This is a great article, however, being a person that likes cultral victory, this is not affordable to me. If your going for diplomatic or cultral victory, the no building wonders idea is generally not that great, even when your playing on monarch or above. GL is a great wonder with a huge drawback--you must research literature, but if your playing under monarch and are 5 or 6 tech behind, sometimes its hard to trade(I've noticed in every game, every AI has the exact same tech path and sometimes it hard to trade up). Also GL can also bring you in alot of gold when you aquire it and trade some of the "extra" techs to enemy civs for per turn gold, this does wonders for both the tax and luxury slider at Monarch or above.
That being said, if your not going to diplomatic or cultral victory, then Ision is right, don't build the wonders, expand like crazy, and go for pure dominance, but if cultral or diplomatic is usuasally your way to victory, I still suggest setting aside one city(usually my capital ro build the acient later wonders) the thing is having stuff like the Pyramids or the oracle, or Hanging Garden does wonders with the luxury slider because if your have those, its less upkeep(granary) and you don't need to waste as much commerce on luxuries in the slider allowing you to pump science and taxes.
One note, always trade comps and ask for per turn gold, its much better than lump sum.
I can play all civs, but I generally favor Religious(cheap temples for happiness and 1 turn gov change) and industrious(damn good in late game) civ, Egypt.
One more thing, I like huge maps, if your playing on a standard maps, just don't build the wonders, expand, otherwise you will lose.
Actually if you analyze if, 5CC is very easy if you can appease your neighbors, generally diplomatic victory is the way to go for me with a small number of cities.