I tried beating deity on weekend. Peter was my choise, as suggested. One city challenge was my choice also. I got lucky start and found AH from hut! Started worker ASAP to improve corn and pigs while beelining to alphabet. I was first, I was able to trade techs like AH and mysticism to better ones! I waited until first AI was near discovering alphabet by himself, and traded it for everyone else for things like math, IW, monarchy, calendar and finally (with other tech of course) currency. I got first GS who built academy. In that point I had a tech lead. Wow, I never thought I could actually be tech leader when playing deity!
I had a some border skirmishes with Mehmed, but he sent only lonely chariots and horse archers, and they were easily destroyed. Rumors about massive stacks on deity were just a urban legend!
I went for Liberalism even I thought I may not have a change. Was second on CoL (lost confusianism by 1 turn!), got 2nd GS ready to lighbulb philo and switched to caste system and pacifism. I backfilled again with CoL, but did not trade philo away yet. Built NE to get even more GSs. When I finished CS I had three more GS ready to lightbulb paper and education (had to research one turn by myself, though). At that point everyone else already had paper but no one else had edu.
I had around 30-35 turns to liberalism (epic speed), it was going to be tight race. Got two more GS, I settled them on capital. Both reduced research time by 2-2 turns, which was nice. I was first and I won by one turn! Took printing press and beelined towards mass media. I lost race to physics, but was first on radio (time to backfill again to get steel and assembly line for fast UN production).
Built UN around 1500-1550. I had played my cards right, everyone was pleased or friendly to me, expect Ragnar and his two vassals. They had a small majority, hence I had no hope for diplomatic victory even everyone else voted for me. Ragnar continued his campaign (vasallized eventually Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mehmed and Hannibal!) and finally had enough votes for diplomatic victory. I actually had a slim change for space victory, because Mongols were not very fast building SS parts (their land sucked), Ragnar was warmongering and his vassals were crippled. I never get the internet in time (stupid me!), if I had beelined to it immediately I might have had a change. I had a very impressive production capacity, SS casings in 3 turns!
Have to try again, that was not so hard!
