Here is what has occurred in the latest game I have played, in case any of this info may help for development, or if anyone is interested;
First of all, not to brag at all, but I am a pretty experienced player. I know far less about the game than a lot of you here, but I can beat most scenarios on Deity pretty easily. This one has given me the biggest challenge of my civ life. It has also probably been the most fun I have had in this game. I have thanked Genghis Kai privately for making this, but it can't hurt to do it again here; Thanks bud! Best civ scenario ever IMHO. That is until you finish the one for the World 2009, of course. ;-)
Playing as Germany on deity. Please don't call me a Nazi, I tend to like the underdog. No camps or genocide in my Germany.
I started off smashing through France and the rest of western Europe. Russia wasn't causing me much trouble, the US was not a threat. I was thinking, oh great, another easy WWII scenario where I will take over the world with no resistance. Wrong.
I need more oil, so I start moving in to the mid east. I take out Saudi Arabia easily enough, plus the Brit cities on the peninsula. I invade Iraq and Iran, then force them to capitulate with just enough cities to make a nice little buffer zone between my cities and Russia and British India, respectively. Jerusalem has a lot of troops, it takes a few more years before I take it.
Meanwhile, I move all my bombers from western Europe and west Asia to the Russian front, and take out a really good chunk of their territory. It's a bitter fight that I eventually win, mainly because American and Canada are no where to be seen, and England isn't giving me much trouble, either by bombing France, or from India. Sorry, I don't know exactly what years all this is happening during, I can look at saved games if anyone cares.
By now I also have Jerusalem, and my ally (Hungary) has Beirut, which is a little annoying because it breaks up my sweet mid east empire. Egypt decides to become a vassal of, I think Russia, maybe America, either way I am forced to invade. No problem, they have weak units, 8 bombers and a few Panzers I had sitting in Jerusalem did the trick. But this opened up another huge, hard to defend front in Africa; with Britain, along with colonial France and Dutch (because I have all their European territory) attacking.
America seems to start off weak militarily, and then shoot up in terms of production. This could not be more perfect, it's what happened in reality. By 1945 they have by far the largest GDP, power, and production. So now, the American attacks start.
Meanwhile in Asia, Japan has made peace with Russia and China, and is now only fighting France. I can not for the life of me get them to attack America for any price... I guess the AI isn't open to attacking new countries while they are at war. I get no help from them.
So, I get 100% of the American onslaught. Every second turn is now D-Day for me. The US attacks with huge stacks, either dropping them in north western France, or invading Nantes or Bordeaux and dumping a stack there. Huge groups of ships, complete with multiple carriers and aircraft (thank you BTS!). Eventually they start coming from the south and taking Marseilles. I am totally under prepared for this, and it takes some luck and a massive amount of drafting to get this under control. At the same time, Canada has started taking my cities in Norway and opened up a whole new front there. Then, Britain I guess had built a huge army in India, and they start ripping through my Iranian vassal and moving quickly towards my territory there. I am now dominated in the skies, my few remaining bombers are useless everywhere but in Africa. It looks very likely that Britain will send a stack in to my territory that I can not repel. I hit them with as many artillery as I can muster, slowing them down a bit. They have occupied almost all of Iran, except Tehran. I was forced to withdraw the army I had in Iran, which until now, had been repelling the Brits.
All this time I have been focusing a lot on spying, and so other civs have shot past me in terms of techs. My only answer to the onslaught of British gunships is frantically turning my drafted infantry into SAM infantry, and then giving Panzers the gunpowder promotion to defend against their mechanized infantry. My superiority in arms has been reversed. (I'm not a WWII expert, but I think that also mimics history)
Russia had rebuilt its destroyed army, and brought it to the front line. Facing it would have meant a very costly battle, and possibly losses. I'm forced to make a hasty peace with Russia, even though I wanted to crush them into a vassal. This is breaking from reality on my part, since by now Russia had an agreement with the US and UK to fight until the end, but since my conquest of at least 50% of Russian territory is much bigger than what the Nazis had achieved, I figure it's possible. Anyway.
Now nukes come in to play. For some reason, no one had built the Manhattan project for a long time, but finally Spain did. Just before my first batch of nukes is built, Britain hits me hard in Nantes with two tactical nukes, wiping out a huge part of my army.
Here is where I get lucky; this combined with making peace with Russia are the only reasons I was not beaten back badly. My spying pays off, all of a sudden I can see what British cities are producing. London is 2 turns away from SDI! So I load up a transport, and on the next turn, hit them with two ICBMs and invade the city (sorry sacrificed Infantry, God speed. lol). After an ugly nuclear exchange, I manage to flatten all of their cities in England, and invade. This totally turned the tide, in fact I think it plunged them in to revolution (their stats shot down on the info screen, and then back up)
Russia then attacks Britain. I guess they want to take India to make up for their lost ground. This forced Britain to move some of their huge stack out of Iran, so I can breath again. I have since conquered British west Africa, but since France capitulated to Japan, I can't have it all. Since Japan was now at peace with everyone, this now opened up the opportunity to bribe them into fighting the USA (5500 gold, my entire treasury). This has forced the US to lighten up their attacks against me, but not stop them. Canada is now causing the most trouble, invading England nearly every turn.
And that's where I stand. I look to have won now, thanks only to my luck in London, and Russia's help. I think I will now look to make a global peace soon, and then begin a cold war vs a super powerful America.
My suggestions:
1) get rid of the space race. It happens to soon, plus WWII shouldn't end because someone launches a space craft! I know this is something I can simply change by playing a custom scenario, but you may want to consider making not having it default.
2) make it harder, if not impossible, to get SDI. In real life, right now the US is still at least 20 years away from any system like this. In the game, they had it by 1948.
Sorry for the novel.