I'm finding that in almost every game I play one of the A.I players blobs early on. Which pretty much forces your hand to wage war against them before they build up an unassailable tech/fame advantage. Part of the issue appears to be the way the game "seeds" players at the start of the game in the Neoliothic age. I've yet to play a game where there wasn't at least 2 other A.I players on the same starting continent as me, meanwhile the other 2-3 A.I players have two large land masses all to themselves, with no way to peg them back until at least the third era when sailing becomes available and allows travel across deep water. For reference, this is on a "normal" sized map with 6 players. Also, in the Neolithic age the A.I players see through the fog of war and make a bee-line for all the goodie huts etc quickly propelling them to the Ancient era ... makes it near impossible for the human player to grab some of the early civs etc. The partial "fix" to the last problem is to switch your scouts to "auto-explore", that way your units get the benefit of the "all-seeing" A.I.