the thing that bothers me about the harder difficulties in civ is that the ai doesnt get smarter, doesnt change strategy, doesnt really do anything different than it would on prince difficulty. it just CHEATS. so today I will show you how to out cheese the cheeser using our buddy Gilgamesh.

So the way you're gonna win is domination victory. IF that doesn't work (unlikely) then you might be able to sneak in a religious victory.

Set up your game by picking Gilgamesh, Deity difficulty, Pangea map. Select your opponent to be Kupe

Why Kupe?

Cus he starts at Sea. It will give you a precious few turns to get prepared while he floats about looking for land. If you're EXTREMELY lucky, you can just capture his settlers and win on like turn 10. Like I said, EXTREEEEEEEMELY lucky though. Never gonna happen.

You can choose a different opponent but like I said earlier, we're out cheesing the cheesey AI. Nothing is sacred. There is no correct way to play this game.

Once you've got everything selected, load into the game.

• Spam War Carts to find Kupe and start harassing his military
  
• Study Mining and Animal Husbandry as a priority
  
• Acquire Masonry next
  
• Go for Astrology then just go for techs that will help with whatever situation you're in
  
• Get Political Philosophy ASAP and acquire Oligarchy
  
• Train a couple of battering rams for your Warrior zerg rush and keep pumping out war carts otherwise
  
• Once you have military superiority, acquire a religion asap as a fallback plan

You might need to restart a couple of times if you get bad starts, but generally what you are looking to do is build on a river in an area with good production yields. DO NOT BUILD BY THE COAST!! Kupe will eventually find you and start ramming boats into your hole.

Once you've built your city, send your warrior off to start exploring and proceed to fill your queue with War Carts.

Keep producing them. Do NOT stop producing War Carts.

Research mining and animal husbandry first. These will allow you to increase production if you get a builder from a tribal village.

Eventually, you will come across a few city states and Kupe. If you are able to send Envoy's, do it. Spend all of your governor points into Amani cus the rest aren't really going to be useful.

Ok so now you have a general idea of what's going on, here's how you want your government to look;

OLIGARCHY
Military Civics

• Maneuver
  
• Agoge

Economic Civics

• Urban Planning

Wildcard Civics

• Conscription/Anything that may help at the time

This is what I rolled with and it worked out fine. You want to be producing War Carts and Warriors faster than an H&M sweatshop. Speaking of Warriors, this is why you wanna start training them;

BATTERING RAMS
Kupe will likely have most techs in the ancient era by now because of his cheating, so ancient walls will be put up. Thankfully, we get battering rams very early on. You only need 2 or 3, so train them up and link them with some Warriors.

Is there a city state in the way? If yes, are you the suzerain? If no, get rid of it.
ONCE YOU HAVE TROOPS UP IN HIS BUSINESS, STAY AT WAR WITH KUPE AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN. If it starts looking dicey give him a peace offering and he'll accept. This is important as Kupe will NOT train settlers while at war. He will also not bother trying to advance science or culture as much, which will keep you as level as possible.

If you need peace to regroup and heal, try and create an awkward perimeter around his borders in case he sends any settlers out. Be aware you have 10 turns after making peace before you can go to war again. If you see a settler on the move, and you are able to go to war, STEAL it. Otherwise just be difficult and make it take longer routes until you can take it.

DO NOT STOP WITH WAR CARTS AND WARRIORS!!!! Nothing else matters. Not yet, anyway.

By this point, you should have scrapped with Kupe enough that his military strength is between 30 and 70 and yours is 400+. This will lower his chances from attacking you, but you still need to be careful.

At this point in the game, you want to be zerg rushing his capital with battering rams and warriors to break the walls. Once the walls are down, throw war carts at him until you win. ggez

IF THIS ISN'T LOOKING TOO GOOD;
Start building a Holy Site in your most productive city, start using the Revelation wildcard civic and get your religion ASAP. If you've been disruptive enough, Kupe will have a great prophet but not be able to use it. This is where you strike.
Create your religion, then send Missionaries to his capital. You just need to have your religion dominant in the majority of his cities, so start with the capital as the pressure from citizens will spread outwards from there.

As long as you can keep pounding at his door with War Carts, your Missionaries should be fine to do their thing.

deity difficulty is kinda cringe honestly so unless you're a real masochist just play it for the achievement then stick with King or Emperor if you want a challenge. there is no correct way to play any game, if anyone calls you cringe for not doing it "the right way" call THEM cringe for being meta riders.

also apparently the 1 turn trick still works but idk i've never gotten lucky with it. Tried with Peter and Trajan and neither worked so maybe I just suck