Sherlock
Just one more turn...
I'm starting to. Time to ratchet up the difficulty I suppose.
Yes. Some of the victory conditions are kinda silly - for instance Domination. If my army's unbeatable and I own half the world already, I shouldn't have to mop up the remaining three capitals in order to win - the game's already over and anything left is just a tedious slog with no tension.
Yes, I've thought that there should be a "supremacy" victory condition. I know everyone says the score is meaningless, but in my experience once the human is substantially ahead on the score they don't lose. Or just make domination >50% of the OCs. SV is the easiest now and CV seems about right. ( DiploV is stupidly hard but who ever plays for that? )
Domination victory is easiest followed by Diplomatic. All you have to do is build the Forbidden Palace, grab up all the CS's and wait.
I think you and I must play on different settings.
Been playing on Prince, King lately.
I play ... packed maps (i.e. 50% more than the standard number of AIs for the map size).
Always have raging barbarians and of course difficulty level, yup.
You can have fewer AI on bigger maps too, depending on who they are that can make it very interesting - I always play random, on Large maps with say 10 players including you at a difficulty level one above what you're used to - well, keeps me busy.......