I won a Noble game (my first Noble win!) as Monty on the Earth-18 map. I had warrior-rushed Roosevelt in the very-early game, and I killed Huyana Capac by the Classical era. At that point, I was all alone on the Americas.
I survived by REXing out all of the good city sites. My economy crashed, but I had the Pyramids, so I switched to Representation for a sort-of Specialist Economy. Tenochtitlan is a great hammer site on the Earth-18 map (lots of hills), so I was able to score a number of Wonders. Meanwhile, I moved my Palace to a site in Texas with some lovely rivers & grassland, so major cottage spam. The Bureaucracy bonus turned those cottages into major commerce.
Meanwhile, I beelined Liberalism. (Have you ever seen the AI Monty do that?
) So when Lizzy's caravels came a-calling in the Renaissance, I had a few solid techs to trade. I didn't trade right away, but I waited to meet a few other folks (Mansa, Freddy) before I started trading away my techs. I also managed to hold on to Education long enough to grab Liberalism for Nationalism, and then I traded it, too.
Even so, when it came time to invade Old Europe, I was using Cuirassiers & Trebuchets against Lizzy's Redcoats. I lost a lot of troops, but I took the British Isles, and Lizzy capitulated. From that point, I started catching up in tech very rapidly. Louis was next to fall, then Freddy, and then Julius. The endgame turned into a three-way competition between:
- Monty (with Lizzy, Louis, and Freddy as vassals)
- Saladin (with Mansa, Asoka, and Catherine as vassals)
- Qin (with Genghis and Tokugawa as vassals)
Domination Victory in 1942 AD.
Here are the tips I learned:
- You can't research everything by yourself. Beeline something juicy (Liberalism is a great choice), and then backfill the rest of the techs through trading as soon as you make contact.
- You don't need a tech advantage to win a war. Sure, a tech advantage makes life easier, but tech parity is all you really need. Heck, you can even get by with a tech deficit (Cuirassiers versus Redcoats) if you bring enough troops. The AI is bad at war, so use that weakness to your advantage.
- You don't need to be on top of the scoreboard to win! I mean, you'll need to be there eventually, but you don't need to be on top throughout the entire game. You just need a plan for how to "come from behind" for your amazing victory!
- It's often worth moving your capital to a cottage site in order to take advantage of the Bureaucracy multiplier in the mid-game. The +50% to commerce can often do much more for you than +50% to hammers, because it's a bonus to raw commerce. That commerce bonus gets multiplied again by any +Science and +Gold buildings, so the final effect can be massive.
I'm on Prince now, so I'm not a master of this game. I'm sure that other players will have their suggestions as well.