Improving connection?

I've searched and couldn't find anything so figured i'd post. I'm having a major problem with other players being able to take 5 or 6 actions before I can even take my first action (which is a huge problem when warring). I assume the best way to fix this is to improve my connection? If there's anything else I should do, please let me know also.

Can anyone suggest a list of steps to take to improve my connection? I'm already using hardwired ethernet and have a very fast/powerful computer.

Are you playing with people that live near you? If you are in Australia playing with all people from the USA that could be a pretty big lag problem for you.

Do you have any open programs or apps that are downloading in the background? Closing downloads or uploads make better connection speeds.

Change ISP?

Quite often you can get a lot os slowdown from the claimed speed if other users locally are taking up bandwidth.

If you have an ADSL connection, set the connection type to fast path, it will shave about 30ms on your ping (typical ping with interleaving = 50-60ms, with fastpath 20-30ms)