Watch-Out

There will come a time in every civilization's life when they are faced with a tough decision: to go to war or not. I usually try to avoid conflict with other empires and playing passively throughout the time limit. Sometimes though, battles and conflict seem inevitable. Other empires were expanding at a faster rate than I was and I was losing land that was available for me to expand and settle on. So, as they were growing bigger and bigger, I was just trying to become more and more advance and force them to try to "keep up with the Joneses" scientifically and technologically. I was able to create spies with the construction of Scotland Yard in one of my cities and used them to collect information about the units of my neighboring empires. The empire to the north of me was Japanese. They were far behind in military technology and in the strength and numbers of their units. Because I could not expand elsewhere, going to war with the Japanese and expanding this way seemed like a logical and smart decision.
But when I declared when on Japan, a much stronger and advanced empire, the Russians, went to war with me on behalf of a defensive pact they signed with the Japanese. Now, I was in trouble. I was sandwiched between two countries that I was at war with. I was forced to watch not only my northern borders and units but my southern ones as well. I was able to move through the Japanese forces fairly quickly and have only one more city to go before I have defeated them, but I have only take 2 cities from the Russians who are defending their cities with much success. I am still fighting this battle and hopefully will be on the winning end of the outcome, but nonetheless I have learned an important lesson. Pay attention to who you go to war with and with who their friends are. I started out fighting the weakest empire in the game, but combined with one of the strongest empires, even they become a formidable opponent.