I quickly expanded to 4 cities and blocked Washington in pretty good. I kept my relative military strength reasonable and was not declared upon in the beginning. After building the settlers, I built the GL in the capital and took Civil Service. Right after that I build CI, and had it in time for the GA from Representation. The other cities had libraries completed by time CI finished, and I built the NC next.
I bee-lined Education (of course I got Masonry earlier) and waited for the other Civs to hit the Medieval age before signing RAs. Unfortunately, I thought I had everyone before hitting the Renaissance but Hiawatha was a straggler. When the message that came in he had hit Medieval, I caught my mistake and made an RA with him.
Next mistake - I checked about 8 turns before and was on target to hop into the Renaissance the very turn a new policy hit. What timing! Unfortunately, I completed Stonehenge (not in the capital) 3 turns later. I had to burn the policy on the Commerce opener. I did complete the Oracle on the turn I jumped to the Renaissance, but I would've loved to have grabbed Freedom with it in addition to getting Rationalism.
I built a Trebuchet and 2 cannons and declared on Washington. He had managed to squeeze in 5 cities somehow and I easily took 4 and the Pyramids. Nice! Washington itself would eventually get annexed and build a Booster.
During the war, I hit Scientific Theory and noticed the Coal problem. This ended up being the catalyst for what delayed my game. After searching the globe, I decided I would send a settler down to the south between the 3 city states and claim the Coal/Pearls there. I knew this would probably anger Alex (who had the biggest army and had never been friendly) and Askia (no problem). In hindsight, I should've camped out for a few turns before settling. Alex and I had an RA that was only 5 turns from completing, but...
Alex denounced me as soon as the city sprouted up. He had allied with all 3 CS - but 2 of them wanted the other eliminated. So, I allied with those 2 and each time Alex threatened I gave him the "go to hell" answer. I wanted him to attack me because I was just about the get Artillery and Infantry (I already had Replaceable parts, just needed Rifling to complete) - but I didn't want the warmonger hate.
Well, that was going to come anyway since I planned on taking out that 3rd CS and becoming perma-allies with the other 2. Alex did declare and broke our RA - I didn't know at the time that I would end up one short with about 17 turns left on the last tech I needed.
That earlier mistake with SH causing me to miss Freedom probably cost an extra GS that would've been able to get around this.
Alex managed to actually take down an Infantry (he had Himeji), but other than that the war went well and I he offered all his cities at the end. I had to sell many away to avoid the 50 unhappiness, but things got back in order and my financial situation was amazing after that.
I completed Apollo on turn 191, but was stuck waiting for the final RA to complete at turn 205. In that time I completed some wonders like Big Ben and accumulated a ton of cash. So I could buy Spaceship Factories and any other production buildings where needed at the end to speed things up.
I think my mistakes did cost at least 15 turns though. I think I was in a golden age for 75% of the game. LOL After rushing ND, I kept at least 1 copy of each resource until I hit the natural GA and built the TM, the Louvre and used 2 GGs on golden ages.