For example, here was my basic story.
Main strategy: Get Chapel, Workshop and Great Wall. Go Fundamentalist, and attack like mad with 2 move/2hp units and lots of wealthy diplomats.
I try to grow rapidly using Wall to defend cities quickly. Build warriors and settlers like mad until Gunpowder - suddenly cities all have musketeers defending them. Then get Democracy and build Statue of Liberty, switch to Fundamentalism - tithes from Chapel! Build Horsemen like mad until chivalry. Right before chivalry, set science down and taxes through the roof and buy horsemen in most cities every other turn (after initial shields put in by city) as much as treasury can withstand. (I got about 75 units this way.) Once chivalry discovered, switch main production to diplomats and make a bee-line to Leadership and all those Horsemen are suddenly deadly dragoons. Magellan's Voyage helped give me speed on the seas to keep my troops moving quickly and relatively safely.
Once I have my (dra)goon squad ready (and waiting across the shore from the english) I start dumping dragoons off the boats and taking cities. Typically I will get a foothold on a continent (either an unguarded fortress or a weak city) then secure a city or fortress within one movement of the capital (up to 3 squares away if roads) with about 10 diplomats and 10 dragoons. I sabotage the capital with dips until the walls come down, and then attack with dragoons until the capital falls. It is important to take the city all on one turn because of barracks, rushbuying, etc. It's taken me as many as 9 dips in another game to crash the walls in a city so I always try to have 9 or 10 available. This is the key: once the capital falls, most of the other cities can be incited for much less money and they are often not as well defended.. Depending on the terrain and level of defender I expect, the dragoons take cities without walls, and dips buy the cities with walls. Inciting cities is nice because you (A) don't need to drain your attack force defending conquered cities (B) keep more improvments and (C) keep higher population for final score - only lose one citizen.
Once a continent is secure, I consolidate my forces, amass the armada again and head to the next target. Because I am fundamentalist, I usually target the most technologically advanced civ (because they will inevitably trade their advanced tech to their less educated, but more militaristic neighbors). They also usually have good economies in their cities which helps fill the coffers for the next round of riots.
Late in the game, I found that shore bombardment is very powerful if you have a naval advantage. A couple veteran ironclads can kill most defenders in a coastal city until coastal fortresses get built. And the population doesn't decrease as defenders are killed. Then you just follow it up with a ship full of ground troops to capture coastal cities. This is how the persians met their end.
I got real lucky in this game because other than the Zulus, none of the other civs really came to bother me until I was ready to blow them away. I was able to bottle the Zulus up eventually and had most of the continent to myself for centuries.
I almost lost the Statue to the Egyptians, but they abandoned it for a while, giving me enough time to get to democracy and build it with caravans. Without it, I probably would have failed because I needed the 10 unsupported units from fundamentalism to do the Horsemen to Dragoons thing.
I didn't develop my trade well at all early on (partly because of terrain, partly bad planning), which almost cost me because I did not have much of a science edge (e.g., almost losing statue)
This strategy seems to be getting less and less effective at the higher levels (this was my first Emperor game). If I miss one of the key wonders (Chapel, Workshop, and Statue) then I will be a sitting duck. It certainly won't give me an early victory because I don't pick too many fights until I get gunpowder, fundamentalism and the Statue which all come later in the game.
Any thoughts, comments, curses?
