Originally posted by Speaker
Well, there's only one way to find out isn't there? 
Yup, when I started playing RBCiv, I made the giant leap right from Warlord to Deity. Of course, that was epic 12, the gauntlet, in which I and many, many, MANY other players were crushed into powder beneath the Aztecs or Romans heels...
Just rmember the biggest thing I learned from following enough SG's...just about ANY game is winnable from most positions, if you take enough time to strategize. At the higher difficulties, the key thing is to slow down and take your time to plan everything. Calculate the shields/food for a settler factory, MM your cities to proper numbers of shields for optimal production and to avoid waste, analyze, analyze, ANALYZE EVERYTHING
And...one must get over any and all "crutches" they have, ie a particular civ, always have to start by food bonus and/or lux, etc. So...what I tend to do is to say "difficulty: Deity. Mapsize: standard. EVERYTHING else random, including my civ" And no matter the start, play it out. I played a game once where I started on the south end of a peninsula that was all hills/plains, not even a decent 2-food tile anywhere aside from city centre tile. By the time I expanded to the end of the peninsula where it joined the landmass, I had 4 cities, and the entire continent was full. The AIs had 12-25 cities each, compared to my four. I won that game by space, where at the beginning, it seemed impossible to get anywhere with my four cities that couldn't surpass size 3-6 until electricity, as I could barely irrigate anything.
Thank you for such an entertaining read a year ago, but since I wasn't registered then, I couldn't state my thanks. This game inspired me to win my first Deity game.
