How to bring this one back on track

Existential civ question: What decisions win a BtS game, in general?
There's illustrative pictures below for the less patient of you guys, as well as a save.

Early game: Quechas scout around, find out that Rome is on a plain hills with a cow plains right besides. They'll have crazy defence with archers and by the time I pop city #2 it's clear I don't have metal. Toku is too far away and chariots would be hard to pull on Caesar. So I go for Oracle/Pyramids.



Eventually, my capital relaxes its wonder aspirations and goes fully military. Tiwanaku becomes my specialist farm, Pig and Corn-powered with good hills for wonder building. Philosophy kicks in and SE starts paying off.



Early-Mid game: representation gets me a tech lead over Toku: we both have trebs and elephants but I have maces and he doesn't have samurais. I religiously sent quechas to upgrade against wave after wave of barbarians so I have several Quechas over 5XP that I upgrade to C1-CR2 maces. Between this and trebuchets, the war easily goes to my favor. Thus, 10 turns of peace + swift re-declaration after, the whole peninsula was mine and Toku answered to me.



Late-Mid game: here we are. I was first to Liberalism, thanks to Japan's rich contribution of cottages, Colossus, Mausoleum and dyes. Rome was always one step ahead of me in military techs, however, and I couldn't fancy taking them on.



My SE's backbone, Tiwanaku, is being grossly overrun by Rome's capital (Hermitage ). It dwindles and loses steam, becoming a good but steadily decreasing research city, instead of a great one. This is despite running free speech, btw.



So I've got a competitive empire, in a very close race for the top3 spots with Justinian and Augustus.



I'm eras behind Rome in military, however, as he has probably around 50 rifles to my 2 dozen medieval units.



The world could care less for me but I'm not a UN win guy. I would like to either do a military (probably hard on this spot) or a spaceship win.

Btw, I started reading a few spoilers and shadow-played them and it was instructive but it mostly mechanically: I now know a lot more about city placement and how religions/corporations work, I know you need to whip just before 2 pop becomes 1 for max overflow, etc. Thanks to everyone that wrote on these boards, I am definitely up to emperor play.

But it was generally too easy to play, too hard or too linear for me to grasp the underlying thought process of the games. The ALC series is a tremendously long read and I'm FAR from being through with it, it's helped a lot too.

well, you get some sort of plan early on - this is based on intuition mostly, since you can't possibly predict how the game will play out, who will eat whose land and get powerful, who will get all the good GP wonders (AIs just build random crap it seems)

early on, you're just looking to establish yourself

for example, I had a game back in warlords with a ridiculously good fish/clams start with plain hills around and marble in one of the plain tiles

that early on, I had no idea whether I will have to fight for more land later on and whether my GP-farm-to-be capital would be enough to outtech the AIs

based on the distance to my nearest neighbour, I figured that each AI won't be getting that much land... half of it was tundra too 'cause the climate turned out to be cold (I set it on random just for kicks)

or maybe not seeing enough empty land prevented the "shet shet gotta expand fast" light from going off

so a random plan was born

I thought, hey, Imma pump my capital full of scientists and focus on that first and foremost, and plant some preferrably good production cities for a space race victory

there was a basic plan that I literally pulled out of my ass, just because I felt like it

so I guess I really don't know where that first plan comes from
but my simple answer to your question is this - every single turn (if you aren't afraid of going mad of course)
you evaluate what changed in the game - tech situation, who started gaining power, maybe look at your cities and suddenly realize "hey! I couldn't afford a war back then, and thought I wouldn't be able to afford one in 20 turns either, but my prediction of what their army would be like in 20 turns was way off, and now I guess I can attack and benefit from it - time to mobilize"

basically, I don't think you can stick to a plan
well you can, but every once in a while you gotta take a broad look at things and say "oh man if I do this instead, it will help me that much more"
it's so much more pleasant to just make a solid plan and sail with it, but you really have to be on the lookout for a better plan that might've become possible - either because smth happened in the game, or because your past prediction of the "x turns after" situation doesn't reflect reality anymore now that x turns passed and you aren't where you thought you'd be

I really don't think you can predict things accurately enough to make a plan
(I think your words "I'm not quite sure I know what I'm doing at all whatsoever" expressed precisely this sentiment, how frustrating it can be to try to make a decision and not be able to tell what exactly is going to come out of it)

this game is too complex and you just have to constantly evaluate the situation if you want to figure out the most certain path to victory

lol or maybe I'm just not that good of a civ player
lost that game by 5 turns btw, almost outteched an emperor level Cathy with 3 vassals with just my megascientists and some mediocre cities

i'm not quite sure I know what I'm talking about, it's 3am on a saturday night and I have a million thoughts flying through my head right now trying to make them fit into a nice pattern so I can make some sense of everything

so I would appreciate it if you could tell me, does my first post make sense to you?

if it does, I can add that too much optimizing can drive you mad
for example, I spent 20 minutes one time thinking about whether I should give a civ a tech for free (note that "no brokering" is on)

pros:
+ he can't research it and sell it to the tech leader (who for some reason neglected it)
+ possible diplo bonus (more likely to fight on my side when a war comes)
+ smth else that I forget
cons:
- might be more of a threat if he's more advanced
- might research smth after that tech and sell THAT to tech leader eventually

and the main point is, those pros and cons have different weights depending on what your plan is - take the leader out now? wait for tanks? wait till he starts a war and jump in? try to just outtech him without war?

and if you try to find the best possible way out of the myriad of possible ways you can go mad

so I decided, screw this, screw you Julius, you aren't getting any techs for free you jerk, and I stuck with my decision and my old plan (w/e it was, I think it was "take the leader out after I vassalize someone else with that someone's help") without worrying that some other path might've been better or more likely to work

and that was my one-time run-in with thinking about this game way way way more than is healthy for an average person

it looks like you got the hang of the basic and not so basic things

being able to spot opportunities will come with experience I guess
I am, for one, all about theoretical bull!@#$
I've only actually played 5 emperor games of civ IV ever, 2 of which I won (and in one I was just messing around with many many artists after my peaceful "out of ass" plan of getting some cities near my capital to flip to me failed - yea I expanded in a strip that's why there were cities there)

so I have a lot of thoughts but not enough experience to base anything definite on (ie, being able to figure out a good plan and not have to change it later on)

and it looks like you too are fairly intelligent, but just haven't played enough
which is why I'm writing all this stuff, 'cause I thought "hmm what this guy is saying is striking a note with me")

anyway
your (or someone else's) thoughts on all this bull!@#$ I so valiantly typed up at 3 am on a saturday night?