I also love, and people have talked about this for days, the way they use your hands/arms in the game, it adds a hell of a lot of immersion to the game in an elegant and sometimes disturbing way (see: pulling rebar out of your leg)

Unfortunately I have to run the game on low graphics settings, so I’m missing out on the environmental atmosphere that also seems to be one of the game’s strong points. I played about 10 hours like this and then set it aside, waiting for a new graphics card.

Domination was truly very hard. Eventhough I had a complete map lockdown and I cared about nothing, it was literally impossible for my opponents to do anything meaningful and I could pump 20 artilleries or bombers per turn (may be more actually) it still took me lots of time to win domination.

The chances are too nastily played in favour of the AI. I attack with 100 points on a defense of say 70 and still the AI wins the majority of time.

But when you have 20 artiliries per turn it’s only a matter of time :)

So keep playing, nothing’s impossible. In fact i’d say Deity is the only difficulty that makes sense at all. The first 2 are completely meaningless except for getting to know the game when you first see it. Emperor is too easy to win any way you like, but can keep you busy at times. Deity is truly fun and engaging.

I could have won either an economy victory or a cultural victory, but the bank built faster.

I’ve to say I feel lucky, after the way I failed my first try, this second try I was close to forfeit almost all the time. Never built any offensive units, just defense. Had a total of 3 cities, 2 of which converted earlier on because of my high culture.

*two warrior units go explore. often i don’t leave anything in my city to guard it. I use horses from barbarian villages to explore elsewhere.
*next build galley. Get settlers on the galley and onto an island as soon as possible. dedicate the island to science until it’s ready to build settlers. *build settlers on the island asap and take those settlers to a neighboring island(s). (last night i won by 1982 w/ 9 islands & my original land-based city)
*i put original warrior units on my galleys to help secure islands or fight more barbarian villages that my galley comes across.
*I build science, science and more science (alphabet, literacy, code of laws (republic–this speeds up settlers for your islands), democracy(gives you banking if you’re 1st to get it. also gives you pikemen for defense)
*I don’t waste my time on catapults anymore. i love pikemen for defense.
*eventually you’ll want one pikeman army on each island. quite often i only have to defend my 1st city (on land) vs multiple threats.
*battleships help keep people off your island & battleship fleets are great for shooting fighters out of the air.
*i always switch to communism to build the world bank faster or to launch a missile at whoever has pissed me off the most. building a factory in the city you plan to build the wonder in helps as well–it helps reduce the turns.
*this strategy will have you winning economic regularly and science occasionally on deity. i usually play with whatever random civ the CPU assigns me. However, if i want to win no matter what–i go with Spain (navigation). this is a HUGE advantage for islands and atlantis.

ideas on cultural/domination victories on deity?

*two warrior units go explore. often i don’t leave anything in my city to guard it. I use horses from barbarian villages to explore elsewhere. i’ll keep my original troops exploring or send them back to my city to protect it. I usually have about 4-6 units exploring at once (after i picked up 2 or three horse units).
*next build galley. Get settlers on the galley and onto an island as soon as possible. dedicate the island to science until it’s ready to build settlers. *build settlers on the island asap and take those settlers to a neighboring island(s). (last night i won by 1982 with 9 islands & my original land-based city) (i’ve won by 1962 on deity with this strategy before)
*i put original warrior units on my galleys to help secure islands or fight more barbarian villages that my galley comes across.
*I build science, science and more science (alphabet, literacy, code of laws (republic–this speeds up settlers for your islands), democracy(gives you banking if you’re 1st to get it. also gives you pikemen for defense)
*I don’t waste my time on catapults anymore. i love pikemen for defense.
*eventually you’ll want one pikeman army on each island. quite often i only have to defend my 1st city (on land) vs multiple threats.
*battleships help keep people off your island & battleship fleets are great for shooting fighters out of the air. by the time bombers attack me—I have pretty much won the game.
*i love to build the internet wonder and see my gold sky rocket.
*i always switch to communism to build the world bank faster or to launch a missile at whoever has pissed me off the most. building a factory in the city you plan to build the wonder in helps as well–it helps reduce the turns.

*this strategy will have you winning economic regularly and science occasionally on deity. i usually play with whatever random civ the CPU assigns me. However, if i want to win no matter what–i go with Spain (navigation). this is a HUGE advantage for islands and atlantis. Rome/Greece also help a lot with republic/democracy. Zulu or Aztec give you a great jump on the game with conquering barbarians (overrun/healing) and that leads to gold.

Good luck–it sure is fun winning most of the time.

I could use some ideas on cultural/domination victories on deity. I would think cultural would be very difficult unless you steal 3-5 great persons with spys.

Got to bed last night at 2am. Civ Rev has got to have the best replayability of ANY PS3 game.
How about cultural?