Guess the strategy

Tons of Juggs, inflated your score and scared the AI to alliance?

Could do it with Quenar slaves too maybe...

Wildland monsters kept everyone super weak so that even with 4 cities you were still bigger than anyone else.

I do not think that this would work.  Even if you are rushing for Juggernauts they will come a bit too late in the game to be able to secure peace with the Kingdoms.  And by rushing for them with 4 cities, you will not have the economy to support enough of them.  Juggernauts inflate the score, but not enough to make it on ridiculous.

But it may work.  I may try it.

Ridiculous AI beats ridiculous monsters with ease, because of the extra traits, and the wildlands seldom keep everyone weak.   It could happen, but what I did does not rely on luck to work.  I had an average starting location between two willands, with two pretty close neighbors, and two not that far off.

My cities tiles were 4/3/-, 2/5/-, 3/2/3, and 3/3/- and no clay pits or horses, so nothing special there, either.

The strategy does not depend on starting location, luck or reloading.  It doesn't guarantee that someone won't attack you early on, but if someone does, your side will be A-OK.

probably Krax

 like ... plentiful use of the silver toungue ability, taking +diplomacy sov traits (if any) ... using their own units against them while working up your caster sovereign.

Possibly a fire sov ... but possibly death. Either way, definitely diplomat over warlock. And most mana probably went into silver toungue ... so I'm not surprised if you went air mana instead for the +experience buff (and maybe earth for the defensive buffs)

Does it involve very little exploration?

That wouldn't work.  No wars at all, remember?  Silver tongue only works on trained troops, and not even on all of these.  And standard Kraxis cannot get the influence for heavy use of its diplomatic abilities.

I did not dare not exploring, and once I made economy treaties, I quickly met seven out of eight 'partners'.

hmm i would imagine the wealthy trait, for a gold influx to pay for treaties. once you have some basic treaties and a reasonable military they won't attack you.

You could get more influence from your three towns. Lets say you grabbed military tech up to archery and then stopped, switching to civ.

You  wouldn't need any crystal or metal - you can trade it away for major gifts, you pump it all back into treaties and then you win.

Hmm, I'll have to go to bed, but I promise to sleep on it.

How many volcanoes spontaneously erupted?

Paid off the Trogs to kill everyone for you.

Yes, I had wealthy, and it certainly helped.  But on ridiculous, the AI starts with more than 100000 Gildar, so wealthy will not keep them off your back, and neither will a few archers.

None.  If I harmed the AI is any way, it's by making a cordon of troops to prevent Yithril from wiping off Pariden, and by boxing in Gilden in a corner of the continent, which was more or less unintended.

Nope. By the time I had scouted them, bribing someone to go to war would have been probably too expensive. In any case, I did not start any wars, by proxy or otherwise.  Everyone jumped on poor Porcupine and I had to save her scrawny ass by getting in the Empires way. 

Altar influence spam with quest maps?

You were surrounded by Dragon lairs so you rushed to Dance with the Dragons.

You cast Destroy Land and isolated every opponent each on his own dinky little island.

You charmed a whole bunch of animals.

Yup. Surprisingly easy.  I had won with Altar before, but this time I did nothing but sit in my corner and quest spam. By turn 70 I had four henchmen over level 25. 

lots of pioneers to bump your score?

Did you keep Porcupine alive for the spellbooks?

My Lord. You give Tuidjy an inch he goes a mile!

Yea, I did it once, but I got sick of fighting the wildlings in the same quest over and over, but that might be fixed now.

Interesting.

Gotta try that sometime.

I've won several games gaining Alliance victory merely by building a military using Beastlord's Tame.