I posted a thread here about it several months ago.
As the Byzantines, on a large continent with both the Persians AND the Zulus nearby (plus the Americans to my south for good measure). On the far west of the continent, The Sumerians were building a big empire AND beating me in the tech race, and Gilgamesh was being miserly when it came to the tech trade.
I was stuck next to two aggressive neighbors in the Persians to my northwest and the Zulus to my far north. I couldn't match The Sumerians Scientifically. And I couldn't get "big" because the Americans were snatching up the territory I wanted to expand into. The Ancient era was not fun. So, out of frustration, I picked fights with the Americans and The Persians to take "my" land on the mainland back. The Zulus were starting to expand onto small islands off the coast of our big continent which I had decided were "mine" but my settling parties were too slow in getting there. So I declared war on them too.
Before I realized just how many troops the Zulu had. Fighting these civs 3 on 1 didn't get me anywhere; I'd take a city and then lose it right back. All the while the Sumerians are getting bigger and building wonders (though I did manage to get the Lighthouse, which as a Seafaring Civ I really felt I needed, especially since I was feeling "small" as an empire).
Things started to turn against me, so I took a step back from the game, posted on here, and with a little help from here, I found the answer. I decided to be patient, and take them on one at a time. I made peace with The Americans for the time being, shifted to a Defensive strategy against the Zulu, and concentrated on taking the Persians out (stuck near Zulus and Sumeria, they were even smaller than I was).
And I came up with a real shifty way of doing it, too. I.E. I made temporary peace with them and bribed them into declaring war with me on the Zulus. It was a mostly impotent alliance (I'd RoP backstabbed 'em so I couldn't march through their territory, which I had had to do in the past to get to Zululand), but it served its purpose; i.e. the Zulu archer swarm diverted towards Persepolis.
Oh, and I got the Statue of Zeus built while the Zulus lost over half their swarm on the Persians, who were down to just two small towns.
Come the middle ages, the tide turned. Wasn't up to par with the Sumerians technologically, but suddenly I had AC and Knights, not to mention those lovely Dromons, so I was more than a match for Persia and the suddenly depleted Zulu forces. Back to war. Dromons sink a Zulu ship, triggering probably my best timed Golden Age ever, and with that the Knights start pouring out of every city like the sweat from your skin on a hot day. I organize an Army of Ancient Cav. The Persians are gone; Persepolis and Pasargadae are MINE. The Zulu island colony turns Byzantine red. I cut down their archer stacks in the field and make a beeline for Zimbabwae, the Zulu capital. I crush it and demand a costly peace from the Zulu, demanding about a half dozen cities from them and getting it. Probably my most satisfying victory of this campaign, as I cut the Zulu empire down to 1/3 of what it had been, what little they had left was either surrounded by me or bordering Sumeria; Zululand was basically my puppet state, and I essentially sicced them on Sumeria to do my dirty work of slowing them down while I continued to present a good face to Gilgamesh in the hopes he'd be a little less stingy with the technology [He still refused to share fairly. I would not forget this]; meanwhile knowing that the Zulus were housebroken and I could finish them off whenever I felt like it, i.e. when they'd spent the last remnants of their archer stacks in a war they couldn't win with Sumeria.
With the Persians gone and the Zulus holding on just well enough to keep the Sumerians occupied, I decided to run the Americans off of my continent. I went for the jugular; i.e. Washington. Much like with the Zulus, I ran over the capital with my armies, demanded other cities as a peace concession. However, the Americans were big, and like the Zulus had out island-claimed me [they took a large island, sub-continent size I'd say, to the south of our main landmass, it was about 7 cities big], and as I looked at that large island that I had wanted and they had taken from me, I decided I had changed my mind and declared war on them AGAIN. So by the time I was done, they had their large island colony, and nothing else.
With the Americans driven off the land mass and the Zulu swarm a thing of the past, it was time to send Shaka the way of the dodo. I finally tightened the noose around those Zulu towns encompassed fully by my territory. They're gone. The Persians are gone. The Americans have been forcibly relocated. It's now time to teach Gilgamesh how to share.
Sumeria was huge, and they had a lot of jungle territory on their side of the continent, so it was slow going, especially since my admittely weak artillery corps couldn't keep up with the knights. But gradually, Sumeria fell piece by piece, as I used the vindictive, petty, slimy war strategy I had perfected against America and Zululand; take out the capital (or the nearest large size city) and then demand a concession-heavy peace (with every intention of changing my mind and redeclaring war in a couple turns; Gilgamesh was suddenly much more willing to share technology now, but, with the other civs purged from the continent now I, too, had a large land empire and a research powerhouse too. Exit knights, enter Cavalry. Now, due to the land issues, Sumeria put up more of a fight going down; they had the numbers to take back the small towns they gave up on the negotiating table, but, ah, see, that's part of the plan. They divert forces to take back those small towns (and don't even get all of them back) while my armies hit the big cities hard, which utterly destroys their production capability AS WELL AS puts them in desperate straights so that I can redemand those small towns as terms of peace.
Exit Sumeria. They had a couple of small, isolated, colonial outposts on an island chain that reached from the southwest of our (by which I mean my) continent to the other large continent. Those tiny little hamlets were now all that was left of their once mighty, once stingy, empire.
Why I enjoy this game so much was that I was the one and only Seafaring civ on my continent, and yet, everyone else had out-seafared me; Zulus, Americans, and Sumerians snatched up all the good islands (the French, from the other side of the world, snatched up a one town island fairly close to my starting point too) in addition to grabbing much of the continental land, fencing me in to the southeastern corner of the continent. Basically, I was beaten at my own game and denied my room to leisurely and peacibly expand as I was used to doing. I wanted to be a peacible builder and a scientific leader, but I got outclassed in both fields. So I got jealous, I got mad, and I got even with a mean, massive military campaign. I was going to switch to Republican government, but I told myself (and I imagine Theodora told her people) that "we're going to have to put that off until this war is over." The war (against those four civs) lasted about 1000 years.
And by the time the war was over and the whole continent was mine, I was making so much money per turn in monarchy anyway, I decided to just plain not bother with the whole freedom thing. Oh well.
And it was deeply gratifying to go from the second smallest shrimp on the continet to the bullying superpower. My humiliating reduction of the Americans and Sumerians to their tiny throwaway island holdings felt so good, too. Now I had the power to bully, and I did. I decided to assume control of that tiny French island colony for no reason other than flexing my power and informing Joan of Arc that all the islands of that world belong to ME. The French ended up gratefully accepting peace anyway.
And I settled into the role I had wanted all along: large continental empire, some shiny pretty island colonies, and being the lead horse in the technology race. I never actually finished that game; I can't remember if I wanted to go for space from there or sic my large armies on the Aztecs and Inca and French (I probably did), or even if I "changed my mind" about that American island and removed them from the that island and the game, too. Maybe I'll get back to it sometime. But it's all probably gonna feel like a letdown after fighting my way up from the bottom the way I did.
) moment, but a couple that stick out as particularly sweet:
I had no clue what I was doing, but that was what made it so fun. I was the Americans, on an island with the Aztecs. I fought a long war with them and wiped them out, gaining the whole continent. Persia, meanwhile, took out all of England, Zululand, and Germany!! India stayed content on their 2 big islands. Persia won the game in 2050, but I played on...to 2463 AD. I built 'army bases' across the world, stationed planes there + units, tried a naval invasion against Persia w/ carriers, etc. It was extremely fun. And of course I remember that Precision Strike was bugged (you could only bomb your own cities) since I didn't have the patch, so I'd quell resistors by bombing my cities (needless to say, it didn't work. 
How I love Regent games 
