[R&F] Deity Beginner - is this a playable start?

Alright, folks. I finally got through this game and have a first Deity victory under my belt. Granted, this is a pretty dirty victory given that I tried the map multiple times and I knew the layout, and I also had to reload twice to rethink a couple of poor strategic decisions. But hey, it's a start! I think I learned some valuable lessons that I will try to apply in my next deity play-through.

To win this, I started from the position above where I captured Scotland. I built cities to cover all remaining accessible space that didn't bulge too much into other civs' territory, using the city-states as a buffer. Per others' advice, I then immediately focused on catching up on infra: I aggressively chopped out campuses and, to a lesser extent, commercial hubs and theater squares, to quickly get up and running. I then focused on peaceful improvement with detours for some military techs to have a viable defense, prioritizing every scientific building (library/university/research lab). Finally, when I got close to winning, I got the Royal Society Government Plaza building, and started spamming workers to rush all the space-ship parts.

Main problems/mistakes:
-One mistake I made after my initial expansion phase is to go after one of the city-states between me and the Cree. This immediately resulted in all other civs denouncing me as a warmonger, and backfired 50 turns later, when I was at war with France and barely hanging on, and got DoW'd by the Cree in a war for territorial expansion. I went back to the point where I'd made this decision and just left the city-state as a buffer. This did take away slightly from my empire size, but I was able to eventually get Friendship declarations from Arabia, Mapuche, and Cree not long after, which was very useful for the rest of the game. To be fair, I had a gut feeling when I tried this that it was a bad idea.
-The biggest problem I had by far, was dealing with France: because of the giant border between us, I had to constantly maintain a relatively large and expensive army, relying on timed upgrades to try to keep the costs at least somewhat under control. I had to fight an Industrial Age war that I was able to survive by liberal use of Field Cannon and some Infantry, but it was definitely a struggle and I felt that it could have easily swung the other way. Then in the Modern Era, France started massing troops on my border, but luckily I seem to have been able to get just enough military (seems like airplanes did the trick - I got a message from her about it) to make her change her mind, and eventually actually declare friendship with me. I think this is the biggest area where I need advice in this match: how do I maintain a sufficient military force without bleeding unnecessary gold throughout the entire game paying for it (obviously, aside from using the correct cards)? I'm wondering if the only actual viable solution here is to force the other Civs to like you - a lot - by pandering to whatever their specific civ trait is (e.g. with France I should have focused more on espionage than I did), but relying on friendship declarations seems like a brittle solution. Also, what is your folks' take on using air-power as defense in the late game? I didn't have to use it, but it seems like having a large number of planes would allow me to tear into invading armies without taking any damage of my own (since AI doesn't seem to prioritize air superiority or anti-air).
-Another minor mistake which could have cost me the game if Arabia was more competitive was starting on a second spaceport too late. It seems like the best strategy here is to time a 2nd (and possibly 3rd) space port to complete shortly after the first one, so that I could parallelize the last 3 components of the ship, taking advantage of the worker boosts. In this game, though, I seem to have pulled it off.
-Finally, though I am not sure whether this is a mistake or just the reality of this particular map, I never quite ran away with the game - at least not in the way that I could run away with games in Emperor and below, where I would be an age or more ahead of the competition by the end of the game. Is this your experience as well? Or, should I have tried to be even more aggressive with science, to try to completely dominate?

So, in short, I think the main problem area here was managing my military/diplomacy after the initial expansion phase to act as a deterrent. Any and all advice here would be welcome.

I also attached a t285 victory screenshot for a rough view of my stats and final empire.

@Victoria, can you please elaborate a bit on this comment: "just not too many times or you can built false positives in your head"? Just want to know what I should be careful of, as I plan to use this approach on my next couple of games.

Huge thanks again to everyone on this thread, for the help here!
 

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Congrats on your first Deity victory! Don't feel dirty about replaying a map or reloading - it's all about learning. You'll get to the point where it won't be necessary.
 
Sounds like you are doing great
how do I maintain a sufficient military force without bleeding unnecessary gold throughout the entire game paying for it
Defence is far stronger than offence in this game. Turtling in ideal terrain gives great strength and defending fortified with heal just gives a huge edge. Adding to this city walls and the power of ranged means your defensive army does not have to be huge. But unless your cities are where a civ wants to expand diplomacy is a powerful thing. Most games I am looking at neighbours constantly early for who likes who to foster the right relationships and use them to your advantage. Too much to talk about now.
Trade routes not only bring gold but also peace.
just not too many times or you can built false positives in your head"
Play the same game 5 times and you find a certain action does really well. Next game is hugely different and using the same tactic/strat hobbles you. So much of this game is dependant on the map and the civs and their moods.
 
So, not that anyone really cares : ), but I have just won a second Deity game, this time on Continents and with Korea. Much cleaner this time - only exception was a reload on t15 because Japan decided to rush me then. With a bit of planning, I was able to hold off their attack with archers that arrived just in time, and once I exhausted Japan's units I went on the counter-attack and was able to take over their entire land. They denounced me early on which should have been my clue that they're going to attack. In any case, the strategy of a very early warrior + archer rush seems to be incredibly effective in some setups (both in this game and in the previous) - so much so that I'd argue that it's a bit overpowered (since I clearly am not a Deity player, and yet I was able to win twice in a row with this approach). I also found that Continents is much easier to manage than Pangaea, especially in this game, where I was able to get good isolation and then play my way to victory peacefully for the rest of the game. Screenshot of the win attached.

Going to give it a bit of a rest, and try an early Knight push to see how that goes. Or maybe try to get up to the higher difficulties in one of the older Civ games (I've got a special nostalgia for Civ3) at some point.

Folks, wanted to again thank you for walking me through this - it is incredibly satisfying to get back-to-back wins on Deity (even if with a couple of reloads), and you guys helped me to it.
 

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