Usually I like to actually play Civilization rather than a watered down war game, and therefore I often use something very much like
Randomturn's Vassal State Strat. However, this time I tried to just blitz the world in the ancient era, and I had great success.
The key difference lies in the idea that you want most of your cities to be "productive", and since corruption hobbles a large empire, a normal approach is to let excess cities remain under the control of an AI and then subjugate that AI so that you can reap what it is sowing. On the other hand, if all you need is population, you might as well keep all the cities for yourself
. (most of you can see where this is going now...)
There are discussions about this under communism, but there is difficulty there because of the unhappiness caused by forced labor, and the high cost of post-industrial units (causing very large population sacrifices). In the Ancient Age,
on the other hand, the best units can be created for only a single pop point. By the time you've taken your first civ out, you will have at least as many cities as your nearest competitor (even with his amazing growth) and you'll be pumping out 1 swordsman every 5 turns
from every city in your empire regardless of corruption. Even deity AIs can't keep up with that.
Here's the nuts 'n bolts:
1) grow to a few cities with normal methods, while completely ignoring AI expansion. Let them come to you if they want to...
2) Force build a granary as soon as you hit pop 3. This is essential! Forget the first settler, you will make up for it with increased rate of growth in the near future. Now you should be growing at least once every 5 turns.
3) I then force build temples when I hit size 3 again to increase the city radius and let me take in resources more easily, but this is not completely necessary.
4) From then on, rush-build your favorite military unit every time your city hits size 2.
5) Use your army to capture more "recruitment centers".
6) Use the occasional worker to build roads between your cities so your military can get to the front more quickly. Ignore other improvements except to link in resources and irrigate super-food tiles if possible.
7) Demand workers, money, and new tech every few cities from whichever civ you are invading at the time.
The reason for keeping the cities size 1 is that I found the accumulated unhappiness from all this forced labor caused my 1st citizen to be only content, and my 2nd citizen to be unhappy even with 3 luxuries and a temple in the city.
Of course you should still wage war intelligently, using fast units and artillery whenever possible to prevent casualties, but exactly how you go about the conquest isn't the point here. Using this method, your ever-expanding empire is _always_ operating at peak efficiency, no matter how large it gets, because you are depending only on population!
When you are done you should have either captured all the wonders that are useful, or built them with Great Leaders (if you get lucky and get some...), or simply destroyed everyone before any wonders were built. I used this on a standard map (not tiny or small), and it worked flawlessly. My only complaint is that it wasn't terribly fun just moving all those units around sqaushing resistance wherever it was found. If that's your thing, though, or if you just want to try it for a change of pace, then go to it!
