Beating the game on Deity Huge Pangaea

How do you do that?

I beat the game on Deity Standard on different types of maps, but I can't seem to beat it on huge. There is always some run-away civilization that builds a huge empire, often by conquest, and ends up winning by science around turn 280.

My playing style is generally like this:

• I play with barbarians off.
• Poland or Greece
• Going for diplomatic or science victory.
• 4 cities
• Tradition, Patronage, Science
• Food production as the default setting in cities
• Try my best to keep out of any war, except for stealing workers in the start of the game.
• Tiny army, rarely more than 4-5 units.
• Dependant on defense treaties
• Using pretty much any excess gold to gift city states after opening patronage.

Should I try getting someone (friendly civs?) to declare war on the would-be run-away civ? I never tried that.

You're probably doing a ton of things wrong so I suggest watching these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roq3DYYG8FI

Acken is really good at the game. His science strategy here is applicable to any map/civ.

On a huge map I'd probably sink all the gold I can into research agreements and get porcelain tower ASAP as well as rationalism finisher. A RA with a strong civ with the tower + rationalism boost can easily be equal to 5-6+ turns of your science. Get 4-5 going at once and that means they trigger every 6 turns, meaning it almost doubles your science output.

Compared to the meager boost you get from city-states with patronage, that's a no brainer. I try to only get city-states through coup with my spies. That's almost the only reasonable way to get them. A level 3 spy can have a 85% chance to flip a city-state for you that would otherwise cost you 1000 gold to get. A pretty stupidly good gamble when it pays off.

possible to reliably win, but with practice.

I agree with poxpower, if they consistently get ahead of you utilize trade routes and RA's to keep up. This plus saving and using your scientists at the end should be enough to rocket ahead and take the Space Victory. Use a scientist or free tech to quickly grab the techs and start building Apollo program and hubble as soon as possible. You don't want to lose hubble to AI.

I'm actually playing this exact scenario in Shoshone Empires series, but I wouldn't recommend using the series as an optimal guide though it might still be a useful reference if you want to manage a big empire and win. It's a challenge series so I'm making it even harder then normal with the additional rules that I need to go with liberty and settle a LOT more cities then normal theming as an "empire". Basically as many as I could settle while still maintaining a good enough tech rate to win and going with order, so I've had maintenance and happiness problems and can't run that many RA's and stuff like a normal game. It looks like I'll be winning though based on the latest episodes.

There are 2 runaway AI in my world but they passed arts funding and are going for a cultural victory so they will be launching probably closer to Turn 190-200, and by that time I'm planning to be on my way to Alpha Centauri.