Bollywood tested for Liberation,Puppets & selling cities

I wanted to get get the Bollywood achievement in the bag before BNW.
I didn't want the bad experence like when I had to go back to vanilla to get Barbary Pirates.

So I start playing and end up liberating a CS, then I started to worry that this might count as one of my three cities.
So I put the question, does it count? I got a mix of answers.
I think everyone agreed the liberated city shouldn't count but some said that puppets didn't either and others went as far to say I could have more than three but sell them off before completing the utopia project.
And Ragan's achievement guide says Bollywood requires you to have no more than three cities for the entire game.
So I send up an end game plan.
I had my capital, another players capital as a puppet and the city I build with my free settler from the liberty policy.

I built to settlers while Delhi was building the utopia, moved them to nice spots.

Three turns before the uptopia completes I save the game.
Then plant the two settlers and sell one city.
Win the game but no Bollywood - So selling cities doesn't work.

Go back to the save, plant only one of the settlers.
Win the game but no Bollywood. So puppets do count.

Go back to save, play out the last turns with the settlers twirling thier thumbs.
Bag Bollywood!

Thankfully the liberated city didn't count, I was not looking forward to my next game being India.
Eithiopa I choose you......

JD

Interesting.

The game that I got Bollywood in was an attempt at 5 achievments that I wanted to get out of the way at once: win on Settler, as India, Bollywood, duel map, and Pangaea, I believe.

I just built the three cities, though.