Hope you guys work out your steam issues. I'm not a fan of steam myself, but luckily haven't had any further problems with steam since the whole issue I had at the civ V launch when I needed to change the steam server I connected to.
As far as the game goes, I just realized how easy it is to "steal" a diplomatic victory in the right condition. On my recent game, playing on King level, I took over my continent that contained 4 civs as the Americans. The other continent was completely dominated by the Persians with only 3 civs on it. I don't know how the Persians did it, but they hit future era in the 1800s (right when i got to modern era). They had 12,000 gold and gaining 550 gold per turn. I had a pretty solid setup, but nothing to compare to that.
I had more people, production and land then them but they were so far ahead in technology and finances that I ruled out the ability to beat them in a space victory or even domination victory. (I probably could do domination victory if I focused on military techs and a pinpoint strike on their capital but am actually tired of domination victories). I was too large to get a culture victory. Even though I was about 100 points behind them, I didn't think I would be able to catch up to their score for a time victory, even if I held out that long from all other victory conditions, which was unlikely.
So that left diplomatic victory as my best option. This was one of the first times they didn't kill off all of the city states. In fact, 15 city states were around (perhaps that is the full number we started with even). I had 6 in my control, he had 5 in his. 9 were needed for diplomatic victory plus the United nations. I bee-lined for Globalization, but just as I teched it, Persia actually finished building the United Nations. Since he had over 10,000 gold, I was pretty scared of what would happen next. 9 turns passed though, and I concentrated on saving up my money. I had about 3800 gold saved, and 1 turn before the first UN election, I poached 3 of Persia's city states to get my total of 9 and then hit next turn.
That led to the Diplomatic victory for me by the skin of my teeth.
The question I have to ask is , with that much money why didn't Persia bury the city states in money so I couldn't poach them. I guess a limitation of the AI. That is three straight wins at King level though. I'm debating moving up another level or not. I actually started looking at the achievements, and am finding those kind of neat. I am 38/120 right now, and might try to see how many of them I can knock out while on King level
