I hadn't played Civ for many months, then for some reason picked it up again in August, and thought I'd come back and try some TSG games. To my amazement, I won the TSG17 Immortal game, but I won it with a Science victory, not domination. Oops. Still, that's the first time I've beat Immortal. As for TSG18...
I won at turn 420, but only barely! I'm not submitting as I replayed the last turn because I forgot to check the city state numbers and I had one less than I needed. I didn't want to slog through 10 more turns of the never ending war with Rameses, because that late in the game on a Standard map, my computer can't handle it, it gets far too slow.
My strategy was to focus on gold & science, try to stay peaceful with everyone, trade for as much gold as possible to get as many Research Agreements as I could, and use the tech advantage to defend myself lightly and cheaply.
Things started out okay, I grabbed the gems to the east right away, and went straight for sailing and bulding the Great Lighthouse. Then began an endless stream of missed wonders. The only two I got through the whole game were Colossus and Eiffel Tower. After the Colossus I built the Nat'l College in the capital (but forgot the treasury) and then settled some more.
I actually picked up a lot of free ships with the Corsairs ability, so exploring was a breeze. I brought the galleys home to promote them to triremes before sending them exploring. I settled the whales NW and the Wine on the south isthmus, and then I started having unhappiness so I slowed down my expansion. That was probably a mistake.
Egypt and Arabia were building wonders like crazy, so I didn't even try for any through most of the game. Eventually I built Circus Maximus, which gave me the few extra points of +happiness I needed to continue expanding. I was really stuck, because nobody seemed to have luxuries to trade for, and I didn't want to spend gold on luxuries, since I was saving that for the city states and emergency defense. Even gold was hard to come by, since England, Germany & India were locked in a never-ending war that left them poor. I wanted to soak rich Arabia, but they seemed to have other sources for all my extra luxuries. I was primarily relying on my ships to defend, but I had a couple of archers (then crossbows until well into Industrial era).
I was slow getting the National Treasury built, another mistake that cost me time and gold income. It was Renaissance, and I had 6 or 7 cities by that time, the map was fully explored, and Ramses, though very hostile, never declared war. I put granaries, libraries and markets in every city, bought harbors when they got up to size 5 or so, then specialized the growth ones for science, and the non-growth ones for gold.
My capital grew very slowly. I knew this was a problem, but I wanted to save the jungle tiles for university + trading post research, since research agreements seemed hard for me to come by.
Eventually, well into the Industrial age, Ramses finally declared war. I was pretty close to modern at that time, iirc. I spent most of my hard-earned savings upgrading my fleet to seven destroyers, my crossbowmen to infantry, and I bought an artillery piece to defend the eastern city.
I held off his attack, and my destroyers worked great on defense. I lost my single warrior (who I had only got up to Longswordsman before he was overrun). After Ramses retreated, he waited some time and eventually offered a plain peace deal.
As I hit Modern, I was up to 9 or 10 cities, all placed near luxury resources for gold income. Through modern, I kept my high bulb cities doing only research, and my high gold cities doing only gold, and I kept building growth improvements in my first 3 cities. I had early on built a temple in the eastern city, and that had paid off in border push, so I made it more of a culture center eventually building the sydney opera house there.
During this same time, Ramses started expanding like crazy to the north, and ran into a couple of my cities. I figured this would be a problem, and sure enough, he declared war again, this time bringing air units into the mix. My destroyers helped defend again, but they couldn't be everywhere, and Ramses also had a few submarines this time, so I lost half my fleet. He wiped out most of my defenses, and for a brief time took over the eastern city. I got it back with a few well-timed mech. infantry and a single artillery. After I got it back, I kept it reinforced with four mech. inf, an anti-air, and artillery and fighter planes in the city. I had lost a great general that had been in the city when it fell.
The science side of my empire was proceeding fairly well, considering there were only 2 countries I could reliably get research agreements with (France and Arabia). Still, I was nowhere near as fast as some people here have been. How does anyone get anywhere near the Modern era by turn 200???
Finally, as soon as I started building the UN, Guess Who showed up at my door. This was an all-out assault, only this time he had a slight tech advantage (rocket artillery that I didn't have yet). I did get Lasers with a Great Scientist shortly after the war started, so I got to field some Jet Fighters. He was attacking not only my city next to Thebes, but several of my northern island cities at the same time. I couldn't buy up units, because I had to save my cash for buying out city states for the UN vote, so I just tried to slow him down as much as possible. I lost my fleet to subs & rocket artillery, he gradually ate away at my mech. infantry with rocket artillery. My jet fighters and artillery combo were able to take out almost all of his artillery, until he took out my destroyers and then his destroyers covered the entire area with AA.
The city was doomed, but I made him pay dearly enough that he was unable to get any further I pulled out the jet fighters and escorted out the great general at the last minute. As a final insult, Ramses used an AA gun to capture the city. Egypt also only took one of my islands, as I had put local defenders up there, too, and they were able to hold off assaults by picking off the ground troops. They were getting the crap bombed out of them, but there were no ground troops to take the flattened cities.
When UN was done, I put my capital on gold, along with everything else, and by the time of the vote, I had about 15,000, which was enough to buy all the city states I needed (even a few that were hostile!). I was still at war with Ramses in the end, but he was short 3 city state allies, and I won.
I won, but I think it took me far too long, and I wish I knew how I could get going more quickly. Any pointers to helpful articles or threads on that subject would be welcome.
for your honesty. 
. Alas this time he decided otherwise.
I also took the city he'd plopped down near Istanbul (not Constantinople). After that it was a peaceful run to the finish.
