I have played loads of games on big continents recently

its quite challenging because the AI is much better at launching attacks across land than across sea

I normally find that early expansion means you face powerful rivals on at lesat two fronts (if not three)

sometimes I deal with the weakest rival so that my back is at the coast and all my rivals in are front of me. that means that the interors cities can be lightly defended and the frontier cities all heavily fortified

however the difficultry with that is a war against the weaker rival will mean that you end up with tundra or plains and by the time that war is finished you have a better strategic position but face very advanced adversaries on the other front

the alternative is choose your most powerful neighbour regardless of geography especially if its monte or shaka because arguably removing them from the game is best done quickly if they are close neighbours. that might however leave you with enemies on all sides

finally you might decide that you need a trading partner and ally - that might detemine who can fight and who not. the rival at your rear may be a friend of a friend so you sacrifice geographic positon for diplomatic advantages

any advice on strategy please

I suppose "It depends" is the best answer here: Which tribe are you? Religion? Others' religion? Access to Copper, Iron, Horses? Tech' advantage or disadvantage? etc. etc.

In more general terms, I tend to focus on the weaker tribe first, expand my land and therefore economy (avoiding the early-game commercial 'black hole'), and focus on military technologies in order to cripple the prospective aggressive runaway. It's not the type of situation that I like to find myself in, I admit, and when confronted with a large warmonger, I do what I can to appease them until I've garnered the critical mass to initiate an invasion.

I occasionally strike the problem of being confronted with multiple aggressive leaders on the one continent, and trying to be a dogpiler rather than the dogpilee is in itself quite the predicament!

It can appear like a 'no win' situation - beat up on the little guy (or gal) and your forces are out of position and you're out of gas, yet on the other hand if you attack the monster and you might lose a lot of troops and fail to get ahead because you were undersized to begin with.

As obvious as this sounds, it's avoiding some of the 'newbie' mistakes that can keep you in the game when confronted with backstabbers and warmongers: Specialise your cities with an increased emphasis on production centres so that you ensure that you are churning out sufficient units,
Time your wars so that you have enough units to get the job done without waiting so long that you've missed your opportunity - while keeping sufficient units in your cities and on top of your Iron/Copper to avoid pillaging,
Don't go after Wonders and other optional city builds if you're not well set up for it and have a focus on war,

Prioritise military technologies,

Mix your units so you're not exposed against any one particular unit type (such as Horseback),

Be prepared to stall science for gold for a few turns to upgrade highly promoted troops,
Be more prepared to Draft and/or Whip your cities,

Make diplomacy work for you - religion and civic swaps, gifts, bribes, trades, etc. - all options to be considered.

I'm sure that this list above can be expanded upon, and as before, a lot of this seems obvious, but I kick myself at times for putting Markets or Harbors etc. before units when I should know better by now! ;)

thanks

sound as ever, Cam H

conclusion seems to be - it nice to have nobody at your back, but the price of that may be too high for it to determine your strategy in some games