Asking tips to play deity on large maps

[vicever]

I have played Monarch and Emperor to a point that I have all techs and overwhelming military power and can take all other civs out easily with proper air defense. I was lazy to do it without air defense. But when I play deity, AIs make too fast expansion. By the time I have two cities, they at least have 4 cities, one of them have 7 cities. It seems that AI start with two settler since they build second city exactly after 4 turns, which is a time taking one to walk a good distance to start a second city. Right now I am still thinking a good way to deal with AIs. I do not think starting a war in the beginning is good since you need a good relation with AIs to get your tech on the par with them.

By the way, I modified the rule to change optimum size from 24 to 160 to suppress corruption on Emperor and Deity level.