Larger maps means here that you have to expand for at least four knighhouses before you even have a hope of seeing someone else. There's a bit of good info about general play as well though!

In larger maps there's less urgency on speed and more urgency on balance. You have to get a good resource system up, as well as a toolsmith for expansion. You need to keep expanding your enconomy and make sure it runs smoothly by checking thoroughly and frequently.

Beginning your game

In large maps a good working wood industry is a must. You'll find that if you don't build at least three (I build five) sawmills straight away you'll be short of wood. More than a few woodcutters and (if the situation requires it) foresters should be built as soon as possible, as well as barracks' or guardhouses. Note that if you know the map and know you'll have little trouble then you can happily build lowly barracks' for the first layer or two, and only build guardhouses when you need to. This creates the problem in that you may be swept away if the enemy gets a strong force of generals up against ranks. You can lost a huge amount of land (even to computers!) with this strategy.

It's a good aim to have a couple of farms being built after the first layer of guardhouses. This means you can start building a food industry as soon as possible.

As soon as you find mountains with resources build up the mineral industry. Hopefully you'll have enough food by this time to have fully efficient mines. I like to turn up the resource allocations so all mines get the equal amount of food - definitely having coal mines get less food is idiocy! Also it's a good idea to turn the coal allocations to let the armory get the same amount as the iron smelterer. Don't forget the brewery as well!

I'd also advise building a storehouse next to any mineral industry you have. Otherwise all gold and weapons will have to travel a long way to your castle before turning back!

At this stage if you have enough wheat (even though it's a large map you might not actually have enough space to build good wheat farms!) build a couple of donkey farms. Donkeys make life so much easier on your roads. When your civilisation is large you get a rediculous amount of merchandice on your roads!

If you have enough stone try building catapults to protect your knighthouses (or aim at your knighthouses). This requires a huge amount of stone but it stops sweeping attacks in their tracks. You have a very large land size so any attacks that the opponents do will take a very very long time if you burn every knighthouse they attack.


Middle of the Game

When you hit your first enemy it's a good idea to build a couple of watchtowers. Hopefully you'll have enough men to staff them (if not your mineral industry is stuffed). Also build catapults aiming at your own watchtowers, incase their taken. The bad thing about watchtowers is that they take so long to get up, but once they're up they're almost invincible in groups! They also accumulate gold so a great strategy is to wait until there's generals in there and attack with those generals. This will keep a steady flow of generals for every single gold coin you produce!

You might (or rather, will) have a few mines run out of minerals. This isn't too bad as long as for every mine you destroy you build another one. It might sometimes be a good idea to totally move your industry to accomodate the moving of mines! This takes alot of construction materials but it's usually worth it! Burn the old makers when they become obsolete and create new ones next to your new mines. Don't, of course, bother if you are only moving the mines a screen away.


End Game

This is where there's full scale attacking. What you do depends on how you're going relative to the enemy. If you're winning, try to roll on. If they have catapults on you try to take a few at once, then watch the catapults carefully to see if they hit - you get a second or so to burn while seeing if the catapult's accurate or not. If you're losing get your own catapults in there at once! Make sure you have very strong watchtowers, even fortresses! If they attack your watchtowers even with generals - if you have the same type of soldier up there mathematically they'll lose two to one because your guys can heal, theirs can't!

If you spot their castle, look at the stats and their knighthouses. Mostly if you can actually see their castle they won't have enough people to man the outer knighthouses, which means that only their reserves will be in there. Luckily their reserves (quite simply) suck, as there's usually only a single person from each rank. If you get a few generals up against it I'd say attack at once - it's a bit of a risk but the benifits are worth it! Storehouses are hard to defend, so if you get their castle they're usually stuffed.

Make sure you continually expand and build. If you take some land, fortify and build farms or whatever you need. You should have the toolmaker running constantly to get more tools to build more farms etc and mines. It's very possible to have an exponential acceleration in Settlers 2 - the more land you have the more able to make men you are. If oyu have land, use it! Don't just leave it dormant.

This is, of course, hard and you'll have to practise.

Good luck!