Hmm...this is very true. I guess if the enemy was pretty close to you then that would be okay, but longer distances would require something more. I'm not professing to be an expert tactician here, mayhap a switch to communism for warring would be okay? Good unit support for metropolises, and equal corruption in all may result in a decent production for far-out cities. After this you may be able to implement the strategy i was waffling on about in me last post. However, i realise that there would have to be a huge amount of samurai produced to implement this, after which the AI civ may have developed gunpowder or something, negating the attacking advantage of the samurai. Erm, i'm running out of ideas here, sorry. Perhaps you could just expand as much as possible, then settle down for some serious tech researching until you get a decisive lead in military techs, maybe up to replaceable parts or something, then railroad to the enemy borders, build a few small cities and airlift troops in quickly.