I've noticed that most of Civ seems to be geared toward more agressive play. When going for a conquest or domination victory it's pretty apparent why thats the case, but it seems that with all the voctory conditions it's enourmously better to be agressive. With space ship you need to have a lot of cities for the commerce and production. With cultural you really have to abandone everything else really early and just focus on building up culture, which always seemed a little artifical for me. With diplomacy you still need a large civ and building strong relations usually means a mutual war. My question is what victory condition and/or leader do you think is best for someone who enjoys building defenses and a few cities more then expansive or agressive play?

The only other victory conditions that would be interesting with a small, defensive empire, would be diplomatic. Just be friends with everybody, don't ever start wars, and beeline for the UN. Either get a religion and work to spread it everywhere, or adopt everyone else's religion. This way you'll make friends and also make sure a lot of your allies also stay friends with each other. You still need a villain, though, not sure how you can work that out. On continents this would be really hard to achieve, as you run the danger of losing the battle to be the first to contact the other continent, and you might also find out that the other continent is all of the "wrong" religion. One possible remedy is to switch to Free Religion, but that's worse than being of the same religion as the others.

But normally a smaller empire would just mean (especially on higher difficulties) that you're behind in techs, so it would make any kind of victory quite difficult. I'd say you have to at least take out a civ and make the most use of an early expansion and then you might be able to stop growing and just concentrate on what you have.

I guess that for starters I'd suggest that playing defensively is generally a weak play-style that will more often lead to defeat than playing aggressively.

I have won games on Monarch where I was never at war, and then there's Kylearan's Nonviolent Gandhi game (http://www.compoundeye.net/civ/nonviolent/index.html) which really was something else.

So - can you win by 'turtling up'? Yes you can.

Is it a 'winning way' to reaching higher levels of the game? Probably not.

My question is what victory condition and/or leader do you think is best for someone who enjoys building defenses and a few cities more then expansive or agressive play?

My picks for the moment;

Up to Prince: Spaceship or Diplomacy with Qin, Elizabeth, or Washington.

Monarchy: Cultural with Asoka, Gandhi, or Saladin.

Emperor: Cultural with Montezuma ... well it's my only win combo to date! ;)

I think Civ 4 makes it eshpeshally hard for defensive players since border wars, which I don't mind fighting, are rare and rarely usefull. Speaking of which does anyone know a way to profit from fighting mostly border wars instead of try to wipe out other civs, pilliageing is one way I can think of.

Fighting border wars? What exactly do you mean by that? If it means only going to war to maybe take a city or two near the border, it's totally not worth it. You'll have a penalty for attacking that civ, which will also reflect on his allies. (which might mean less trade) You'll also pick cities that are only marginally useful. And you might find out that they're unable to work a lot of tiles since the culture most dominant in that area is your rival's culture.

Pillaging doesn't give you enough money to be worth it. The only time where you should consider pillaging is if you can't finish the war and want to slow your opponent's economy, or if you'll raze the city anyway since it isn't useful and only adds to your costs.

Also consider the facts that if you let the AI start the border war, that means he will be the one pillaging your city improvements. And you most certainly don't want to see a village/town pillaged, do you?

See that difficulty in fighting limited wars makes it hard on defensive players since I don't usually want to have to fight a war large enough to eliminate another civ, but I do from time to time want to expand my territory somewhat.

The only time "border wars" are useful is when your playing an OCC (one city challenge). If you just sit in your city you'll see your enemy pillage every improvement you have made ( highly frustrating) In an OCC its best to defend your borders as they are small and attack any city because if you capture it, it will automatically be raised.

In later OCC games it gets ALOT easier if you have alot of :nuke:s for defence.

I think Civ 4 makes it eshpeshally hard for defensive players since border wars, which I don't mind fighting, are rare and rarely usefull. Speaking of which does anyone know a way to profit from fighting mostly border wars instead of try to wipe out other civs, pilliageing is one way I can think of.

Sometimes it can work, current game as Cath, (huge map / fractal / marathon/ monarch), I started on continent with England, Mali and India. Built half a dozen cities then found Mali being very greedy with city placement and boxing me in, so took a few cities (skirmishers are tough with just axes) and then had to stop for financial reasons..

After getting cats, I went on to take Timbuktu and Pyramids there, plus another few cities, and again ran out of steam..3rd war finished them off..

In the meantime, Gandhi started spamming "one archer" cities encroaching on my southern borders, where i couldn't afford to expand to yet. When I could, I destroyed several (the AI builds in stupid places sometimes, 1 tile away from what would be a great longterm site), kept a few, and rebuilt the rest. Again financial reasons made me sign for peace.

Shortly after, England (very boxed in by India) started dropping settlers off by sea in very annoying places (near where I had been fighting India), so more war to destroy those fledgling cities.

Then Gandhi gets a Holy City right on my southern border, so more war to take it, then another war with English upstarts for again trying to settle land this isn't their's:)

Long story short, both India and England are still alive in 1600AD, I've 31 cities (because I fought all those border wars)..winnable by a monkey at this point.

Back to the original point, at no time could I have conquered any of Mali, England, or India in one go, but by squashing any cities built in what would be my land (they are far easier to take /raze when new obviously), it halted their progress in every possible way, while unimpeding mine not at all. And yes, the remaining 2 civs on my continent absolutely detest me, but who cares, I just trade with a few of the 8 on the other continent.

So I would say that if you want a truly monumental chunk of land, you must fight many border wars, often and early on...

Another strategy that may work for the style of gameplay you're after is Catherine Cottage Spam (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147012), though it would work for any Creative leader, and potentially for any leader.

I've tried it in a couple of games and have not quite pulled it off perfectly, but I've been able to claim a lot of territory with minimal warring until I have Cossacks. Last time I played as Cathy, I founded six cities before I ran out of room, then added three more. I took one city from the barbs, another from the Americans that was just too close for comfort (and had the misfortune to become the Christian holy city), and an Incan city that flipped to me because of cultural pressure from Moscow.

Once I got Cossacks, I started warring, but I could have stayed peaceful with nine cities, I suppose.