Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
My I ask the logic of your city placement? Lots of really dense city clusters, and lots of large uninhabited areas?
Yes, for max score. You can only claim so many tiles before triggering domination (which I don't want until 2050 A.D.), so I selected the best terrain (grassland) because it offers the most food (max population) and avoided desert, plains, etc, although I did have to claim some plains because there isn't enough grassland.
I built densely because this offers the fastest growth (when you get over size 12 you now need 60 food in order to grow than 40 or 20 food with smaller cities). Plus it doesn't take much at all for every single citizen to be happy (8 luxuries with a marketplace is all you need, no temples or cathedrals are needed). So in other words, a dense build will get you at max population/happiness alot faster to maximize score.
Perhaps the AI has a 'foolishly aggresive' attribute and it is set for Bismark.
Yep. Bismark waged war on me 3 times in the milking stage of this game. The forth and last time he made a demand from me was at 2047 A.D. when he demanded oil. I just gave it to him because I hadn't bought the techs from him yet, and with a pop 1 city on all desert he wasn't going to build a panzer in 3 turns!