So 5 civs on a Continents map (2 continents seperated with oceans), Roman, Songhai, Iroquois, English, and myself as the Americans (+1 visability range and easier to buy stuff... don't hate). Anyhow I decided to leave barbarians on, and it seems to have affected me more than any of the AIs, severaly cripping my advancement, as I have to keep them at bay, and by the time I start meeting the other civs I'm way behind on my tech research and at a huge disadvantage given that military conquest is practically the only way to win. I actually lacked many resources to train advanced units and for once in my playthroughs I trained a calvary based army as I had no iron, but a crapton of horses, to make more powerful swordsmen.
After finally staking out my territory, a giant freaking cross where the 'arms' curved south, with lots of natural harbors, and mostly having put the barbarians down, I notice England is connected to the same chunk of land I am on to the southwest and set out to build a defensive line to keep them away from my cities and land I have set my eyes on. Turns out they didn't like that one bit and after a few diplomatic skirmishes they declare war. Their riflemen against my knights, I thought I was a goner. Amazingly I had the forsight (I reloaded) to form a defensive pact with the Romans and the Iroquois, the latter of which had practically already destroyed the Romans (2 cities left) and Songhai (1 city left), so that when England did declare war against me, my 2 allies declared war on them in return and I suspect that lessened the blow I was delt.
Using my short time I used my simple army of 5-7 knights, and killed several units and took the city they had put next to my defensive line as their way of being a prick. England was stubborn, and still saw me as weak, however I was finally catching up and only after bringing my budding navy into the fray they wised up and asked for netrual peace, before they were demanding I pay gold and strategic resources, and even on one occasion half of my cities. I used this occasion to build my own version of the Maginot Line, right along the area where our boarders met, I constructed forts and planted my own Riflemen in them, forever in a defensive stance so that no enemy could break them, and sitting behind that were cannons, and later AA guns, each unit was upgraded as soon as new technology was researched to insure England would never cause me harm. England has and probably never will get over this first encounter, and eventually it would lead up to our next conflict.
Around this time the Romans, who I wanted to save yet was not able to match the Iroquois army, was defeated. I was promptly offered the chance to assisted them in defeating Songhai, and saw no issues with it since we were never really on terms. I send a small fleet to assist, a carrier with some bombers and 3 destroyers, decimating the city for Iroquois to take in a single turn. This act made England even more upset with me, while solidifying my alliance with the Iroquois. Then a waiting game happens, everyone researches technology, expands their territory, and expands their armies. England starts to build up forces along my defense line, and also starts showing signs of a small navy in an area that I don't have many ships. I decide to be silly and see how far my friendship will go, I ask if they would be willing to assist me in a war with England. Much to my shock, they agreeded with both of us immedietly declaring war, and thus the Second Continental War began.
I didn't even have my army in position, so the first thing that happened was England smashed against my Maginot Line and they were destroyed, I also noted they had moved their atomic bombers, I had been eyeballing for awhile, into a city near my defensive line, I struck first with my own atomic bomb to save my troops and dealt a severe blow. After my 2 navies, one for each side, got into the conflict I launched a counter-attack and took a few cities by land with tanks and sea with my Marine forces, land units with an upgrade negating the penalty from when they attack from the ocean. England offered a peace treaty and I accepted, but the Iroquois did not. However 99% of their military might is land based, and for whatever reason they dare not cross over the channel and attack. So a slight peace envelops the continent between us, heck England even eases on hostilies a little bit and another era of peace and prosperity occurs, for me at least.
After both of us build up our forces and tensions start pick up again, I decide it's time to deal with England once and for all, as it's the only way to win now and having full control of the channel would help immensly when the time comes to fight with Iroquois since they have no navy to speak of. Once I have my forces in position, I declare war and slowly overwhelm England. While they now no longer posses nuclear weapons, having used some to build neclear power plants and being cut off to their main urainum source during the Second Continental War, they had amassed a sizable land army that could easily push me back if moved against me as a whole. So this is where I am at, England still has a good fighting chance of stopping me, however it's mostly because alot of their units are out of range of my powerful navy. I'm not entirely sure what I should do short of making a fleet of atomic bombers and laying waste to their territory. Unlike a nuclear missile, the bomber won't wipe a city out, but it only does roughly half damage unlike the missile completely destroying a unit...