What do you mean by elaborate? The AI stinks so crush them. Its that simple. When you focus on science in gold instead of production you have an incredible advantage. My advice is to play peaceful until you get cannons. Then use gold to rush a few cannon armies and the mentally challagned AIs will not know the differnece between a cannon and naval vessel so the average AI will still have archer armies. With cannons you can easily take down a civ or two, one more if you are France. Save any sciency civs like greece and japan for last. Turtle for a while after you go on your cannon conquest. Then when you hit Artillary build Leo's Workshop if available and rush a few more artillary to easily take down your final competetors because of the magnificent attack-defence ratio of the eras increases dramatically on the attack sied with artillary. Most civs by then will have rifelmen armies by then wich will be crushed.
This is my general strategy. A lot of the time no matter what victory type I set out to get I end up winning domination because the AI's are so easy to prey upon if you play it right. So while turteling may seem like a good strategy for a lot of players, if you turtle to get your science and gold reserves up in the realy game you can hit the AIs with force when you get into the late game.