[llamabeast]

Towards the end of one of my early MP games I got the disheartening feeling that everything I was doing was pointless, when people started saying things like "everything you have is useless against Tartarians anyway", "if you haven't been beelining for Construction 8 you've been wasting your time" etc. In my now considerably more experienced opinion, these things simply aren't the case. There are any number of approaches to the whole game and I try something different every time.

Of course, if you actually want to win a large game with a lot of players, you will need some cunning plan to be powerful in the early, mid and late games, and different things will be needed at each stage. (Though if you are playing a smallish game with 8 players or so, the true late game stage will never even be reached.)

Anyway, my advice is: Don't be disheartened. It is absolutely NOT the case that the game boils down to a few minmaxed strategies in competitive multiplayer. That is why this game is so awesome.

Incidentally I don't have a minmaxing mindset at all, and tend to do pretty well in multiplayer. I think quite a bit of that comes from success in diplomacy though.