1.) How many own cities? I use to make 4-6 to claim lux and strategic spots and later to pump out armies. Also to make neighbours DoW and backstab me. On immortal this easily results in losing a city or two with makes me pissed. But maybe It's not so bad? What do you think?
2.) What SP after honor? For me this has been situational. Often i take some trad or liberty before rationalism but im very lost about it. Commerse is good to.
Ideas?
3.) religion. Should I get one? I like, if possible, getting a culture pantheon for faster early sp but I never really go for religion. I try to conquer the best one and give it to myself if the civ having it is close enough.
At last. What do you Immortal and deity players do when/if opening full honor?
I've played several Immortal games with pure Honor opens, also with no worker stealing, including one I just finished as Zulu with no Rationalism.
1: I settle 3 cities usually. Sometimes a fourth one later on a different continent, for army-buying. Transferring to wide/liberty style without Liberty (policy discount) is a very bad idea. Even if the lux and land deserve it.
2: Commerce. Fairly mandatory if you did early conquest. 1: Early conquest creates a lot of space between your cities, so the road discount is nice. 2: Puppets make merchants, so you might as well play along - Commerce merchants are fairly great. 3: as you expand in Industrial/Modern, you'll be buying a ton of Landsknechts to keep your garrisons filled. They never obsolete so you can start buying after all your discounts are online.
The disadvantage of Commerce is that you can't finish it without delaying Rationalism; but if you open Rationalism it's hard to finish Commerce before the industrial war rush. It really works best if you skip rationalism for an industrial domination win imo. Honor -> Commerce -> Autocracy.
3: Depends on land. If there's no good land pantheon for your start, I would skip.
Other:
-Like some other harsher strategies I usually wouldn't do an Honor open without a mining lux near the cap and some nearby forest. Early mining/chopping helps get around the lack of free monument / settler in capital, plus a nice cushion for happiness before I settle second city.
If you usually steal workers, keep with that for your Honor games - I don't, so on Honor opens I hard-build the settler before the monument then chop for monument, maybe chop for shrine too. I'm not going to be building any early wonders so this is the best use of forest.
-Other than jungle/coastal starts, there's no real reason not to open Honor. AI never wins before turn 360 on Immortal, and even with a very slow start you can get Diplo or SV by then.
You don't have to conquer everyone. However, you aren't going to win off an Honor start before 330 unless you do. Rationalism is obviously essential if you are not going Domination. It's a question of whether you are going to need techs after Electronics.
-Zulu, Denmark, Germany are my favorite for Honor. I've won with Aztec pure Honor opens, but found that Tradition would have been a lot better. I've tried with Poland for the free mid-game policies and Horse XP but went too wide, I'll have to revisit.
-Early conquest isn't essential, but it's just as well to kill off one civ and take the capitals of everyone else on your continent just to get a head-start on Domination. However, you have to follow this up with strong exploration and a solid plan for getting your economy and culture to a decent level.
Example: in my last game, Immortal / Large Continents / Zulu, I went for Astronomy as soon as I had conquered my two neighbors (with spears->Impi and comp bows), and founded World Congress to propose World Fair.
I swam over to settle one more city on the largest continent next to the most hated civ, Greece. This city was just for buying units in later, especially planes. The XP building bonuses in Honor makes rush-buying armies a lot more worthwhile. Even a trashy city can make all your XP buildings, then buy an army with your Commerce/Autocracy discounts instead of having to swim units over.
I finished Commerce and saved up $2400 so I could rush-buy three factories as soon as I got coal, so all my future policies went into Autocracy and so I had strong enough production to win World Fair. (I finished Big Ben just as World Fair started.) Next I teched Chemistry then Biology. Greece killed all my cannons haha but then was conquered with frigates and gatlings.
Because of the adopt-first effect (the other two ideologies get taken by the two strongest AIs, and other AIs follow them) I got up to 12 unhappiness from pressure around this time but pulled out of it even before most of my conquest thanks to World Fair and Futurism.
I teched flight to handle the rest of the big continent and Electronics to handle the 3 civs that were on continent 3. I wasn't ahead of the AI on tech at any time. I didn't finish Plastics until turn 298, the same turn I won Domination.
So, aggressive exploration was the most important factor in that game. It really helped that Great Lighthouse was built on my home continent.
Looking at my less successful Honor games, the failure to settle a foothold on a different continent and begin conquest there pretty much shut me out until Radar, which is a big hassle.
bonus would be pointless. 
Because it's fun to do something other than tradition and liberty every single game!
