Different strategies depending on whether you're playing 2-person, 4-person or more.
First of all, I love the layout, Korrun did a good job of making a visually appealing board. Secondly, there are many possibilities for action, as the board is larger than it appears at first glance.
A key decision to make is about when you attack a capital (if you don't alredy start with one), since you need to go through a shark to do so, and the more sharks you hold, the more their negative multipliers affect your beginning of turn bonuses. If succesful at capturing and holding a capital, the factory production from this may offset the negative bonuses from sharks, but this all depends on what else you own (specially how many sharks you have). And capitals are very hard to take from an enemy, as they have heavy dice defensive advantage.