Alright, test game on Deity; I am almost in 2nd age, and although I am behind in tech's (not by a huge amount though), some civ's have Arqubruisers, which I am 4 techs back (EDIT: 8-10+ techs back

). But I am still in 3rd place in Power; and doing fairly well in Demographics with most all places being 4 through 10 out of all 31 civs.
In fact, out of my 8 immediate neighbors, I am Strong Military to 6, and Weak to 2 of them. The same thing goes for overall. Probably weak because I have been building infrastructure for the last 15 turns after taking out Spain. I have 3rd largest empire (I was first, so someone is taking cities fast from war).
This is absolutely insane that I am doing this good on Deity... I don't know if it is because of the defenders?? or what... but normally I get slaughtered on Deity in regular C3C games.
I am so confident in fact... once my building overhaul is completed, I am producing straight Cavalry units, and will completely run my Mayan neighbor into the ground (they have lots of Elephants, but I have destroyed every last one of their workers with my Enslavers; and I wait at the city that auto-produces them and kill them right there, and I do the same with their settlers; they have no ability to settle or improve terrain at all.)
My Enslavers are spreading to do the same to other neighboring civ's.
EDIT: Many wars are started in early game due to the fact that AI ships limited to coast, will 'plow through' other ships on the coast if they can't get around any other way (probably a similar situation to the sub-bug). I've seen it 3 times now, once to me
Tom