[douche]

In my experience, war is rarely worth pursuing in Civilization. Relentless, manifest-destiny expansion via settlers is the way to go. They've tried to build in some penalties for this kind of expansion in recent titles, but I've still found it the best strategy. I think in either 3 or 4, you could produce so much culture/influence that you could simply take over land and assimilate cities from other civs peacefully.

I do always play marathon games on huge maps, though.