@Unconquered Sun
What are your thoughts on riverside plains cottages, capital or not? Dave's declared his disdain for them repeatedly in favor of specialists, but near max size vs a non-riverside grassland cottage or a far far off great person...
Plains and grasshill non-financial cottages: I wouldn't compare them directly to specialists. I'd compare them to grasshill mines, where they lack income.
I'd also consider their pacing. If capital, they'll be the last tiles to be worked as a good capital has high happy and health caps and, consequently, has a lot of growing to do.
Other cities have more of a flat line followed by a sudden increase in caps mid-to-end game. Investing in 1food cottages during the flat line is not that good as you'll need more food eventually, adding more turns before being able to reap villages+printing press and higher incomes from 1food tiles. It's probably better to work mines and so on early on; then switch to food, grow, and switch to Emancipation cottages.
This is basically what I was getting at. But I wouldn't consider it "breaking gameplay down to essentials". The "essentials" on higher levels, to me, seem to be the well-known gambits that a lot of us use. You don't necessarily deprive yourself by growing cottages early on, you still get the same GPPs from your GP farm.
I was making more of an argument that Deity is really something in and of itself, and the bonuses are so ridiculous that only what essentially amounts to hacks will let you pull through. A lot of people won't consider brokering GP-bulbed techs "hacking" but at the very least you got to admit that the fact civilizations can "trade" techs is a bit iffy. Add in the fact that you can broker them amongst civs and it's even more over the top.
I wouldn't say all the gambits are well-known. It's not that long ago since, say, BOTM 10, when my gameplay shocked a lot of people: mind you, that was a fairly mainstream set of gambits by my understanding; truly rare gambits require truly rare map/opponent setups.
Deity is something of itself, but much less so than it was in Warlords. Its weakest spot is indeed roleplay diplomacy, and will remain so until Firaxis drop the useless "aggressive AI option" and add "gamist AI" option.
Tech bribes are the most powerful leverage we have on diplomacy. Bulbing is a different matter though. It's simply the best investment-to-return way to research early on.
