After a disastrous second phase of the game I went for a time victory. The plan was to go for space and use culture to keep the AI at bay.
I started out strong managing to create a line of cities across the borders with Ramses and Shaka and down toward the southern coast. This was to preserve the eastern half of the continent for me. Ramses had three cities, Shaka a few more. I had linked up the copper and built up an army after seeing Shaka next door.
I'm sure Shaka was pissed because the culture from my city on the border was pushing his border city toward a flip. I Dow'd on Ramses just as he got his horses hooked up and was already to take his capital when he got Shaka to declare. I made peace with Ramses for no gain and eventually peace with Shaka for some gold.
Of course this slowed down expansion and I unwisely settled a city in the SE without a defender who was on his way. Three turns later it was razed by the Barbs and then Hanni decided to fill in the southern part of the map AND take the horses that I had failed to notice. Horses
were going to be a big part of my plan. I also lost out on the Pyramids by a turn or two after failing to explore quite far enough to see the stone to the NE.
Then Shaka decided to attack and got Ramses to join in. I had failed to keep track of two units that Ramses had wandering isolated in the NE, blocked by my culture from going home. Shaka's troops were destroyed and I managed to take his border city. Ramses managed to take my two cities to the North. Ramses had the AP and I knew the vote would go against me on everything so, I thought I would make peace with Shaka, take out Ramses and then go back for the Zulu. In one of the smoothest AI moves
ever, I made peace with Shaka who vassaled Ramses in the IBT and as a result I was blocked from retaking my two cities on the next turn with my troops teleported home.
Of course I eventually crushed Ramses and then on to Shaka who vassaled to Hannibal with his last four cities. I wasn't quite ready for war with Hannibal who had gotten comparably powerful. At this point my early space timeline was shot and I wasn't sure whether to continue to space or the UN.
When Hannibal DOW'd on SB I waited a couple turns then proceeded to wipe him out. Now I had the continent to myself and found that it would be necessary to take some land from the other continent to get a domination win. I wasn't against it, but decided a space win would be easier and I would try to run my score up. HC suddenly seemed to find the secret to rapid tech advancement and he wouldn't share! The tech pace seemed to crawl with the other AIs hopelessly behind and so a respectable date for space was out of the question. I decided instead to just go for a time victory and see what kind of a score I could get. HC got close enough to make the risk of him completing a spaceship too much so I moved my armies to his continent via open border with Monty (Thanks!) HC was soon gone as I razed his cities. SB was the only who managed to have any of the wonders that I did not build or "acquired". I then proceeded to eliminate Monty and took SB down to one city.
My aim was to maximize my score. I couldn't take any more land as I was close to the limit. I had nearly all the wonders so there wasn't much chance of improving that score component, I was steadily growing my population and was increasing my future tech acquisition at about 2 turns apiece. I figured that by razing the AI cities I would raise my percentage of population quickly but this did not seem to have an effect.
So I ended with a whole lot of future tech and a score of around 16K.