I'm working on Diety, Huge Map with Standard Settings.
Tried half a dozen serious games, but I think I have a shot at winning my latest one.
It isn't easy and you need a lot of luck.
1. Starting with Incans and using Quecha rush.
2. I lucked out on my current map. Starting city is next to a river, goodie hut, cow, elephant and there was a copper mine two squares away hidden. Hut gave me a scout. Mine was next to the same river so I didn't need to build roads to it.
3. Sent my scout out to grab other huts. Got fishing, hunting and animal husbandry. My scout got attacked left and right by wild animals, but I was able to heal him up. Picked up Combat I and Medic so now I just stick him in large stacks and they get an extra 10% heal even in enemy territory.
Researched mining and bronze working on my own. Then went for Alphabet to force AI civs to give me all their tech when negotiating peace treaties.
4. Sent my one man Quecha army out for conquest. Captured one Indian worker and then an Indian city after clearing out three archers. Quecha's have 100% strength vs archers and combat I to start. Extra promotions after winning every fight helps.
Lucked out again. Bombay was a holy city for Buddism and on the same river as my capital so there wasn't a need for roads to spread religion or copper from my mine.
5. Started using captured workers and doing forest chops like crazy to build axemen. Didn't even bother with building barricks in my newly conquered city. My capital built a barrick while researching mining and bronze working.
Here's where things get interesting. I didn't do a lot of exploration so there is a lot of hidden territory. I've got 182378273 barbarians spawning. My cities are getting attacked every other round and sometimes by a stack of three barbs.
Unfortunately for the barbs, I've got one axeman in each city and another axeman parked on my copper mine. After three or four rounds my Axemen are getting 10 exp max from defending against barbs which is enough to promote them to Combat I (aggressive), City I and City II.
I send my upgraded axemen out from Bombay one at a time to join the fight. They capture New Delhi and the last Indian city and wipe them out.
I've turned all my axemen on the Chinese nearby, but it's a stalemate so far since he's got axemen, swordsmen and more cities.
6. With all the axemen I've produced from my capital I'm waging a war on the Japanese. With some spearmen to help against chariots I've taken over four Japanese cities. One of them is the holy city for Hinduism so I control two holy cities now. Japan has three cities left and one of the is the holy city for Judaism. England just discovered Christianity and I'm going after them after I finish off the Japanese. Not sure if controlling every religion is gonna help me.
I declared a truce with the Chinese and forced them to give me Wheel, Iron Working, Masonry and some other techs. Not making any progress parking armies against fortified Chinese cities while taking out raiders with my axemen/spearmen patrols.
Really need construction here for catapults.
7. Biggest problem I have right now is tech. I think I'm really far behind in terms of research speed and my units are going to get outdated really fast, but I think I'm stuck in a conquest strategy for now. My ten cities isn't enough to overpower the AIs in tech research and I've only eliminated the Indians.
The longer it takes to eliminate AIs the faster I'm going to fall behind.
Think I'm going to keep on trying to eliminate opponents one by one until I can get a Great Prophet and convert the world to the ways of Budda and let the cash start rolling in.
I can't imagine playing Diety without the Quecha rush right now unless you do custom settings.