Recently I read the article "How to Win on Deity Builder-Style, step-by-step." by Drakan and as I needed a change from the domination games I've been playing the last couple of months, I decided to try out that strategy. Of course the setup of the current game is not exactly as what Drakan had in mind, but a few stratagems can be applied.
In order to make up for the reduced number of opponents in this game, I sent out an early warrior right away and also tried to get a curagh going asap. But still I was not fast enough to meet the Vikings in that game...
Some of the German city names later showed, that they must have swallowed the Vikings before I was able to meet them! (The replay at the end of the game showed, that this happened around 1700BC, iirc.) The strange thing now is: the Vikings were never shown in the history graph throughout the entire game?! Anyway, it meant only 6 friends instead of 7 to do the research for me...
And as always in my Demigod games I had a very bad start and suffered a lot. Even though I gave in to all demands, gave little gifts here and there and had built a little culture at the start, the Carthaginians surprise-attacked me and took the town on the hill west of Rome, which I had planed to be my warrior factory. Only one turn before the barracks there would have been ready
! It was defended by something like a spear and two warriors, and they took it with less than a handful of units! That war was a nightmare, my archer were no match for the Numidians, and even on the offensive, those Numidians often killed fortified spears! I was barely able to avoid the loss of a second city, but Carthago was able to slip two settlers into my area and found two towns SE and SW of Rome. When it became clear that I would shortly loose my dyes town to them, I bit the bullet and gave them Literature for peace.
As layed out in Drakan's article, I went for the "Literature slingshot" and got it. (I had often failed to get the Rep slingshot at Demigod, so decided to try this alternative. Also because of the bad start, I would not have been able to get Rep anyway, so this strategy matched my situation perfectly...) As soon as infrastructure was in place, Rome had started the prebuild, but it was still like 15 turns until completion, when I had to give Literature to Carthage. And immediately afterwards other AIs started the Great Library as well! Also once Lit was publicly known, there was a danger of loosing the GL in a cascade. But my prebuild had apparently been good enough and carried the day in 775BC. Otherwise I would probably have given up the game. (As a matter of fact, when things were really tough, I had laid aside this game and started playing GOTM85 for a while, to get a bit of "distraction"...)
But with the GL things got slowly better. Turned off research and raked in quite a bit of money... My scouting warrior had met all AIs on this continent, except for Scandinavia (which had already been swallowed by that time). After the peace with Carthage I was able to complete my core as good as possible under these circumstances and concentrated on infrastructure and warriors. (This is another interesting "twist" of Drakan's strategy: he recommends to build two warriors instead of one spear, as the greater offensive power makes the AI consider you "stronger". As the Romans it had the additional benefit, that these warriors could later be upgraded to Legions...)
Sometime around 400BC I was able to buy iron from China and upgraded 15-20 Legions. Now was the time for "sweet revenge"... It took until around 10AD to take over Carthage's empire, including the Pyramids and the Great Lighthouse. I got two leaders in that war (highly unusual for me...). Both formed Legion Armies.
Shortly after the begin of the second "Punic War", which had triggered my GA, I got Republic from the GL. (A second despotic GA after COTM53...) But this time I waited until the end of the GA before I switched. The GLH now also enabled my galleys to cross over to the other continent.
The next phase was peaceful building again. I set up my second core 3NE of Carthage. Once that was complete, I decided it was time for another war. This must have been sometime between 400-500AD. I finally wanted that iron+horse town (Medina), and also I would need a much bigger empire for a successful research after the expiration of the GL. The Legions had meanwhile been upgraded to MI, and together with the two Legion Armies, that war was quite easy. The Germans, who had meanwhile also swallowed the Chinese, came to my aid. Fortunately they got only two Arabian cities, which was quite lucky, because -- as turned out much later in the IA -- otherwise I would not have had access to Saltpeter, Coal, Oil and Rubber!!
Mecca added two more wonders to my empire: ToA, which was quite useless, because I captured Mecca about 5 turns after the GL gave me Education, and Leonardo's, which was quite nice, because it always kept my defensive army up-to-date all the way from Pikemen to MechInf and from Trebuchets to Artillery.
From then it was peaceful research and trading for the rest of the game. (Except for two short wars described below.) I managed to get Copernicus' and Newton's, but lost the race to Smith's to the Germans. Starting in the industrial age, I got every wonder that I wanted (including the ToE/Hoover slingshot with two nicely-planned prebuilds), simply because by that time I was out-researching the AI. Which was a bit surprising, because the German empire was much bigger than mine. In general neither Germany nor Persia was very helpful in the IA and MA. Both got Nationalism, when entering the IA. I was able to trade three industrial techs from them, and sometimes they reduced the tech cost a bit for me, when they were finishing the tech, I was currently researching, 1-2 turns ahead of me.
Then in the MA they were completely useless. Germany got Computers and Persia Fission, but the prices they were asking, were incredibly shameless! The Germans were willing to sell Computers for Espionage, 1510 gpt, Worldmap and Oil, which is 30400 gold + a 2500-tech + oil for an 8100-tech! After all I had done for them...! Persia would not part with Fission for anything I had to offer. So I accepted the deal with Germany, then pillaged my two oil resources, which "freed up" my gpt again
D) and then traded Persia Computers, another large sum of gpt and a luxury for Fission, cut off that luxury as well and in the end got both techs basically for free
...
After that Germany and Persia were completely useless (except for a fair amount of money I got out of them for my techs). I researched Miniaturization, Rocketry, Space Flight, Nuclear Power, Superconductor, Satellites, Laser and Robotics in the hope that meanwhile one of these two jokers would come up with Ecology, but nope, I had to do that myself as well...
Two small wars in the IA: at one point Persia demanded an expensive tech from me. I said no, and they declared! I signed MPPs with India and Germany and then pretty much ignored that war... The Persians captured two overseas colonies of mine, which I had gotten in peace deals from Carthago and Arabia. After 20 turns I made peace again, gave them a couple of gifts and good deals to make them polite again and that was it.
Sometime later at the beginning of the MA the Indians landed a single Cavalry on my shores. Very suspicious... We had a RoP at that time, therefore I surrounded that Cav by workers and put a couple of MechInf in the cities close by. Sure enough the next turn India declared on me and captured three workers. (I didn't know so far, that Cavalry has the "blitz" feature
?) This war came quite handy, because the small island to the NE of India had Uranium. So I build three transports, loaded it with a MechInf Army, a couple of tanks and artillery and took that island. After that peace was established so I could continue to buy their wine for old crap technologies...
So in the end I managed to launch in 1655AD. Probably not a good date, but so far it looks like I was the only one who went for space, so perhaps I get the medal...?!
Jason somewhere in the 6000s.
Anyway, despite the many grey hairs in the beginning, it was a fun game, a new experience and finally a comfortable win on Demigod for me.
Lanzelot
I played and settled in about the same manner, but this time I got the Philo sling and was ahead of the AIs. I got Feudalism 2nd, then built MI and Legionaries and following the attack strategy I should have used above, I wiped the floor with Arabia.
. I didn't use the iron for much, I built like 1 lego, got GA and built 20 horses and killed off carthage with RoP rape, he was kind enough to build the pyramids for me 
, so I held back on attacking him. Persia didn't have iron when I arrived, but shortly after I attacked he somehow got it and got GA, though I only saw like 2 immos total. 
. I got 122 cities when I finished... I'm doubting anyone is gonna have that many cities for domination.
