Deity AI, bad play that lets you catch up, and victory conditions

I've been playing and watching a lot of Deity lately and have started to wonder if there isn't a very simple rule when it comes to BNW Deity AIs, and how it easy it is to catch up to them and/or overtake them before they win, when oneself wanting to war at least moderately.

The thought spent a while 'brewing' but finally floated to the surface after watching the behaviour of Rome in MadDjinn's VidLP as Poland.

Rome hits the industrial around the same time as MadDjinn, who would admit that he did not play the game optimally, and tech'ed comparatively slowly. But when MadDjinn goes to attack with his cannons and winged hussars, Rome has still only trebuchets, pikes and legions.

I have to say that if one wants to do any warring in BNW, the single-biggest factor is the AI's troop preparedness. If you are matching the same era of troops, you can still win because the AI is pretty dumb, but it's a lot harder, and your win time will be longer, etc.

Having looked at this phenomenon with a view to which VCs the AIs appear to be seeking, it really does seem that if the AI is seeking a DomV, they will have a much better chance of being prepared, vs if they are concentrating on other things, like Diplo or CV.

So could it be summarised that when going (relatively) peaceful, the AI techs worse and especially doesn't prepare it's troops for defence properly?

Has anyone ever disabled all VCs except DomV and seen what difference this makes?

I used to play with only DomV on. Its chaos. AIs attacks you relentlessly. Its very hard.

I think that it depends on what your skill level is. If you're a seasoned player and you know all of the equations and the details about how the game works and you obsess enough to conduct experiments like that with the game, almost anything will appear a cinch to you. But for the average player who's just learning the game, even organizing an invasion, and then dealing with the unhappiness hit afterwards will be an adventure enough.

Warfare is the hardest part of Civ5 to master (I don't just mean the actual fighting itself, I mean the diplomacy and other aspects of warfare) - the rest is fairly straightforward after enough games but you can always screw up a war with a wrong move. Because of how much more complex it is compared to other aspects of the game, the AI is more obviously bad at it because there's no algorithm for good warfare.

So when the AI is on higher difficulties with more advantages, the need to rely on warfare to close the gap is important.

In terms of speed and techs, it's a damage output per turn thing - if you have a tech advantage your units output more damage per turn which makes warfare simpler and you can destroy more of the opponent's army, it's relatively straightforward. Obviously with a tendency to DomV your opponents build more and up-to-date units and prioritise military techs - of course it's going to be harder and take longer.

Of course, the longer your war with one player takes, the faster another player is outpacing you.