Hello, I'm me. You can see my name on the right. You might have read my "Thorough Explanation of Culture Victory". If you haven't I highly suggest it, because this is how I did my playthrough:

• Deity AI
  
• Huge map, 11 opponents
  
• Islands
  
• Modern Era start
  
• Dry, few hills, high water level
  
• Teddy Roosevelt
  
• going for Culture Victory
  
• all victories enabled

If you think even these settings are lame and cheesey, don't use those! You might even think all of them are cheesey, in which case, why are you even reading this guide?

Most people don't like starting in a different Era. It's not the default setting. I too have never changed Era in Civ V(my only other civ), so I can't compare them in this respect, but I shall note the differences between starting in Ancient Era in this game.

• The game will start around turn 300(standard speed), and thus end in just 200 turns.
  
• All civics and technology of all Eras up to and including the Industrial Era have are already completed. Choose a tier 2 government and policies in the very first turn.
  
• You start with 3 Rangers, 2 Field Cannons, and 3 Settlers. You also get about 1k of gold. The Deity AI, I Assume, starts with more.
  
• The first city you found will become your capital. It instantly has 10 population, and spawns a Trader, Builder and a Pikeman unit. It also permanently has 4 extra housing and 2 Amenities.
  
• Your next two cities also spawn Pikemen(and a Builder iirc?), but start with 4 population.
  
• All cities, not just starting cities, automatically start with 4 population, and have the Monument and Granary already built. They also have a bunch of tiles.
  
• All districts have minimal building times, almost always being 1 turn. Cities can even build one as soon as they are founded, as they have 4 pop.
  
• All districts start with 1/2 buildings, depending on what Era those buildings are researched. The exception is the Encampment, as you have to choose whether to boost cavalry or melee/ranged units.
  
• Great people are only selected from Modern Era and upwards.
  
• Barbarians are a force to be reckoned with, spawning Rangers that can easily ambush your own, and the first strike wins. They can even make Ironclads from their coastal camps.

In an Ancient Era start, they get 3 settlers and 6 units, and easily trample you at start, where there's not even warmongering penalties. But there are penalties now.
What's also stopping them is the Public Service civic, which automatically gives all cities walls and the ability to attack. AI attacking your newly found city, which already has 4 pop? Build an encampment and blast it with two strong ranged attacks.
The Nationalism civic that allows forming of a Corps or Fleet is already researched at start too. The AI makes heavy use of this, even putting their Rangers together. Which would make them beat yours, but they still get decimated by city attacks.

The AI will see the time left, possible victories, and amount of players, and all decide that a Domination Victory is impossible. Founding a Religion still requires Great Prophet points and spreading your religion to everyone else, and will take far too much time. The only plausible win, to the AI, is a Science victory. This makes them all quite peaceful, if you ignore the continuous denouncing. Get two friends, perhaps a defensive pact, and noone should bother you.

A Culture Victory, as detailed in my other guide, is easier the more opponents there are. The point is not to get Culture, but Tourism. Great Works, Artifacts and Relics are completely useless this game, I got my first Great Artist the turn I won. Instead, 90% of our Tourism income will be Seaside Resorts.

Found your cities, and make sure your Entertainment Complexes and Industrial Zones are within 6 tile range of as much cities as possible. Money is hardly needed, focus on getting those settlers out and grabbing as much land as possible.

In one of your first cities, probably your capital, focus on building the Eiffel Tower as fast as possible. It will give +2 Appeal to all your tiles, making it invaluable. Chop woods to build it faster. After that, focus on the Christo Redentor, which doubles all Tourism from Seaside Resorts. It's not likely either will be built by an AI, but you never know. Use the +15%P policy to speed up building.

Some science will be required, but you'll get quite a lot from population already, so you hardly need even one Campus. Use Research Agreements to get boosts and it's fine. You mostly care about

Do make a Holy site, so you can get out a National Park later. Found a Pantheon, and take +15% border growth. Parks and resorts can be constructed outside citizen working range, as long as the tile belongs to one of your cities.

Teddy Roosevelt is perfect for this game. Ignore his unique units, like almost always, but the +5 Strength on your own Continent helps with defending against barbarians. A city with a National Park will get +1 Appeal to all its tiles, a nice bonus. But the most important thing is that the Broadcast Centre is replaced by the Film Studio.
Theatre Squares are useful, not for their Great People points, least of all for the Great Work slots. Don't build an archaeologist either, it's hardly worth the giant amount of production needed. But the Film Studio doubles the Tourism output of this city to all civilizations "in the Modern Era", which actually means "in the Modern Era or beyond". Which is all civs. Delicious.

Build only minimal military units, you won't need many. Cover ground with your Pikemen so there isn't any tile in Fog of War: barbarian camps can't spawn where you have vision. Don't bother with building ships, your ranged units and cities can handle any barbs stupid enough to stick with you, and other civs will want peace as soon as they suicide some units into your cities.

Keep up diplomatic relations. Make a permanent embassy with as many civs as possible, so you can see their hidden agenda. Select an easy civ that likes population, conservation, or has the same government, and make friendship/alliance/defensive pact/research agreement with them.
The relationship detail view shows you the relationship growth per turn. Gift your resources, or even blunt sums of cash, to get "favorable trades with them" to +10. That's +10 per turn. Keep checking back if they don't want some actions.

The map was specifically picked with resorts in mind. Few hills, as resorts can't be placed on those, lots of woods to chop and for old-growth appeal, and a lot of desert. Why desert? Because the enemies won't have a lot of use from them.

Don't worry about money. You don't have a lot of unit maintenance, and all those Resorts generate gold. Just flood the map with cities. Even those 9-tile, all-desert islands are great, as they still have a good amount of Appeal; all water gives +1 Appeal.

Use the "+2 build actions each builder" Policy continuously, as you need a LOT of them. Especially since that policy also grants +30% Production towards builders. Sell(delete unit, but it doesn't even show you get money for it) builders when they have 1 charge left for gold equal to half the buy cost. 1 Extra build charge or 300g? EDIT: Fall patch: Deleting a unit no longer provides gold. Bummer.

Get some spies out to some good cities to steal gold. The AI is far too busy stealing research to counterspy, and some cities can give you 1.5k each siphon. Don't worry when you see them build 4 spaceports(what's even the use of that?), they need to research the technology first. Keep track of their progress in the Science Victory tab. You can always disrupt their spaceports if you're slow with your own victory.

Results of my own run: No religions were founded. No cities were ever captured. There were enough wars though:

Don't worry if you're at turn 400 and still barely have tourists. The amount skyrockets after everything is done. Turn 422: 136/172. Turn 426: 174/171.

+1166 Tourism per turn. But that's increased by almost +100% because of the Film Studios and Trade Routes. Of that, only 47 was because of Great Works

Overview shots:


The one park that gives +74 Tourism

But that's not much given that some Resorts give +36 Tourism(and 9 gold)

So yeah, that's about it. Spend some hours on this instead of doing the 1-turn cheese, and you'll feel a lot more self-esteem. Or whine about what a cheese I still was. Or give me a recommendation on how to do better.

In other words
LEAVE A COMMENT!

Kthxbye.
~Wolfzoon