At least you are a much more literate form of tommynt. But I dare you post that in the BNW forum.
He does have a point though. In a game where things don't go well, I'm at 500 beakers by turn 200. In my most recent game, I was at 880 by 206, would have been there earlier but I ran into some money problems and couldn't rush buy all my satellite labs.
But I do understand how people end up with less. It's usually one of four things:
1) Wasting time building stuff they don't need.
2) Working production instead of food.
3) Not working every possible science specialist slot.
4) Not keeping their happiness positive.
And 1-3 are really all one thing. They don't have enough population because of #2, so they can't do #3, and it's all because they wanted production to build stuff they didn't need. And #4 is probably because they traded luxes for money to buy things they didn't need. ;-)
However, playing hyper-focused is very difficult. I played countless games of Civ before I learned to play focused. You have to know the tech tree inside and out. You have to understand how culture, science, faith, growth and diplomacy work, and probably most importantly, you have to have enough experience to adapt when the map doesn't exactly fit a strategy guide.
That takes time, and for most, it takes hundreds of hours of games, because of two simple reasons. One, they play tons of games on low difficulty, learning bad habits. (Yes bad, not because they aren't deity exploit-based, but because they wouldn't work in MP either)
Two, they play a lot of games where they're not really learning anything, and they play them out to the bitter end. I know I did this for a long time before I realized the error of my ways. Now I play to learn, not to win. The result? I win a lot more. ;-)
I think a lot of people would benefit from playing games only to turn 100-150 until they learn to really adapt and handle every situation.
For example, moving your settler. This is a fine art that most people don't even attempt, because they don't know what constitutes a good starting spot, and they're afraid of losing those wasted turns. But it can make alllll the difference in a game. It takes practice though. So, why not play 20 games to turn 50 to see how moving your settler affects the game? It's worth it.
I tried another Shoshone game last night, and as is occasionally the case, my first pathfinder move showed me a mountain range 2 turns away, which for me is pretty much a no-brainer. An observatory in your capital is almost equivalent to +50% population with zero extra unhappiness. Think about that. Your size 20 capital is suddenly equivalent to a size 30 capital. And your capital will likely be your biggest city, and have NC, and PT, and Oracle and/or other +GS wonders, so an observatory there makes by far the biggest difference.
So, it's pretty much *always* worth moving your settler to a mountain even if it loses you a river! The extra population will at best compensate for not having an observatory, but at the cost of extra unhappiness.
Anyway, point being, I always look for mountains and move there if I see them on turn 0. This time however, I discovered that I was on a peninsula with a mountain range between me and the rest of the continent, with only 1 tile on each side to move. My capital was virtually untouchable. But, on the other hand, any city I expanded out beyond that mountain range would be a sitting duck. And any road would be like 15 tiles long if I actually moved the city far enough away to have any luxuries.
So, at this point, I almost completely abandoned the strategy. I had to. No trade routes. None! No one to steal a worker from. Satellites left completely vulnerable and guaranteed to piss off anyone if I placed them anywhere good. So, I went with a 2-city approach instead, crammed in a second city on my peninsula for the 1 extra luxury, and as soon as I get universities, I'm beelining Astronomy and Navigation. Even though this is Pangaea, and even though I'm playing as the Shoshone, I'll be winning a Domination Victory via naval warfare. Of course, there are a million ways to play this. An isolated start on Deity though is arguably a death sentence if you don't handle it right. And in this case, I believe following the strategy to the letter would have been a mistake. And that's not something you can expect someone to just know.
So, I don't criticize people who haven't learned all the nuances of Deity play. I feel like I still have a lot to learn. But I do agree with Tich's point. If you follow the guide, it's pretty hard not to end up with really good beakers.
