Tall liberty and no religion strategy?

I decided to try the following strategy for laughs (with the Dutch):

1) Build monument and shrine in your capital immediately.

2) Get Liberty (free worker and golden age + reduced policy cost first) as you are going tall

3) Get Monument to the Gods as you really need to get certain wonders and you don't intend to create a full blown religion (so use prophets for holy sites)

3) Focus on getting population and production related wonders starting with Temple of Artemis (use the golden age from the social policy to boost the construction speed)

4) After building all the Ancient and Classical wonders you could get, adopt one of your neighbors religions.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be the easiest game I played (on Prince) so far. Did I just get lucky or did other people get similar experiences?

Well, I think that's a waste of the golden age to use it on a single barely-grown city extremely early.

Well maybe the golden age aint optimal, but the sooner you get the policy, the faster you get the next policys

Well on Prince anything is possible, so go right ahead.
Tell me how your strategy works on Emporer.

As for my golden age use, I felt that it was more important to get my capital up and running as early as possible than to get a bigger production boost later.

And, yeah the policy cost reduction is great if you get it early.