Could it be fate?

Ok, so I decided to run through last week's scenario once agian playing as the Japanese Empire once again in the Earth scenario, but this time I was planning on continuously changing my government whenever the opportunity would arise and I was also planning on adopting certain practices that I don't believe in such as Communism and Facism to see if they would help boost my production. They did but here is what I noticed, although my Empire remained the wealthiest and most developed 3/4 of the game, Germany once again took the lead around the 1600s with ease. I began to ask my allies to declare war on Germany to hinder its progress, giving me the advantage once again. This was a REALLY BAD IDEA, I ended up aiding the other countries in surpassing me in my development. Yet somehow I was still the wealthiest country in the game. Once there were14 turns left I decided to declare war on everybody because I really wasn't going anywhere and I figured to Hell with it, if I can't win I'll at least piss off ALOT of countries. I succeeded in doing so and noticed that my infastructure was absolutely decimated by the assault launched by the other countries. Things that would take me one turnt o produce now took me 45. Structures, railroads, cities, people, and a bunch of other things that had taken forever to produce, they were completely obliterated within seconds.

So the two things I took away from this is that war is bad if you can't defend yourself and it will make it even more difficult to recover from the damage done. But the thing that struck me as odd is that I did everything right in expanding my empire but where I inherently failed was expansion, something that the island of Japan is not suited for, leaving my Japanese empire with an inherent handicap that unless you waste alot of time and resources on, cannot be overcome.

So next time I plan on playing as another civilization and repeating everything else I did in hopes of finally getting a victory in the game.