What is your tatic to survive maximum difficulty games?

[Dampfnudel]

What is your tactic to survive maximum difficulty games?

There are endless waves of enemies and they are hard to make peace with.

My current tactic is to rush the foreign affaire council and try to peace out my neighbors.
Then I stabilize my situation and look for the weakest target.

Rampaging AI armies, Slavers, giant allies creatures, mutant hordes and aggressive major neighbors can make the games very challenging.

[LarryP]

When it gets real hard, I go play a fishing game. [8D]

[KingHalford]

I still play on Regular. Depending on the start, it can be pretty easy at first (but usually with a difficult conflict with a Major AI or three at some point) or it can be a fight from the very start. I think after I've won a few on this, I'm gonna move up to Hard.

[JWW]

Play on beginner. [:)]

[Kamelpov]

Try beginner you got that metal mine. I'm now on regular as i won the beginner start. AI will be tougher to beat as i start with less ressources in regular and now know how to use shq (training field and capital garrison).

[Dampfnudel]

All these answers for "play on beginner" are totally off optic. I can win up to hard difficulty.

The question is: "how to win at extreme difficulty"

The biggest issue in extreme difficulty in the early game, as you start surrounded by massive hordes of enemies attacking the starting city. So every turn needs to be optimized.

So far my best experience is with the foreign affairs council as the first organization.