Custom Win Conditions and Ideas

So sometimes when I get bored with the standard game, I try out different approaches to playing it. I basically play for a victory condition that I set, rather than going for a standard VC. For example, I sometimes play a game on the Terra map, and rush to find the "New World". Then, I'll spend the game colonizing the New World and placing cities in each available spot, focusing on good city placement. I personally like the process for finding good locations for city placement and building a wide empire. Eventually, I end up with the entire continent on the "New World" colonized, my cities spread out everywhere.

I'm sure there are also some other great ideas out for there custom games that this community plays. Care to share?

Yeah try to play peaceful with the only vc condition is domination I died fast.

Lately I've been playing the CSS (Coastal City Sprawl and, yes, I just made the name up) where I settle cities only on the coast.

One rule: Control the coastal borders of your entire continent so every other civ is landlocked. You can attack and raze cities not on the coast but you can't annex/puppet them and you can't settle in land until you have complete border control.
Map size: Anything standard or smaller.
Civs: Carthage or Polynesia. (Arabia and Japan would probably work as well but I've never tried it with them).

It's essentially a domination victory because you're going to have to knock out other cities to achieve this goal. Only then can you storm their inward cities. It's no walk in the park but if you like to be challenged then there's nothing like it.

Carthage works better than any other civ because of the free harbors. The situational ability of crossing mountains becomes a given - every time I've played them with CSS I've had key battles surrounding mountains.
Polynesia works well because of the moai which helps you keep up with policy costs, brings in gold and most importantly provides a much needed defense boost.
Even though I've never tried them I list Arabia as possible because of trade route money and Japan because you're really going to need all the combat strength you can get.

I didn't intend to win I just wanted to see how long I would last which wasn't long.