Ok I've gone for good defensive position for the following reasons

1) I'm not that good a player, dont have enough time to play any of the games due to other commitments, hence I only know basics to get me through, so therefore I want to be in a position whereby I can slowly build my forces, knowing that I will have a fairly solid defence whilst doing so.

2) Good Units. What is meant by good units, those in early or those developed late in the game. If its early then given my nature of play I'm not looking to expand to fast anyways, and hence I can find a reasonable defensive force with most of the standard units. If its in late period, then I have found that nine times out of ten I havent bothered building many of top level units of whatever faction I'm playing, as normally by then, I've virtually won the game (or else drastically lost ) that these units arnt likely to make that much difference, and I build one or two of each just to see what they look like.

3)Trade - from what I've found or can remember, those factions with decent starting trade, either came under attack pretty quickly or else had loads of unrest. Again due to my lack of time/skill, I don't want to be under pressure straight away and always seem to find that this is the case with these type of startup situations. PS I am old and my memory aint what it should be, so please forgive if I have this completely wrong :-)

4) good generals - never noticed that much difference between good and bad, that it affected my game.

Appreciate that this is very subjective, but I have cast my vote just on what I know and my own playing ability :-)