Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deciphered if you don't feel like doing it and want to read it here: There are 3 basic strategies in the early game: 1. Rapid assault. Wait for a decent-sized army on your capital, then start charging around the map and hope that you are able to capture another player's capital while it's poorly defended. 2. Rapid growth. Focus on capturing territory and neutral cities. Vulnerable to rapid assault, since capturing ci…
There are many problems here. Taking a neutral city costs 40 troops, taking a long time to recuperate. You're better off looking for the enemy and attacking immediately, only taking neutral cities in the late game when it takes 20+ moves to deploy men against the enemy. Attacking the enemy is better than taking neutral territory, n.b. you want to do this towards the end of the turn so your conquered territory will re…
It's better to cover a large swathe of territory. This can hide where your general is, and every 25 turns you can collect armies from the squares. Build up that way and then you wait for someone next to you to get into a fight with someone else, or take a neutral city, and then bomb in on them in force when they can't defend, and take advantage of all of their hard work.
There's also a bit of a "dark forest" aspect to the game, where you can benefit from being hidden for a long time at the beginning of the game, but you have to trade this off with the disadvantage of not being able to build adequate forces in that time.
I'm "bubbles" in the game.