in these games. You have to go through stages of advancement and resource-assimilation; first is food, second is wood, then stone and iron, then more stone and wood as you become self-sufficient within your cities, then more advanced materials like reagents, mana, horses, mithril, etc., and finally just the wars with your neighbors.
See, here I disagree. I didn't bother with wood at the start of the game, going straight for stone and iron so I could build axemen to conquer my slow neighbours. If I just sat there and resource-accumulated before waging war, I'd have lost the game to you or Kashykk who were better at building rich farm lands.
I'd be up for an asymmetric map next time, perhaps with lots of narrow oceans to encourage barge use.
You got lucky at the start. If your opponents had a measure of sense then you would have met with huge opposition to your initial attacks. It probably wouldn't have really cost you anything. But still, you obviously did win the game that way, so saying its a bad strategy is a bit stupid.
It's a trick that everyone can use, but not everyone was aware of it, and it's both pretty cheap and I would actually think it detracts from some of that tactical layer; instead of having to worry whether or not you could take the city, you could just offer up a weak old unit as a sacrifice. But I think it's just the way I prefer to play; I like to out-snowball my opponents and go for a direct approach, and I'm rather good at snowballing.
Re: Intercept tactic with horsemen. I really like it actually, because it adds some tactical depth, and its not an unbeatable strategy by any means. It does allow you to delay them by a turn if you know what their path is, but you have to take that into account if they have calvary nearby.
I'd rather a more continental style approach, so that we actually see some bloody naval combat. Not just straits, though straits can be fun because they make for interesting scenarios; barges and the like turn into boat bridges, which is even more awesome because that's a thing in real life. Only for rivers, typically.
My next map will be a symmetrical 4 people map. There are only two ways to get to your opponents, through the wastelands in the very center (which have -100% defense, are expensive to colonize (-4 food per turn), and cost 6 movement points each (as well as not allowing flying units to pass over them), and through the straights (which are both in the middle and the outside of the map, and only allow boats/flying to pass through them clockwise in the middle and counterclockwise on the outside).
There are a few more things, but that's the gist of it.