This time around I've decided to take a new route. Instead of just conquering as many people as I can, I'm going to concentrate more on creating more settlers and settling in as much unclaimed land as I can. I figured that since there's more land separated by sea, making the continents smaller but larger in number, it'd be much more beneficial to go claim far away land as fast as I can. If I do this early enough, I'll be able to claim more land than any of the other civilizations because they're most likely still working on developing and advancing themselves, rather than settling more land. The only drawback to this strategy is that by increasing the amount of land I have in the beginning of the game, not only am I sacrificing my time to make other developments or advancements with my civilization, but I'm also risking possible anarchy with my cities as well as invasion by barbarians. I might not be able to create enough troops to occupy all the cities fast enough if there's any barbarian threat nearby. Furthermore, the cities wouldn't have troops to keep them from getting angry and stopping work. However, land is key in this game and with more of it means more opportunities to find new resources and make healthy happy cities. This is why I think this risk is well worth it.

So, there's a good chance that this strategy could backfire on me and make me totally regret ever doing it. If it doesn't work out for me, there's also a chance that my civilization won't be able to bounce back from it meaning the end of my game. Regardless, I'm going to take the chance because I'm really sick of the strategy of trying to win over as much land as I can from rival nations, which is what I've been doing up to this point. I've only started applying this strategy, however, so it could be a while more until I see the consequences or rewards of it. Hopefully things will work out for me and I won't beneft ever doing this. If not, and things DON'T work out for me, I'll have to start over and think of a new strategy of playing.