I meant peace, but clicked war

. Oh well.
In my games, I find I almost HAVE to have one small early war to capture 2-3 cities and get my game off to a good strong start.
I prefer to be the tech leader, but that doesn't usually happen until the Industrial Age.
I'd say I average 2 wars before the Industrial Age. One in Ancient, one in Middle Ages. Once I get Tanks, it's a toss-up. I try to be building every Wonder, and getting every tech, but it's hard to keep the AI from getting enough techs to build the spaceship, so I generally have to fight someone, or they'll beat me to the spaceship before I can get everything I want and still win.
Ideally, it would be like Civ I, where I would eliminate every civ except leaving one civ with one tiny isolated city

, then research about 100 future techs, build my spaceship to arrive on the last year, and get my win

. I still haven't figured it out though. It seems like the only way to get a lot of points is to win a really early domination or conquest win.