i played a game last week specifically to get a time victory, it was on settler difficulty so obviously was easy. it was OCC so what i didn't have, i knew i would never get (duel size map, one opponent who i was never going to be friends with). i played as shaka to have a spiffy UU and did have to reroll quite a few times to make sure i got copper or iron (i got copper).
my pre-game strat was to cripple him early and keep him crippled and pinned in forever or until 2050, whichever came first. i never got horses, oil, uranium, or aluminum. i did have ivory. i got iron very very late, i was well into gunpowder.
my impis rocked at hurting him badly early on (altho of course they do need copper). i hated not having horses and did get to construction early to use jumbos, i made a lot of them. more than i'd ever need. which turned out to be very good since i hadn't realized that when ivory goes obsolete, it not only means you lose the happy face, you also lose the ability to make jumbos (silly me). i also hadn't realized that without oil you can't make gunships.
archer, cats, and ellies were key, and rushing to gunpowder. it would have been quite a bit more painful without the jumbos even on settler.
an iron finally came into my city radius after i'd researched steel, but luckily before i'd researched artillery. i connected it right away, and then ended up pillaging it, so that i could make catapults again. i wanted a level 6 unit for west point, but didn't want to waste a GG to get one. a jumbo was my highest exp unit. i needed to get collateral damage so that he and only he would kill the troops in the city to get the exp reach level 6. i was afraid that cannons might actually kill the defenders and i'd have to wait longer for mehmed to make more troops (i didn't want to actually take that city, time victory remember so i was dragging it out), so cats were the thing.
i mention pillaging my own iron to make cats available again to point out that if you want to see how such a situation would work, it's easy to fake. just make sure you don't road any strategic resources you want improvements on, and don't improve any that are on rivers since they count as roads whether you want them to or not.
it sure looked funny at the end. cute elephants running around with mech infantry, no tanks/modern armor/gunships anywhere, marines on my galleons, the first useful ironclads i've ever had, etc. it was a learning experience even at settler.
