War vs Diplomacy

Usually any players country can be seperateed from others as being one of two types. The first of these two types is a fighting country and the second is a netgaining or networth orientated country. The difference between these two types of countries is as the names imply one is geared towards a strong military and one is geared towards having a high net worth. Now it can be very profitable to choose which type of country you wish to have because then you can start out on the right path and you won't have to change around your strat and government later in the game and loose some size.

If you wish to be a fighter then:
join a fighting alliance
Use a communist or tyrany government
Use either a industrialist or technology strategy
Spend lots of money buying military and then attacking so that you don't have to feed so many soldiers for 30 turns at a time.

If you want to be a net gainer then:
join a pussy alliance, oops I mean Laf or something similar. You can follow almost any Strategy you want for being a netgainer. The important thing is you should avoid all wars. Also you will want to make sure your land grabs are very effective and ge you lots of .land