All my games end the same way.
Some far-off civ not met till caravels is 2-3 military techs ahead, apparently has a massive economy, hates me (different religions due to overseas), and has an army 10X mine, attacks 10-30 turns after meeting.
With the tech advantage, and massive army size the game is lost at this point. Not much to do when 40 units land in the first wave, with another 60 quickly following.
The only glimmer of hope is a highly promoted leader (from behind), but that army can only be a reactionary force and there are too many invasions. The super-civ always buys allies against me, and while their armies are near enough to mine to handle, it's a numbers game that can never be won.
Does anyone actually get past this point in the game?
I tried making all of the gunpowder era units national units to limit the numbers, but perhaps did not go wide enough in scope or low enough in numbers. Another change was to lower the free military units with the later civics (eg -5 free with Guilds).
Is there some sort of mod that could be incorporated that is able to limit the number of units (ie "realistic army size")?
I really like the culture preservation option, however disagree that recently captured cities would be trusted to raise significant numbers of troops. Don't know if it's still around, but there used to be a unit allegiance mod. Perhaps that is the missing component?