Aside from just turning it off as an option when you start a game, are there any successful strategies for preventing this? I am trying for a science victory on medium (Prince or King) difficulty and keep running in to the same scenario. An AI civ on the opposite side of the world conquers all his neighbors, gets crazy gold per turn, builds the U.N., pays off all the CS and wins the vote long before anyone sniffs the techs for a science victory. What is even more frustrating is that when I scout their territories, they are full of puppeted cities with little to no tile development and yet they still have ridiculous (300-400) gold per turn production.