Nice to meet someone to have things in common with (I'm assuming you're listening to the same sort of music that I like, because of the way you write)
.
To help at defining an intermediate player: To me, intermediate players are that have generally accepted that they are playing a game, but they're neither far advanced enough to simply pull things of, nor are they so new, that they don't know about the basics. I think intermediate players can be found on all levels and in all games. What makes them hard to find in CIV, is that Deity is just so much above all other levels, that everybody winning that level says things like "everything below that was nothing" . I think there are generally 3 lvls in CIV, and those are "below Prince" , "up to and including Immortal" , and then Deity.
Those jumps are from pure personal perspective, because when giving back what people in these forums think, the levels would be "anything up to monarch" , "Monarch + Emperor" and then "IMM + Deity" , because Monarch is the first level where the AI starts with Archers, making Warrior rushes impossible, and IMM + Deity are often mentioned the same, however, I don't find that true from personal experience. My experience is telling me, that Noble can still be won without any real knowledge about game mechanics, Prince however, doesn't allow that anymore, even though some people say so, on Prince, one loses if one doesn't know that trees can be chopped, that slavery converts population to hammers, and that everything Sid (or the game) is suggesting, is stupid. Once one has found out those things, it's a straight way up to Immortal, because it's until that level, that certain tactics almost always garantuee a win, i. e. Worker-stealing, Axe-Rushes, REX, building the Mids, getting Oracle, or whatever.
But then, comes Deity, and Deity is simply the level where a player gets confronted with the uggliest and most ridiculous things he ever has experienced. He's forced to refrain himself from wanting, he's refrained from wishing, he's refrained from relying on something, but it's that level, where he finds out that there's a layer past wanting, it's math, that the layer behind wishing is doing, and that everything he thought being necessary, was something hurting him. He'll get to know that what he knows is truely good, or AI will show him the opposite.