Well, the saga is over, and I won. If I were any of the AI players I was up against I would be asking myself the following questions.
The Zulu:
Why did I research Advanced Flight when I was in a tight spaceship race with 2 other civs?
Why, being in Fascism, and being the leader in every aspect of the game, did I make peace, like a wuss, after 8 turns of war with a much weaker neighbouring civ who was threatening a space race win? And why did I only send over a couple of troop transports, one at a time, when I had hundreds of units sitting around on my soil scratching their behinds?
Why did I trade uranium to my mortal enemy 1 turn before the end, allowing him to build the final spaceship part?
The Indians:
Why did I declare war on another civ and then send a grand total of NO units at them?
The Russians:
Why did I demand tribute and then declare war when I had only 1 city left?
The Egyptians:
Why didn't I attack any of the troops invading my continent until they'd already slaughtered 80% of my forces?
The Chinese:
Did I really think that the 3 troops I pathetically managed to send across a short sea divide to invade my neighbour were going to have a chance? And why did I make a military alliance with the Zulu only to have them declare war on me the next turn? I think I'm confused.
The Mongols:
Whoops, I'm dead. What happened?
The Iroquois:
I've been dead so long I've almost forgotten what it feels like to be stupid.
The Arabs:
Why did I keep on declaring war on the only civ in the game that was being nice to me and trading me cheap tech, or sometimes even giving it to me for free to help me to keep up? I mean, I really didn't have to demand Superconductor. I probably could have bought it for 500 gold or something. Doh.
The answer to all of these questions is the same. Even on Sid, the AI is stupid, and doesn't know how to make good use of what it has. Which is good, of course, because if it did, the game would be unplayable at any level above Regent...! Out of all the above mistakes, surely the Zulu researching Advanced Flight in a space race was the worst. In my opinion, if the Space Race victory condition is enabled, the AI tech tree in the modern age should be hard-coded so that they only research techs relevant to
I was intimidated by the idea of this level before; now I know it's beatable, given a good start. Maybe if you're a good enough player you don't even need the good start; I mean, after my good start a LOT of things went wrong for me, but I was still able to win. I would say that the only difference I saw between Sid level and Deity is that the AI has INSANELY large stacks of units on Sid, making it extremely difficult to make war against; but I was never much of a warmonger anyway, I'm much more comfortable building and trading and creating a commercial and industrial powerhouse with a modest military...
I'll be trying this level again and I recommend people to give it a go. It's not impossible.
