AI starting units are adjusted to Deity level.
I'm not a big fan of Challenger series games that are played on a different difficulty level, as it's often "cheap" to go a level up for faster teching trading partners in the AIs.
That said, I couldn't pass up the Deity-level unit adjustment.
The Deity save for this game has units adjusted to deity level as I added them in WB. In future, we will be going to the system you describe as it is easier to manage for staff.
In that case, in the future, I'll probably go back to boycotting the Challenger games again.
Honestly, my preferred Challenger games are ones that are played at the same difficulty level, so that players can't get an advantage from tech-trading with higher difficulty level AIs (and thus faster-teching AIs) or from capturing better-developed Cities from higher difficulty level AIs (and thus better City-building AIs).
Take away my starting Warrior. Burn down my Forests. Take away a Gold Resource from the start. Let me "forget" one of the starting techs. Give the AIs extra units (although it sounds like that stuff is a lot of work, so maybe just the nearby AI gets 2 extra Archers or something). Whatever. Make it harder, but make it on the same difficulty level. Then, Challenger players are still faced with an extra set of challenges to overcome, without getting potential advantages over Contender players who have "weaker-playing" AIs. It defeats the purpose to play the Challenger save if doing so means that you get advantages over the Contender level players. I made an exception in this case, though, as the extra Settler and other units for Deity-level AIs really does make for a tough challenge.
Okay, onto the game...
I decided to settle on the Plains Hills square. Pangaea... fast-built Settlers... I figured that I could get out a quick Worker, a Warrior or two, then pump out a quick Settler before all of the land was eaten up.
But, then the Scout uncovered the Gem Resource, so I settled on the OTHER Plains Hills square. Hey, it's Deity. Go big or go home. Either I'm going to die or I'd better have a strong capital so that I can tech up to Iron Working relatively quickly, should we prove not to have a nearby Horse Resource. At least I could Axeman-rush this "Ulundi built on a Copper Resource" City with the luck of having either Copper or Iron nearby, since Axemen would likely eat Shaka's Impis (as long as I could catch them!). Unfortunately, that meant that I was settling with 2 Seafood Resources in my fat cross in a City that wasn't on the Coast, but I'd live with that fact.
By the time that I was contemplating starting to build a Settler, though, the immediate surroundings were already settled. A City to the north, a City to the north-west, and even one to the south-west.
Fortunately, Leif gave us a nearby Horse Resource and that was all that we really needed. Who needs cheap Settlers, anyway?
I struck early, and struck hard. I managed to find the time to sneak in a Barracks before getting the Horse Resource online, so several Combat I and Flanking I Immortals took their wrath out on Hannibal.
I tried to always build up overwhelming odds before striking, so that I'd never lose my momentum.
I captured Hannibal's second City and then his capitol. However, he managed to settle a 3rd City somewhere before I could eliminate him completely.
Shaka had to go next, but he had built WALLS in 3 of his 4 Cities. Okay, time to get 1.5 times the number of Immortals that I'd normally attack with.
I cut Shaka's empire in half, then took his now isolated City, leaving him with 2 northern Cities. He'd keep them for ages, while I used his Archer Attack Parties as free experience and Great General points.
Germany (was it Frederick? He died so long ago that I can't remember) was tough to crack. He had Copper Mined and was just finishing up Mining his Iron. I gathered a huge stack of Shaka-Archer-promoted Immortals outside of the Iron City and struck just as the Iron was Mined, capturing the City and getting my own source of Iron in the bargain.
Then I played a lot of hit-and-run games, as the German Leader had huge stacks of 6 to 8 units running around. I razed a City and then another one, all the while whittling away at his stacks... while he kept rebuilding them.
Finally, I had enough units on the war front to field two stacks of about 8 Immortals each, and the German Leader couldn't figure out which City to defend, so one fell.
Ragnar came into the battle to help me out in taking down the German capital (I was the one to capture it), after which I turned back towards Shaka.
Ragnar could have captured the last German City, but no, he decided to raze it. Then Ragnar proceeded to "steal" Hannibal's last City out from under my nose, which had 2 Gold Resources, while I was distracted with Shaka.
This delay fighting Shaka cost me, as first Roosevelt and then Ragnar got Longbowmen.
Still, I managed to eliminate Shaka and resettled one of his Cities, settling my first self-built Settler in the game.
From then on, it was a long, drawn-out cold war. Eventually, I managed to get a tech that Ragnar didn't know and that he thought was valuable enough to be bribed into war with Roosevelt (the first two such techs that he didn't know weren't "good enough" for Ragnar to go to war).
Then the real fun began. I finally teched Construction and started pumping War Elephants like mad. Still, Ragnar beat me to the front line Cities and was able to capture a City and raze another before I could get enough forces on the war front.
Roosevelt, meanwhile, was fighting using Knights, so my Immortals that ventured into his lands would just get picked off one-by-one.
The turning point of the war came when I decided to make it an "all or nothing" push. 16 Immortals, backed by my first two War Elephants on the scene, sieged an American City. I lost most of my Immortal stack barely scratching the Longbowmen defenders, but the attacks were sufficient to let the War Elephants take down the strongest defenders and then my Immortals marched in, capturing the City right before Ragnar's amazed eyes.
It was good that I did so, as that City proved to be a treasure-trove of Wonders, netting me 5 Wonders, including The Great Lighthouse and The Great Library, if I recall correctly. It even came complete with two Holy Shrines (although the Religions were very marginalized ones)! I couldn't have built a better City if I'd done it myself; thanks, Roosevelt!
With enough War Elephants in the field, my Immortals were becoming "safe" from counter-attacks and I was able to position myself to be able to beat Ragnar in capturing ALL of the rest of Roosevelt's continental Cities.
After that war, I saw Ragnar's tech level--Cavalry and soon-to-be Riflemen. Ummm... War Elephants, a few Macemen, the odd Trebuchet, left-over Immortals, and the occasional Catapult on my side of the battle field... well... I could PROBABLY do it, but it would have been an uphill battle. Still, I kept pumping the units, with the tentative plan of attacking.
But then, my approach of "being nice" to Ragnar paid off and I got him up to Friendly status. Wow, that would mean that he wouldn't be able to attack me! Good enough for me!
With 55% of the 66% Domination Land Limit under my control, I retired my armies and headed off to Space.
It was a nerve-wracking game from that point onwards, though, as I checked every single turn to see if Ragnar was still Friendly with me. Three times Ragnar declared war on Roosevelt (those war declaration sound effects were very scary every time that I heard them, even when I knew that Ragnar was going after Roosevelt from getting "too much on his hands" while being Friendly with me), but he couldn't manage to kill Roosevelt off. That fact could have had something to do with all of the military techs that I kept feeding to Roosevelt.
Ragnar, at Friendly, could have made for a good tech-trading partner. That is, if he weren't about 14 techs ahead of me in the tech tree. I eventually caught up and passed him with a couple of deep beelines, but more often than not, he'd immediately research the tech that I just finished researching, on the same turn or one turn later, so that I didn't really have much of value to trade to him.
The breaking point came when I used a Great Engineer as part of a Golden Age (yes, I know, it pained me to use one in this manner, but I needed an edge--I'd already used an earlier Great Engineer on the Taj Mahal so I felt more justified by that fact) and used a Great Merchant for a splurge of Gold... with this heavy-push on tech, I eventually got enough of a deep-beeline tech lead to trade my way out of the tech deficit.
At the end of the game, I was up by about 3 Space techs.
Roosevelt even managed to stay alive until the end of the game, although Ragnar declared war on him at the end with masses of Transports, Destroyers, Infantry, Tanks, Fighters, and more against a couple of Riflemen and Grenadiers.
The Americans can thank me for launching my Spaceship and thus preventing them from being eliminated.
I even managed to sneak in The Space Elevator and had it contribute to all of my Spaceship parts. I kind of blame the fact that my late-game tech path was all over the map, mostly to try and get techs that I could use to trade with Ragnar. So, while the teching order was a bit inefficient, I finally got to play a game where I built only 1 Power Plant while managing to complete The Three Gorges Dam, AND got to complete The Space Elevator mid-way through most of my Spaceship parts, such that every Spaceship part got at least some boost from The Space Elevator.
Thanks for a fun game, Leif, and I appreciate the time that you took to pain-stakingly add the Deity-equivalent units on the map!
Bad decision. So I accept Code of Laws for peace, and start whipping courts to get my economy afloat again. I had Pyramids from Berlin, but am stuck using HR for happiness + relations, so can't enjoy Police State or Repr as much as I could have liked to. But size matters... and I am able to beat Roosi to Rifles/Cavs, and my prodcution is double the rest of the world put together... so I take all Roosi's cities except the islands (I only built 1 trireme and 1 frigate, neither of which ever saw any action), and make another vassal.
And a military one at that! I'm impressed.
that we get few players participating in it. That is why I prepare a Deity version of the save when we have Contender as Immortal. 
Meanwhile, there's adventurer save for players who do not want to play deity, you could attract same number of players to play it if you let the plays from adventurer save be eligible for the award. I hope a true deity WOTM before I leave CIV4.
.
