Have recently started playing Deity, got 3 wins already.
Frist i tried babylon standard continents, had to reroll because i was geting Monty and Iourquis flanking me and DOW early. I even managed to kill monty once but going for the other would have been a pain and I wanted a peacefull game. In the reroll i got a nice peninsula with a few mountains and a citystate blocking my entrance to the rest of the continent, so i turtle up and went for a nice science victory, geting a few DoW but only got into trouble once a massive persia started pushing me when i was building the spaceship parts. keeped killing his units at range until the very end.
The seccond one was with Isabella from spain, pangea, standard, domination, beelining Chivarly and taking out Rome and France and i think iourquis with Conquistadors, than Germanny backtabed me and i had no oil so i bulbed to Mechinfantry and used that and artys to deal with them. aftter that i had oil, and uranium, so i hit A-bombs in japan(ingluding nagasaki for history accuracy
) and take their uranium, than i have all the map uranium, just cleaned up small gandhi and massive USA in a couple turns. quite nice win.
third one i was Egypt, started with the HGardens plan, then education. DoF with arabia and japan(who was north but didnt share borders), Demmark and Monty declared on me for about the whole game. I just wonder spam and build my own 3 than later 6 cities (got a nice spot to expand). Monty died eventually(he massivelly DOW everyone in sight) i took demark out when i got rifles. was planing on using artillery, but only used in his last city(nice spot with 3/4 whales, 3/4fish and hills for production, should have been his captial but i beleive he settled the other settler frist). From there since i had artillery i decided to take on the score leader russia. After that i was planing to get the eiffel tower but harun(my friend) got when i was 1 turn away, so i reloaded and DOW him
. After that backstab and i almost wiped him out the rest of the word was guarded to me. I could easilly got nukes and killed off japan, ottomans and elizabeth, but the science victory was right there and i had about 200 production in my captal (2 GE setled, the HS one and Liberty, I hard build both PT and ND with them) so i went for it. really early science(turn 230+/- i think), with most of the map controled. quite nice.
So tips:
The one thing that was substancial in all games was finding allies early on and paying for people (all people, not only ally) to DoW each other, so they lose their RA(while you keep yours) and lose units/waste resources/production on meaningless wars and take diplomacy hits with other civs. Find out who do you want to go to war with who and make them hate each other. Always find out who of those two will pay less to Declare war on the other. Don't denounce cause that civ will probably denounce you back and you get a diplo hit (unless everybody is already denouncing them, then join the party for a diplo bonus with the rest if that civ is not your friend/threat to you)
Top civs don't seems needed, but a mediam civ would be apreciated, and I certally would not want to play as polinesia on deity pangea
The starting place for the captal should be able to grow and have nice production (i would consider at least 3 hills for the early game, within 2 tiles tops so you can buy). Other than that everithing else is bonus, but not essensial.
Mining resources are a nice, marble is only good if you can settle on it(to have a shot at GL or HG without researching mansory) otherwise is just ok for HS and nothing else. Not geting gangbanged before turn 50 seems essensial as well, but an early DOW is not all bad if you can defend well enought while stiking to your plan, it takes quite a toll on your opponent units and than you can couterattack than sometimes even with archer and horses.
Anyway i'm not an expert by any means, just my couple cents
Around 1912 AD Hiawatha built the UN. Three votes in a row stayed undecided, and 5 city states abstained every time. Like mad I started collecting money by selling everything I had: units, luxuries, buildings, resources. Until I had the money (6500 gold) to ally the 5 abstaining city states and make one city state change side. I won the 7th vote. I still cant believe I won on deity with such a poorly developed civilization. The other civs had 3x (Catherine) 5x (Suleiman) and 11x (Hiawatha) my score of about 600 points!!
