I was more than a little unsure how to proceed in this game, and it took me a while to figure out what the snake in the can was. At first I was expecting 5 barb camps right outside of your starting LOS with barbs ready to ninja those juicy MOVs. Then I met The Real Sejong, and figured I was facing all tough opponents. When I met Polish Shaka, I was wondering if I was going to have to deal with Impis somehow amped up by Solidarity. Finally I met Maria Shaka, and it all made sense.
So what to do with the classic Venice/3 MOV/Petra/Faith/etc. open? Seriously, the only thing that could have made this start more OP would have Mt. Kilo or one of the workable faith mountain NW plopped next to Venice. Then I could have built the Neusch and collected every wonder.
I kinda dislike Venice's UA because I like to expand, although I admit it does give a fairly smooth Diplo win and is a fun change of pace for every VC. I therefore decided to use all three MOVs to puppet early, grabbing the first as soon as it popped a worker and the next two as soon as they improved their luxes.
At the start, I was thinking I should take cities all game and keep my foot down on units. I bought a scout and a worker, then built another scout and a monument. Then I thought, well, the ToA will help me build archers, and will help all my puppets work more trade posts, so it's OK. I lost my mind, and built 19 wonders before I built a single military unit. But, how many games do you get to build the likes of the Hanging Gardens and the Statue of Zeus, let alone hard-build both in the same city? I didn't get the best possible early growth, but turn 89 Education with 5 wonders (6 w/Petra) in the bag isn't too bad (for this map!).
I obviously needed some early army, so I went with DF and Holy Warriors to open, along with Tithe. I followed that up with the Faith from Wonders belief to keep the units coming, and the amped up Prophets so I could get an effective late spread without any early missionaries other than the 3 from Borobudur. I did instigate Shaka into fighting Shaka (if you ask about which Shakas, the answer is yes), but I didn't bribe anyone away and actually had a respectable army just from HW. Polish Shaka DOW'd me before I wanted to go on a rampage, and I took one of his cities just to get him to go away for a while.
As this game played out, I bought more buildings than troops because my troops were quickly elite, and I took my time taking cities at first. Order would probably have best augmented my game, but I went Freedom and it worked. I don't really think it was that much more challenging, just fun to try and convince an AI that can't choose Freedom that it should have. I also decided not to raise any cities, with some vague idea of seeing if I could pull it off and what it might do for my score. I've only read a little about what a time game involves, without having ever tried for one. I did have full Honor, so it's not like I was warring with no help. Frankly though, warring with a tech lead is easy and doesn't require any buffs. I lost 3 gats and 3 tanks the whole game, and except for the initial push with upgraded Holy Warriors, I only used units hard-built in a single city. Freedom has the highest growth potential, and some minor direct and indirect buffs to building an army. There's also acceptable happiness if you build farms or otherwise provide enough food to your puppets to convince them to work specialists.
When war did come on about turn 200, it started slowly with 2 armies of 3 arties, 4 infantry, and some supporting gats that got left behind as garrisons (upgraded faith bought archers/CB). I had built 19 wonders by then too. I switched from food ITRs to a mix of production and gold routes for this stretch of the game. I lost 3 gats, but took down Polish Shaka with just those troops and the beginnings of my Navy and Air Force. I temporarily left him with his worst city. I was wondering how long to wait before going after Poca-Shaka, but decided to go right after him when I saw how many archeologists he so kindly built for me. I was thinking that I wanted some Archeologists to keep my culture/tourism pumping, but I didn't want to waste turns building them.
It was right about then that my bombers (upgraded from GWB) came online, and I now had two bomber stacks running round the clock missions. The arties were getting close to logistics, and my tech was still strong relative to the number of cities I had. With a small but tough navy of 5 battleships and 2 clepto-Destroyers working the North coast, I sent one set of arties/infantry/bombers on the North of the Eastern front and the other on the South of the Eastern Front. The pace picked up quite a bit, and I rolled Poca-Shaka in 5 turns, except 1 city. I left him holed up in Yerevan because The Real Shaka looked ready to put up a fight. Plus I had figured out that not prioritizing the Forbidden Palace was a big mistake on my part, and he had it. I built 8 tanks to improve my forward LOS for my bombers and to pillage, a few more naval units to protect the home land, and then went back to building wonders and winning all three international projects. After I bought the last few city states so I could ram Freedom through as the World Ideology, I spent the majority of my gold on science buildings, happiness buildings, and garrisons for my puppets. To support troop movements I built two massive East-West trans-continental rail lines, one in the North and one in the South. I also upgraded my logistics arties to RA.
The Real Shaka had a lot of troops and put up a good fight, but once I chewed through his standing army and the first few cities I started taking 2 cities a turn. Thankfully, I got the happiness in Liberty and Exploration in time never go into the red, but I had to buy happiness buildings in my older cities after some conquests. Annoyingly, you have to mouse over the info bar of a newly captured city to get the population working tiles/specialists before you can see how much happiness you'll get from said specialists. But happiness wasn't the real problem; that was reserved for the city tech penalty. When you have 15+ cities in resistance, you get the tech penalty but no tech. Future techs quickly went from 10 turns of research to 33 turns, with no change in beakers going in. The number of turns to complete Satellites stayed around 8 for a long time, and The Real Sejong beat me to Hubble because of that. I was much happier with all of those cities though, and couldn't even muster a sigh of regret. Once everything came out of resistance, I started seeing some big numbers splashed across the top of the screen.
I took 2 more Zulu cities after his cap, then took the rest of his cities except for two in a peace deal. I was feeling generous, and so I let him keep that 2 pop island city with exactly zero resources of any kind in addition to his current capital. I only lost 1 tank in the war, when I left it alone in battleship range. Unfortunately for both of us, his new cap had the Forbidden Palace. 10 turns was long enough for me to get my army to the North, take all Gaja-Sejong's cities in 3 turns (I lost 2 tanks in my haste), and get back to take Shaka's last worth while city. I left him as the sole survivor of my hostilities on his only-the-AI-would-found-here island. I went from having to buy stadiums to stay happy to having a 65 happiness cushion with one conquest.
After clipping Shaka, I brought my army back West and killed the Sejong I had temporarily revived as a buffer. Then I waxed Poca-Shaka, and sent some of my tanks towards Polish Shaka's last city. The rest of my army took its time getting over to The Real Sejong. I bombed Polish Shaka out of existence and sniped the city with a tank. All three of the single city opponents were obliterated in 1 turn each.
Now I faced a cross-roads. I was starting to really wonder how big I could grow all of these cities as I was now pushing a 100 happiness buffer after grabbing all of Freedom's happiness tenets, and I still had a lot of happiness I could buy/hope the puppet builds. When I was in my earlier happiness crush, the cities I was taking were not well developed and didn't have the buildings Freedom would buff until later in the game. Once I got into Shaka's core and the various Korean cities, I got cities with lots of buildings that were buffed by policies. I traded the survivors spare luxes for nothing to see if I could encourage them to expand and found some new cities for me, but they didn't do anything. I delayed for a bit and upgraded to stealth bombers, then decided to just finish and see what kind of high-score I can put up some other time without cheating the start. I rolled Sejong in 4 turns, mostly with my stealth bombers, battleships, and captured subs (upgraded to nuclear). I sat on the 6+ nukes I bought once I teched the bomb, and only planned to use them if Real Sejong attacked while my army was on the other side of the continent.
In conclusion, I'm not sure what I achieved, if anything, but I had fun! I crushed my existing top score (America, Deity, domination), which also featured modern era onward conquest. My final screen shots show all the numbers, and I'm certain I've never hit those kind of science and culture numbers before. I was nowhere close to 1 billion, but I did have a fairly substantial population overall. I'm definitely interested in trying a time/score game of my own some time.
As an aside, I tried using the demand option to see if I could get an AI to give me a city, and even with 3 times the AI's military score and 10 nukes collecting dust, they told me to piss off. I wonder what the threshold is?