My comfort zone is Immortal, but I play Deity and, yeah just say it like it is, cheat. I add a worker t20, maybe add 1 wheat tile from the beginning and in really extreme cases, when I'm playing a low-tier Civ, add a holy site to a tile I'm working until I get a pantheon. Then I remove it ofcourse. I know it's blatant cheating but I need it when I want to play something else than the 4city Tradition game with a boring SV. I want to apply different tactis, go full piety/honor and do a bit of Role Playing. When I want to play Babylon for example, I don't need to cheat to win on Deity, but I've had enough of those 'standard' games where at a point it just an automatic pilot who gives you the same victory on almost the same way over and over again.
The reason I don't play Immortal is because I win those games 99% of the time and I never finish those games. Also, a Deity game gives you much more intensity. Insane early rushes from Attila, Impi swarms when I haven't reached medieval yet, discovering Sejong is completely outteching you when reaching the other continent, and so on. Things I never see on Immortal. There the warmongers just fail to overtake their opponents and just kill their troops and those of their opponent and they fall back in science.