As I posted in the first spoiler, I did not play a very focused game. I did not decide on a victory condition until very late, as I was too busy having fun just growing my empire to ridiculous size as a pure builder exercise.
I eventually decided on an AP victory, and finally got around to researching Optics and sending out some caravels. Found all the AIs within 10 turns of doing so -- they really were amazingly close by. I had spread my state religion of Judaism to all my (many, large) cities so I had little worry about votes. The biggest issues would be getting all the AIs infected with my religion, and then getting one other civ to vote for me.
The answer to the second issue appeared when Catherine, still penned up on her starting island, showed up one day and asked to become my vassal.
Our relations had been poor due to my declaring on her twice and razing her attempts to settle on the mainland. But I was happy to offer my protection to the Russian people in return for their loyalty.
But this raised a new problem: Catherine had long since adopted Judaism, and would be my rival for AP victory. I needed her vote since I was not permitted to vote myself to victory, even though I more than had the raw numbers to do so. I would need to pick one other AI and send enough missionaries to convert enough of that AI's cities to make them my rival. I picked Joao for this, as he was the most easily accessible of the AIs.
France, England, and the Netherlands were easily infected with my state religion, one small city each being converted by missionary. Portugal received a steady stream of missionaries, converting city after city. Soon he would be ready to serve as my puppet opponent.
But Isabella of Spain was a problem. She had not yet researched Theology, but she refused to open borders even after several sizable technology gifts. However, she had not entirely settled her continent as she had been busy warring with France. So I founded a new city on her border, converted it to Judaism, and gifted it to her. Every AI now had at least one city with my state religion -- time for a vote.
Joao converted to Judaism, conveniently doubling his votes and making him my rival. A couple turns later the vote was held, and I achieved AP victory in 1530 AD.
Just the turn before I had finally completed my master dotmap for the starting continent and associated islands (other than Catherine's), founding my 28th city. I discovered Combustion the same turn, with assembly plants finishing all across my empire. My final wonder count was 17 world wonders (Statue of Liberty the last finished), and 3 (+1) national wonders (Oxford, Wall Street, National Epic, and the palace). I did not get stone until rather late, so I lost a lot of the stone wonders to various AIs. Got most of everything else, though.
I am sure AP victory could have been achieved centuries earlier. I had delayed getting Compass for a
long time, as I was just having too much fun growing and improving all my cities. It is not often that you get a chance to play builder like this game.
I fully expect to be beaten by a huge margin for fastest AP victory. But this game was tremendous fun to play, and I thank the sponsor for the scenario. Very enjoyable.
I did go culture but posted a horrible date of 1695 AD. I popped too many great prophets (too much GP pollution from going wonder happy). I also had a spare great artist left at the end of the game as I totally miscalculated when city #2 and #3 would go legendary. I ended up using all of the late religions, including Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and even Islam. I had easy access to marble + copper and later stone so the multipliers were easy to build. Still, my game left a lot to be desired...
both came in. Obviously I beelined Chemistry for more 
. I thought I'd done quite well through most of the game, made a few mistakes, but generally having a smooth ride. Should have won soon after 1700AD, but botched my handling of last great artist, delaying win for a while.
