on your last screenshot. I don't usually go for Pangea maps personally, I guess I did too many of those in Civ or Civ2. I'm about to go play a Byzantine game on 80% water and see who I can fry with my Dromons...l8r