What are your strategies for huge games?

[sampsa]

Why k-mod? It's almost a different game.

 

[Lennier]

I usually play huge/marathon/emperor/low sea levels/12 civs (one more than default). Majority of the time I'll play hemispheres or continents.

I find early rushes rarely profitable. Keeping the capitol of another Civ in an early rush usually crashes my economy unless it spawned unusually close to my start point (~ third ring of cities). So my plan is usually to settle/take barb cities until boxed in by the other civs (usually 10-15 cities). Then I start planning to conquer. I generally like to have currency and construction before launching my first invasion.

Wonders are harder to get in huge maps. You have more competition to build them if you try to build them yourself. And if you take the "let the AI build wonders and take them" approach, you may find them built so far away that you'll be on the verge of victory by the time you capture them.

 

[gaash2]

I usually play huge/marathon/emperor/low sea levels/12 civs (one more than default). Majority of the time I'll play hemispheres or continents.

I find early rushes rarely profitable. Keeping the capitol of another Civ in an early rush usually crashes my economy unless it spawned unusually close to my start point (~ third ring of cities). So my plan is usually to settle/take barb cities until boxed in by the other civs (usually 10-15 cities). Then I start planning to conquer. I generally like to have currency and construction before launching my first invasion.

Wonders are harder to get in huge maps. You have more competition to build them if you try to build them yourself. And if you take the "let the AI build wonders and take them" approach, you may find them built so far away that you'll be on the verge of victory by the time you capture them.

Well none of what you say precludes early a large BC (even 500 BC) war. I should clarify I don't launch troops to go far away from my core to attack. I'll note that I've found on continents (default sea level) getting to 15 cities unless many are low quality before being boxed in or DOW'ed is very difficult. In general, rapid expansion without building up a military leads to DOW more often that many seem to account for.. or, my diplomacy skills just really suck.