Need advice for winning a Deity match on Huge Marathon, FFA vs 11 AI, 24 CS

My best game so far has been with Songhai. I razed all of my neighbor's cities(with the exception of his capital) and by the time i finished him off a few civs had like 1,000 points while i was in the middle of the pack with about 600 points, even after what i considered a flawless start . (Had a lot of different lux resources,only lost 1 unit in the war vs my neighbor) I havent lost the game but i feel like im to far behind these other civs and i will eventually lose.

Please dont offer advice unless you have won with settings similar to this.

 

marathon....

1. assuming you play with ruins, open with 3 scouts (no ruins -> 2 scouts)
2. Use liberty 3-4 cities or tradition 2-3 cities
3. build 6-8 archers (or less, if you don't have enough gold)
4. Upgrade to CBs (hard build CBs if needed)
5. Do shooting practice to stack XP
6. shoot until you get range+logistics
7. Conquer the world

 

Marathon...I slightly highlighted the most important of all.

 

Ive pretty much done all of these things, any other advice?

 

1. Find the capital with the most wonders and take it out.
2. Don't lose your units in marathon because they are extra valuable. This is something the ai doesn't recognize and it's why marathon is so much easier than standard pace.
3. Don't worry about the score. If you take enough wonders you will eventually be the leader.

 

To be true, I do not understand why people play marathon. It is -2 difficulty levels to standard speed.

 

Really?ive been told marathon on huge maps is harder than small maps/quicker games

 

It may be harder than using Attila on a duel map quick game. Whoever told you that marathon on huge was harder is misinformed. I haven't played marathon in a long time, but I remember certain things didn't scale right and it only seemed to benefit the human. The one big thing is what I said earlier and it's that units are extremely valuable and the ai does not understand. On regular pace they can keep losing units then pumping out more to keep up. On marathon if they lose a unit, they cannot replace it for a long time. Also, it's easy to get insanely upgraded units on marathon that would be very difficult to attain on standard. Most experience players agree deity marathon is equivalent to playing standard speed king/emperor games. I have always wanted the marathon scaling to be better, because I would very much enjoy it if it were more of a challenge.

 

Rank up your units to give them range and logistics promotions and what not. It's like the stealth bomber which isn't intercepted by usual radars since range can get you faraway from the city's shooting radius.