Having around 40 hours in the game and no previous Civ experience, I would suggest that I am a noob and kind of trash at the game. But I just finished my first Deity game this morning (Standard everything, Small map with one extra AI)
I'll give you my perspective as a fellow 'prince player' of how it all falls down, and how it happened in my game:
EARLY: Aggression is key. If you are looking for the most easy way out, do as I did, and play Macedon. Macedon is just stupid. Not getting war weariness is op, and being able to forsake setting up science and culture early game because of Eurekas synergizes really stellarly with the neccessity of playing aggressively early.
You'll want to build up 2-3 slingers and another warrior and take the closest civ out ASAP. If no civs are around, then take out the closest / least useful City State. I personally built a settler in between (Prioritize horses, and then luxury resources, which you will need plenty of later.), but if there are lots of barbarians about, then you will have to squeeze out more units.
You need to take out the villages asap, or they pump out an absurd amount of units.
Beeline Political Philosophy Civic
Beeline Archery, then possibly something situational, but aim to go for Horseback Riding as early as possible. I don't know about Hyphasists. I didn't find a good window of use for them, and I didn't go for early Iron Working. BUT MAN ARE HETAROI RIDICULOUS! Rush, Hetaroi. These units provide an unprecedented powerspike for Alexander. They are essentially classical era siege units, that, with the support of a few archers, take out a city in a flicker. Go for 5-7 Hetaroi and 3-5 archers and run remove the closest / weakest civ next to you.
You should aim for around 10-12 cities @ 100-120 turns. This is a good benchmark, and the way I see it, the beginning of midgame.
MID: Now you need to play catchup. The other civs are far ahead in tech and culture. Luckily at this point you should have more cities and have a larger army.
This was the point for me to start setting up campuses and commercial hubs, and beelining to Industrialization. I need to point out at this moment, that you have to understand how crucial Great People are, especially the scientists, and to some extent the engineers. Even if you are not going to science victory (you should, it's the easiest), you need to deny a few key Great Scientists from the AI, or they win the Space Race. So get busy with the Libraries and Universities.
I would personally use excess gold for builders, as you will need them to increase the production of your cities, as well as popping Eurekas from key resources.
Scout with Hetaroi and position them strategically to provide vision, so that no pesky barbarian villages manage to spawn, and to tell your AI buddies, that war will get expensive for them. You should have an encampment in 1-3 cities, so pump out units from those cities, to get Basiliskoi Paides science bonuses. But your focus should be on infrastructure and research.
Once you feel ready to attack another civ, just declare war and blitz them. At this point you will need Siege weaponry and Knights.
Once you've taken out 1-2 more civs and the game seems to stabilize, I'd say its turning towards Late game. You should feel pretty confident right now.
LATE: Lategame you need to be racking up high amounts of Great Scientist points, around 150-300 science per turn. The two easiest Victory Conditions are Science and Domination. I would personally go for science, but if you mucked up, and missed the critical Space Race scientists, you have to go for Domination, and you have to go for it fast.
Either way, you need to go for critical unit upgrades (tanks and artillery), and rush the civics that give you Corps and Armies (Nationalism, and then something I cant remember... Mercenary?), because otherwise you cannot compete with the AI's armies.
Choose a city with high production (atleast 40), and research nukes. You'll need nukes for two main purposes. To attack advanced AI cities with spaceport researches, which is the numero uno. There is most likely going to be atleast one Civ with an advanced space program, so just plop a few radiation farts down their way. This way you remove competition, and then you just endlessly press next turn until your space race is complete, and GG you just won the game.
If the situation for an easy Domination victory presents itself to you, just plop nukes on their capitals and then go claim them with a cavalry unit, ezpz, lemon squeezy.
I hope this helped. I finished my game on Turn 380. Which apparently isn't even decent. But hey it's a win, and I'm taking it. But I am saying this because I believe there are alot more efficient and better strategies to do this. But this was my way with a very limited experience and understanding of the game's mechanics, so maybe it will be enough straight forward for you to achieve your own first Deity victory
I left out alot of stuff about policy cards, trade routes, gold management (buy a bomber lategame for the nukes btw), trading with other civs etc. because I didn't want to boggle you down in the details. But ask away if you need clarification
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