[Baalz]

In a game like Dominions, the term "all other things being equal" doesn't have a whole lot of meaning - nothing is ever equal when you're going to have such different capabilities than your adversaries. Gold is not always the limiting factor, you can certainly have a viable strategy other than expand as fast as possible. For instance, focusing on research at the expense of some expansion is often a reasonable strategic choice - or site searching, or dominion push. Sacrificing expansion to not overstretch yourself and thus being able to take advantage when your aggressively expanding neighbor is embroiled on two other war fronts is also a sound choice. Restricting your expansion to make your borders more defensible - perhaps staying in the water if aquatic, perhaps stopping at some good choke points - can be a good choice. It can sometimes be effective to mass an army and wait for your neighbor to clean out some tough indies as you then steamroll over his expansion force and proceed to gobble up his lightly defended provinces. Pros and cons, to be sure, but it most certainly can be a viable strategy to expand a bit slower so long as you're gaining something more valuable than the opportunity cost. Expanding *very* slowly though is going to set you at an insurmountable disadvantage against competitive opponents though - the opportunity cost is too high.