The map is a globe so the sides connect. So china is a lot closer to the Americas than it looks. There's a few weird spots regarding fleets but I don't remember them all. Besides that I like treating the game like several small dip games coming together in the end. Play your continent and then your hemisphere and then the world.

I disagree with Ghug. Being Ghana helps way more than being Kenya. Being India, Quebec or Western-Canada also seem to have its advantages over being Kenya.

With draw-size scoring, the 17-player map never ends in a solo if no one misses its moves or severely messes up (as far as I know). The game will most likely end in a draw. It is common for the 17-player world map to be won by an alliance that draws. (I am not advocating for not trying to get a solo victory, but this is what naturally happens on a big map.)

Also, just like in any diplomacy game, I would recommend in general to talk with a lot of people, even people on other continents. Find out what they are up to, think about how that affects you in the long run and use it to make your strategic decions - or even better, think about what you ideally want them to do and try to make them do so. People on close-but-not-very-close distances to you may appear to be valuable game-long allies, too.

They may disagree with whether you should pray for Kenya or Ghana, but I think everyone can agree that the best strategy is to not draw Libya.

I disagree with that, too. The best strategy is to not draw China.

For most of the powers, you initially need many armies because getting armies into the centers of continents is how you come to dominate them. The coastal territories are difficult to to defend by sea against a land attack. You'll regret early fleet builds with most powers.

In the late game, the armies become unhelpful as the small number of sea zones means that a medium number of fleets can completely wall off a whole section of the map from any sea attack. You'll regret overbuilding on armies.

Therefore, the general strategic plan for most powers is to build enough armies to take over a continent, but to start using the builds from those gains to make fleets so that the continent can be simultaneously defended (by the fleets) while the armies get convoyed onto another continent to try to take over that continent as well. Because of the high defensive value of fleets once you already control a continent, it is relatively easy to defend one side of a continent while invading out of the other side.

Talk, talk, talk. You will need not one, nor two, but 4 or 5 allies to make it through. Among which, 1 close to you, the others further away, that can give you intel on what's happening on their parts of the globe. Try and build 3-way alliances once the first few years have passed.

swordsman3003 gave good technical advice on the choice of builds.

Praying for a particular power is nonsense. With enough diplomacy you can win with any power. So far, I have personally solo'ed the World Map with Kenya, India, Europe and even Libya.

Look at all the players and figure out who has the best reliability rating. They'll likely be in it for the long haul so prioritize that when deciding on your allies. Lots of NMRs and CDs on world map.

I'm a beginner at World games, but it's what I've mostly been playing recently. Diplomacy is the key, building alliances & an alliance group. For example, one game I am currently in, I have one "close and trusted ally" bug we each have a second ally, so that's a group of four, ( in Europe / Asia & Nth Africa ) plus an alliance pair from South America... So a six way alliance group.
Alliances are often "Continent" based, the common interest is defending a continent from invasion. You need alliances to build the combined fleet strength to firstly defend your continent, and then invade another continent.
In most World games there are players who just give up early on, they don't like the country they got, they have a bad start etc. So you get situations where there's inevitably someone who gets a "dream run" because a neighbour gives up.
Good luck.

While it may be true that alliances are often ''Continent'' based, in my experience these alliances do not tend to last long.
Since solos are less common in the World map, people are less likely to gang up on aggressive expanders. This makes it more worthwhile to become an aggressive expander yourself. You should still always have multiple allies, but these allies just do not need to be your direct neighbors.
To give an example: In gameID=194712, MajorMitchell played Argentina. He allied Brazil, but that didn't get him very far. It would have been perfectly reasonable for him to ally with some North American countries and South Africa or Frozen and attack Brazil from the get go.

I say there's no dominant alliance strategy.

You will become very strong, possibly even un-killable, if you come to dominate your entire continent. With the exception of Antarctica, the number of sea zones bordering a continent is much smaller than the number of supply centers available within it, which means once you control an entire continent, you can likely stalemate any attempt to invade the continent with a relatively small number of fleets. This provides a pretty high incentive for players on the same continent to attack each other, because if they succeed they will almost surely make it into the draw.

However, this means that each players' chance to invade other continents is sort of time-limited, because if another continent becomes dominated by a single player this way, it will likely never be conquered by anyone else. This provides a moderate incentive for players on the same continent to form a truce or alliance, so that they can get a foothold on other continents early on and thus have a bigger chance at expanding widely, and probably a higher chance at the rare solo win.

A similar sort of dynamic exists on the classic map, where for example, Italy and Austria are a huge threat to each other, but risk getting themselves both killed if they ineffectively attack each other.

Jeff Kuta probably has given the most crucial piece of advice here. With 17 players, there will almost always be some unreliable ones that NMR and go into civil disorder at some point. When choosing your allies (and you have to have allies), avoid those with low RRs and try for high RR allies.

When choosing early targets to attack, the low RRs are often good choices, or those players that appear to have allied themselves only with low RR players, because they are likely to have their allies abandon them at inopportune times.

It's a long game. If you stab someone early, that could trash your reputation for a long time, making other wary of you. If you are doing an early stab of a player, make sure it's in partnership with 1-2 allies you want for the long term, as they are less likely to hold the stab against you.

One ally does not cut it on the World map. You need at least two, or you will lose to a bigger alliance eventually.

Solos are rare, so play for the draw unless the opportunities all fall your way. This means being good to your allies, not stabbing them if at all possible, unless that is the only path forward.

I'm still a beginner at world dip, but from what I've seen the key is communication. Talk talk talk and be good to your allies. Strike a balance between too much aggression and being a doormat. Keep a pleasant and reasonable demeanor, even when things go to shit. Be an entertaining presence in the global chat.

The more people like you, the more they'll be willing to go out on a limb to help you.

That strategy is especially important when you draw a weaker country like South Africa, Libya, Europe or China.

The key advice is don't play that map. It is terrible. Look at Antarctica. Not even a decent shot at a single neutral and two power that can roughly earls into you home centers unless you get very lucky? That's just one example. It's poorly tested and outrageously unbalanced

And of course if it's anonymous, then you can't choose the low RR players as targets and the number one strategy is "get lucky enough to have multiple CDs next to you". That's a good approach to being a powerhouse

Mercy, if you have a look at the game you've referred to, you might see two pertinent things that occurred, firstly the player with Brazil was a bit of a clown, & backstabbed me, so it's not a faulty strategy, just a useless player, Plus the player with Antarctica got an absolute dream start..the clown with Oz didn't move /NMR'd /went CD, so Antarctica was unstoppable.
There's a lot of these World games where luck plays a huge part, like Antarctica's success in that game.. Luck because a neighbour doesn't play and hands you a heap of easy sc's early in the game...or bad luck when you're close to someone who gets a huge advantage and your ally turns out to be a useless clown.