Knight-Dragon: "You just need to learn how to place your cities better."
I know how to place cities VERY well (in CivII anyway--the specials pattern is pretty simple). If there's ONE thing I'm any good at, it is that....
"Plus there's the second capital. Just no more productive global empires (which I wasn't fond of anyway)."
I've read in the new CivIII forums about the corruption problem, that plagues even democracies, even with the Forbidden Palace, once they get to even controlling half the area one normally goes for in CivII. Is this exaggerated? I mean, they were talking ALL BUT ONE SHIELD/ARROW type of corruption under DEMOCRACY (I take it democracies are no longer immune to corruption)! That's very obviously a bug....
Plus "global empires" is the way I play on higher levels--that seems to be the only way to beat the AI at a space race (if they have all the techs), who can somehow miraculously build one spaceship part (even modules) per city per turn, in 10-20 shield cities even, without spending any gold (and I know they aren't accumulating freights to build them with either). I spy on them, and believe me, they cheat.... So the player must have a huge enough empire to match the level of space production of even a ten-city AI.... This is on king level and higher of course, when I played prince I could win with a nice compact empire....
Besides though, expansion and conquest are FUN, especially in late game....
(BTW, another reason I haven't got CivIII yet is that I hear there is no real scenario editor yet. I seem to recall a better scenario editor than CivII MGE's was promised for CivIII--must be for a later version though.... Of course lack of a scenario editor wouldn't affect the play of this "democracy game", but I want one for other things I may do.)