Request for Guide On Playing Wide

If possible, I would like a guide on how to play wide for the first time.
By wide, I mean founding 7-8 cities and doing it with any civ (I like to use mod civs).

I've tried a few guides so far and it has not worked, it just is very hard to not lag behind in science, culture, policies, happiness, and so fourth doing wide+liberty. Any very basic guide, even if it means doing the first game on prince, is fine.

I like to play at emperor.

I don't have a guide for you but I can share some advice from my own experience of learning to play wide.

The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was trying to play wide using the same strategies I'd use playing tall. It's not merely enough to go Liberty rather than Tradition - you have to rethink every from the tiles you work to the techs you research to your build order in each city.

My general tips would be:

1. Production > Growth.
2. Your capital is not everything.
3. Look for a luxury and production tiles when settling an expansion city.
4. Cities, including your capital, only need two rings of workable tiles to be worthwhile.
5. Focus on the bottom and middle branches of the tech tree, e.g. get workshops before universities.
6. Get religious beliefs that give you happiness and/or culture.
7. Securing city spots is your number one early game priority.

Hope that helps!

This is a good guide aimed at MP, but valid for SP as well.

The only point I'd say is that you should probably focus on building Colosseums before Libraries.

Most players take it as blind 'truth' that libary + NC is the most important stepping stone.

But if you want to found lots of cities early in the game libraries aren't going to help you. Happiness is the limiting factor to population growth and Colosseums will help you grow cities larger. This will give you more science and more production and gold so when you need to build libraries they will come much faster.

So you should in my humble opinion tech towards Construction before Philosophy.

Acken is one of the best players/modders.

Have you had a look at his guide?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=559009