With a really long history of Civilization on my shoulders, I think I understand all of this. I started on CivIII, and back then there was no worldbuilder. I remember there were some apps available on the internet for download that could edit some of your game values. Many times they ended crashing your game, so it wasn't reliable. I suffered a lot back then
And I'm sure I only started playing on a harder setting when I was already on College, so by my calcs I probably spent around 8 years playing Civilization (at least 4 years playing CIV) without bothering to try any difficulty harder then the normal level (Noble for CIV, I don't remember which for CivIII).
Then came the Multiplayer Era, and this was the reason why I decided to learn a lot more about the game and try it on harder levels. Prince was simply ignored, and we went directly to Monarch. Then 2 years later I was already trying Emperor, and from Emperor to Deity it didn't take a year.
I do remember using worldbuilder sometimes, but nothing compared to the time spent waiting to see every move done by the AI in CivIII when I used the reveal world map cheat. Back then you had to wait and see every move done by the AI if you were able to see the entire map. That was really frustrating, but many times I needed that to win
