I am actually enjoying my current game where I had just a single 4/3/2 spot for the first 100 turns.  I built up a nice level three fortress (love strike garrison!)  and built 5-6 outposts to gather resources.  I was really pleased that even though I lagged behind the AI players I met, nobody declared war on me for another 120 turns or so.  I had a few tribute demands, most of which I ignored.  Now, I am at war with three of the nine other factions but adding many cities to my once lonely turtle fortress.   

But sometimes, yeah, I ctrl-n a lot! 

I usually force myself to play the hand I am given...I find the games are more interesting when you have to deal with a 'crap' start. But of course, I realize some starts are almost guaranteed failure.  

One time I started a random map, and there was a dark wizard tower within three-four tiles of the only decent yields. On top of that, there was no "gimmie' champion in sight, and not a single goodie hut in sight. I hit control+N pretty fast. 

I start over every game at some point, I almost never finish a strategy game.  If I run into a lot of bad luck in the start of the game I'll start over, but most of my starting over is when the game has reached a point where I gain no more joy from building up my empire or I am just steamrolling enemies.  I had one game that I ended because I was in a stalemate.  This was a long time ago, maybe in the beta.  I started in a far corner of the world between a mountain range and an ocean, and had room to make three cities.  I made my cities and Was then immediately at war with Tarth.  They had me completely cut off from the rest of the world.  The attacked non stop, and eventually the captured and razed two of my cities, but I was able to take a force and capture their capital and force peace.  but then the game became instantly boring to me and I quit. 

I'm starting over when I'm leveling each opponent's army and it is becoming obvious that I'm gonna conquer each settlement no matter how well protected it is. Next game is definitel gonna be on a level bove challenging...

Since I have disabled all victory condition options but conquest victory, I always have to resort to violence. *grins*

But only AFTER I have done all the available quests and mastered the wildlands.

I used to play medium maps with everything on random but sometimes I ended up with no wildlands at all. That was boring. So right now I'm playing a large map with random resources, many heroes (my sov has adventurer profession and my faction has traitor trait mind you ), dense monsters, many wildlands and 6 opponents.

I'l play and play and play and play.

When I load the next day, I generally have a very hard time getting back into it.
If I do, I play and play and play some more. .
If I don't, I start over and play and play and play again.

After asking for more entertaining starting options in the forum I decided to try it, and I liked scarce resources but not scarce shards. IMO scarce resources are fun because add to the feeling of post-apocaliptic world, but scarce shards just weakens magic too much. Spells power depend a lot on shards, as does mana.

Dense monsters are really funny, makes for a very alive and entertaining world. Makes you think twice before leaving cities unprotected, and many times forces you to clean a city spot before settling, which IMO is soooo fun!

i think the only game i didn't finish so far was with relias/altar. i just don't have the discipline to ignore the pretty overpowered aspects of henchmen and the game gets too easy when you use them, imo. i quit that game when i realized that i was about twice as strong as the other factions and managed to kill stuff like obsidian golems from the imperium wildland around turn 80 or something. i guess i'll give them another try when LH is released (if henchmen are removed or changed to work significantly different [aka less potential for abuse])