What victory and how long did it take? Which civ is best to use on this difficulty? I never have a chance because i am bombarded from both sides with SoD plus the AI gets so far ahead in techs it's not very fun. Is it possible to win any other way but domination? I wouldn't imagine you could survive being the weakest with all teaming up on you but i wouldn't say it's impossible.
I've won once against the sid ai, civ of choice should be entirely dependent of which type of map you are playing and what strategy you intend to pursue.
My game was a archipelago 60% warm, wet 5billion I believe and I was playing netherlands (mostly to secure the ai not playing as them and glb rush, which i achieved)
My victory was quite reliant on rng, I had a pre 2500 bc war with lincoln, the only ai on my island, in which i captured his two settlers (guarded by a warrior each) while evading his sod of warriorz. Because I captured so much, I was "winning" so a peace treaty could easily be signed.
Managed to then block him off so that I got a fair chunk of land to develop.
The inevitable redeclaration came shortly before I got swiss, so had a tough war which I eventually turned by blocking him off all contact with the rest of world by continuously making each of them my war allies instead of his.
I got ahold of the entire island and were started to get a grip of the world situation.
The germans were starting to cascade away, knocking the japans out of the game and the mongols of the continent. After glb went obsolete I kept in tech parity by stealing every tech, enduring war declarations by defending, even the sid ai sucks at naval warfare, researching nothing, except for another TOE gambit, which gave me hoovers dam.
Left without oil, i had to invade the backward arabians living on a tundra island, which was still problematic because of their ~300 ansars and longbows.
Then I turned to face germany, after getting espionage, denying them any allies like i did with lincoln. After many, many turns of besieging Karakorum the city fell and I had a landpoint on his continent. After taking another couple cities I signed peace treaty, took open borders and fortified a mech army on his only source of oil (the aztecs managed to take his other source on a remote island).
Now I could fight him with superior troops and total air superiority, slowly but safely taking away germany from the map.
Bismarck was the only ai to reach the modern ages, so the rest was a race against time, conquering all other civs with like 18 turns left.
Honestly, after winning that I have a hard time sitting down and starting up another sid game, takes so much time to get going and so many units to vanquish. Maybe I should start playing with other victory options.
So in short, my tips are
Block off and grab as much land as possible
Try to 10% research a expensive tech available (typically writing) and try to monopolize it, gaining many needed techs for survival and infrastructure
Keep up in tech by trading til one ai races away (usually happens by IA)
Artillery units, lots of them
If you can, fight the strongest ai, by allying everybody against him
A modern army cant run without oil, deny them that at all costs.
Oh I just remembered, I've won another game on sid, but that was elimination, playing as the vikings on continents, staying in aa the entire game, also playing occ. Sending a single sod of archers to each neighboring civs, exploring the entire continent, then waiting out till the surviving ai on the other continent settles a city, and pray you can destroy it against rifles.
Still, that was with elimination.
Good luck!
