There is a comment somewhere on the EB website: the AI has money, you have brains. If the AI is allowed to run armies three times the size their population allows, and magic fresh population out of nowhere, I'm allowed to fight river battles.
Blitzing: I blitz because it makes sense, because only a fool doesn't, because RTW and EBBS fundamentally encourage it. When your enemy gets free money and free population for every turn they exist, so anything you kill is replaced, it makes sense to finish them ASAP. The longer they live, the more free stuff they get. When they hardly develop their cities at all, just recruit, it makes sense to get any cities you will eventually be conquering into your domain ASAP. Then you can make with the sewers and markets they should be building. And EB's anti-blitz measures (making it difficult with build times etc) are missing the point: they don't affect the motivation to blitz, they encourage rational players to get really good at it so they can do it despite the hindrances.
Forced diplomacy: Sometimes I do the AI a favour that it won't do for itself, e.g. give them back their city which just rebelled to me in return for a ceasefire. This is rare.
Fog of war: I prefer not to remove it, it's such a huge advantage that any reasons for doing so feel like excuses.
One big advantage that I do feel a bit guilty about is having prior knowledge from previous campaigns. I know who's dangerous, who'll get dangerous after the reforms, where to send the spy to "discover" things, and so on. It's quite hard to get around this.
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