Aha, the secret was forbidden city the whole time

[coldsteel]

With nothing better to do, I tried a game with just apolyton pack, and nordicus trade goods. I was shocked to see the computer complete alien life project in 1923. Wow! Then ensued a long search to find a strategy that would always win against an enemy who could stack up pikemen and samurais and invade you in 760bc, with musketeers in 600bc, then later get war walkers in 1600ad. Well it finally turns out if you build forbidden city wonder, which you apparently always can build before the computer, then an era of peace is ushered in for more than a millenia, which allows you free expansion with no defenses. Also relations are improved, and if you try to repeatedly trade techs and they don't accept, their regard for you increases until they love you. Thus you have almost everyone's maps too, and some alliances. Gifts of gold... So, using the building/unit purchase cheat, with no need for defense, you can always eventually get cities and research up high enough to have plenty of nukes in time to crush any enemy when they try to build the wormhole, in theory. I know active air defense stops nukes, but I think you can just send two or three on the same course, to hit units outside cities, since cities can have sdi. Then paratroop in. Preferably robotics, it looks like you can always get robotics by 1800ad and build stacks of war walkers, which presumably can destroy any computer civ. I don't know if you can always get robotics in time. But it's interesting, almost everyone who played ctp and complained about the computer being too dumb, could have played apolyton and nordicus trade goods, and easily gotten creamed. If they didn't use forbidden city that is. Took me a while to think of it. As far as I can tell, forbidden city is the only way to get a guaranteed win every game on apolyton and nordicus trade goods, regardless of map settings.

cold

[coldsteel]

Aw heck, I took another look and it appears the computer can win anyway sometimes. Especially on apolyton and nordicus, min trade goods, uniform, 2 other civs... you can get a start position so bad, ie all plains and deserts, no mountains, no rivers, no useful goods, etc., you just can't get to engineering, and/or build forbidden, before the big enemy attack in 720bc. Yet the enemy has no trouble assembling samurais, pikemen, archers, even musketeers not much later. I don't see any way around it. Besides, without a mountain range to stop them, when forbidden expires and the enemy gets tanks... I guess that's that.