This was one of the more competitive and intelligent games I've ever seen the AI play. From start to finish, several civs made some pretty good decisions, and France and Korea were tech'ing harder than I'm used to seeing.
The start was close to ideal. I settled in place and knew I needed Petra to get any production out of the capital. Warrior went SW and stole a worker from Brazil on t6, went home to heal up, then went NE grabbed a ruin that gave me Calendar and found Katmandu to help found Desert Folklore. Scout sent SE, grabbed 2 culture ruins, a couple of pop ruins, and became an archer.
I hard built Petra t70 (no Gambit this time as there was a lot of desert out there and I didn't want to risk it). Germany seemed the most likely to go for Petra, so I joined Mongolia in an early DoW against them to slow them down.
Feeling so giddy about the Petra build, I then built HG, Oracle, and got a t90ish NC.
Cultural order was a bit unusual: Tradition Opener > Liberty Opener > Republic (to help w/ Petra build) > Citizenship > Aristocracy (to help w/Petra) > Finish Liberty > Finish Tradition > 1st 3 in Rationalism > Freedom > I threw in Commerce Opener for Big Ben > Finished Rationalism.
Free Settler went West to grab the faith Wonder (which I really needed at the end). 2nd Settler, right before Petra, went to the Copper to the East (and I immediately bought 2 tiles SE to block France's expansion and grab some desert sheep). Final Expo went to the coast up North.
I was pretty much just cruising along, making friends with France and Brazil, when Korea comes out of nowhere and builds PT. WTF? It was pretty early. I used Liberty GE finisher for SC, which saved me as I barely got through all of my needed SP.
I only had 4 horsies, and got 3 Camel Archers built just in time for America's sneak attack on me. It was a pretty impressive invasion, but the CA's are just so freakin good. I ended up taking Chicago and gave Washington an expensive peace. He tried to retake Chicago 3-4 times, but it was a good defensive location and I had FL's, and eventually artillery, so he just kept suiciding units and paying me to not counter-attack.
Money was rolling in all game and I kept tech'ing and upgrading units. I probably bought more buildings than I ever have. I did keep Wonder Mongering, picking up, in order: Petra, HG, Oracle, SC (GE), Eiffel (GE), SoL (GE), Cristo (GE), Hubble, Big Ben, and then used a naturally spawned GE to build GF on the final turn just for giggles.
About that naturally spawned GE.....I also let a GMerch spawn and he delivered 1000 much needed late gold. Arts Funding had been passed and I wasn't going to get any more GS, and that 1000 really saved the game.
I had been tech'ing pretty well all game, but didn't get the tech lead until I started bulbing after Labs. I then watched both Korea and France pass me back up in science.
France was a conundrum all game. Napolean was a science whore, built plenty of Wonders, had the strongest army most of the game, but never attacked me even though he was right on my doorstep and I bought numerous tiles away from him. He also didn't really want to DoF, but he was a good trading partner. Had he not been the only one in Autocracy, he likely would have won the science race, as he had 5 parts built at the end.
I was 4th to ideology, and thankfully Freedom was still there. Germany would join me in Freedom, but he was everyone's favorite whipping boy and ended up as an island nation.
Korea was a a$$ right from when I met him. He never wanted to be friendly, was very stingy in trading, and was a tech monster even though he didn't bother building spaceship parts.
Brazil did try one sneak attack, but sued for an expensive peace after about 5 turns of losing everything he sent into my territory.
I had considered more military conquest, but my empire was so wide and skinny, my borders were going to be hard to secure. I was just too vulnerable from too many angles. At the end, I built 3 SS parts and bought the last 3. I had a tone of GPT (400+ at the end) and just had to wait a few turns to accumulate enough gold to buy the last one. It was a bit worrisome at the end when France again passed me up in Science near the end, but I got one last faith GS (2500) to pop the final tech needed. I guess taking both Mosques and Pagodas paid off.