Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that.
My "favorite" number of cities is about 12, give or take. I prefer to find myself on a medium-sized continent or on a tiny cluster of small continents (in my most enjoyable game ever, I had 12 cites dispersed on four land masses: 4 cities on one, 4 on another, 3 on the third and 1 city on a tiny nearby island).
However, that being said, I also like to play games with VERY few cities. I play on King level only, as I've said, and I've never managed to win with only 3 cities. I USUALLY win with four, and with five or more, it's a done deal. So I too enjoy games where I have six or seven cities. But I think ten or twelve is a bit more exciting.
Also, I sometimes decide to go crazy and build twenty-something cities. This happens when I find myself on a pretty big landmass, and I get rid of my neighbors super-early in the game -- so that I have the time and resources to colonize nearby land masses as well. In these sorts of games, I'll have ten or twelve cities on my main continent, and another ten or twelve scattered around any surrounding islands or small continents.
Finally, I've played on the Earth map, and in one of those games, I decided to eliminate everyone except for one city. I ended up with about 100 cities and a population of almost 300 million (I think -- I'll have to dig around and load that one up). That was insane, though, and "We Love the President Day" is a nightmare...plus, even though I had NO cities polluting, for some reason I began to get pollution out of nowhere. That's when I gave up on that one -- fortunately, I'd pretty much maxed out my population by then, so my original goal was basically satisfied.
In short, I like a good solid 10 or 12 cities, and I go for trade and diplomacy (and a strong defense), not conquest. The Earth map game I just talked about was the only one where I really did take over the world, getting rid of the Americans (I was the Egyptians) just as they were developing Gunpowder and Banks -- while I had tanks and bombers =D
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