I am an experienced player trying to make the step up to deity. I have found many strategies contained in these forums very helpful. Hats off to players such as DaveMcW, Obsolete, Mad Scientist, aelf the list could go on. However, I still find getting a good SE up and running is straightforward enough but without sufficient cottages I simply cannot maintain my tech rate through the Industrial era, and if I drop out of representation, or fail to make the 'mids then this just makes the job increasingly difficult. Now, I can beeline my way through to the internet, catch up with the competition, but if there is one AI with a large landmass then I am stuffed competing in the space race at the end. I have tried REXing with an SE, but my econcomy never seems to come out of the doldrums.

For me the 4 cornerstones of playing at higher difficulty levels are:

Tech beelining and trading (wisely)
Active diplomacy
City specialisation
Maintaining a reasonable power rating

Add to this the requirement for cottages which is, as I see it, directly proportional to how hard I REX. I tend to run with an early settler and get 4 city sites asap, and from here I can run an SE, build cottages and set a platform for the next 4-6 cities (standard/largemaps).

In summary, what I am saying is that the only way I have managed to stay anywhere near the AI on higher difficulty levels is by using and SE/CE hybrid economy. I tend to play normal/epic - normal if I want to try and capture a significant proportion of Wonders (Obsolete style) and Epic if I want to reduce micromanagement and war a bit more. I find capturing a lot of wonders harder on Epic and Marathon.

I am interested in specific strategies that players use on these higher difficulty levels, including situational and leader specific. Any help?

The best strategy is to read the map and adapt. Which strategy is superior depends on your surroundings--don't decide what to do with the game before-hand; keep an open mind and focus on what the map offers you. After the initial exploration you should be able to make some long-term plans based on what you've found.

You're asking for a book in a thread :lol:.

Your cornerstones look good to me. I'm no deity player though. It sounds like you might be lacking enough cities. Cottages become increasingly effective with more cities IMO, and having a larger empire reduces the odds of a large AI empire out pacing you solely with city count and AI bonuses. When I jumped into higher difficulty I learned that more cities is extremely helpful. If you have the room REX them out, if not rush basically. If I wind up with tons and tons of room or isolated I tend to make a wonder or two early as their opportunity costs drops in that scenario considerably.

I don't think you can run pure CE or SE very easily at high levels outside of a wonderspam strategy...you're better off making full use of both cottages and specialists and forgetting you'd ever seen the letter combos CE or SE.

There's too many nuances to higher level play, and I'm still learning immortal so I can only be of marginal help here. I suggest you look at the immortal university in this thread as well as some of those deity games elsewhere on civfanatics. Walkthroughs were you see what a player decided on and why are far more efficient once you have the general concepts down.