Greatest challenge, and yet over before railroads. It must be a drag not having any game be a challenge. Maybe you should try archery, or golf.
I did play Golf for about 1.5 years. I finished with a Handicap of 16 and with scoring 3rd place (gross) in the yearly golf's club championship with a score of 11 over par after 2 rounds ^^ . I also once won the 1st place in the yearly youth championship for clubs from all around the area, so I already got that achievement ^^
Seraiel, I think for the Strategy forum, it would be a (relatively) safe assumption that people are trying to win at the higher difficulties, or at least higher than they are winning at currently. For the General Discussions forum, I think it depends a lot more on the person. There are a lot of people here who, while they can win at a certain level, say Emperor, prefer to play at King because they find it more fun not having to play so optimally, and aren't interested in winning at higher levels than they are presently. And as Timsup2nothin said, there's also a sizeable contingent of us who like to play into the later stages of the game rather than winning as soon as possible. There certainly are people interested in optimizing their score/difficulty level, it just isn't a safe assumption that everyone in General Discussions is (though I agree that in a non-mod specific thread, you have to assume we're talking about the non-modded game, or you can't really assume anything).
I personally don't build Forest Preserves as I tend to be very lumbermill-centric with my forests (most of which survive into late-game, though some fall victim to irrigation projects or mining for resources, and on rare occasions something like a windmill). By the time forest preserves come around I tend not to be having happiness issues, so the +1 happiness isn't usually much of a draw (though I'd previously thought that the city had to be working the tile to get +1 happiness... good to know that isn't true).
I understand, that players are playing lower difficulty levels, and I also understand, that not everybody somehow wants "to study a game to become a master in it" . Yet, I don't understand, how human (in general) can be so stubborn, and not simply take something good when it's offered to them.
In general, I've always been really thankful, when somebody with greater experience shared his experience with me. I never questioned such people, I just took what they gave me and accepted it.
Regarding what you wrote: I cannot really remember when the last time was, when I chain-irrigated anything precisely. I do build 1 farm somewhere if it upgrades a food resource lying directly next to it, but as for the rest, I wouldn't even have the Worker turns for that, as I usually manage with 1 Worker / city, or even less.
It's hard to describe this, but I've found out, that really only the very fewest tiles are worth working at all, meaning riverside Grassland and Floodplains, if at all, and not only the special resources. There are situations, where it's still right to work a grassland mine, sometimes even a plains mine, sometimes even a plains Cottage, but those are situations lasting only over a short period of time, like i. e. fast-teching Education to reach Liberalism.
There's a basic rule over at Strategy & Tips forum, saying "don't whip away the Food" , and that's almost the only rule I'm willing to accept. It really takes playing Deity, to find that there's absolutely no room for "I want this" or "I'd like to" , because seriously, 400% and more bonuses on almost everything are nothing but insane. It's actually amazing, that AI is scripted that bad, that it can lose with those bonuses at all.
Ping Pong, Lacross, maybe Foos Ball? lol, seriously, I admire your competitive spirit and single minded focus of beating the game as fast as possible. I'll think I'll just enjoy playing on my puny little mortal lvl and not worry about beating the game before rail roads
I played Ping Pong, I'm not sporty enough for Lacrosse and definately not for Football. Thx for the compliment, though I'm not really sure if single minded focus really is one
. I am very competetive, yes, I actually have no idea why, it's just as it is, and I need the best players / enemies, to get really good myself. If there's noone to beat, I suck badly.
I do chop forests, but I only see its usefulness in Ancient/Classical eras when the
received from a chop really help to complete a Library or a Horse Archer much faster. For Renaissance/Industrial buildings/units the
are insignificant and chopping a forest can even do more harm than good because cities are larger which means
becomes an issue.
I understand this. You think that if a city makes 50
/ turn, the Forrest will only shave of 1 turn, but theres a complete error in the way you manage your workers, if you even have forrests left in Renaissance era. Let's say that a usual city has 8 forrested tiles. That city has to build a Granary, maybe a Library, definately a Forge, and if possible also a Barracks and an AP-temple. The total sum of those buildings, is over 200
, which about amazingly just those Forrests. You can construct all of those buildings prior to reaching Education, if you just chop, chop, chop, and you'll be rewarded, with an excellent city, that's good in size and has all necessary buildings.
Me just mentioning that number of buildings, already says something about how I play, there are also players arguing that the only building necessary is a Granary, and I partly agree with them. To understand why Happiness and Healthiness is no problem, you must simply understand the principle of Slavery, and that is, the smaller the city, the more efficient the whip. To produce Horse-Archers, a city has to be exactly size 4 to allow 2pop-whipping. There's no possibility, that you won't have a Happiness and Healthiness-limit lower then that.
The exceptions to this are exactly 2 cities, the capital, and the GP-Farm, because those actually benefit from being larger, but all other cities are simply too weak, because they don't get heavily multiplied by Burocracy, and running multiple GP-Farms is more sort of a special strategy for Golden Ages.
As I understand, that your games go very late, I'd just like you to once think over this: Why are there strategies in HoF, where people chop-out the Spaceship parts? (Non-Deity-Question. )
Seraiel
and 
through Emancipation won't hurt you ^^ What hurts, is having +5 Unhappiness through lack of Emancipation plus +6 
