I can never feel like I've beaten a game unless I take down the AI on the hardest setting. I worked my way up from chieftain to now winning the majority of the time on monarch and emperor; but the deity level victory eluded me until more recently. After quite a few tries with my favorite civs: the Iroquois, Japanese, and Zulu, I started winning with a more disciplined strategy with the Egyptians (this is in plain vanilla Civ 3). The defeats taught me more than the first victory; but I figured I'd write down these tips for you Civ 3 players out there looking for a deity win. The two main problems about winning on the highest difficulty level is getting quick city expansion early and then trying to overcome falling behind all other civs in the tech race. It really puts you on a very defensive and diplomatic stance. The AI gets enormous advantages and works cumulatively against you, even when it fights amongst itself.
