Did a 3-city National College, then expansion through conquest. I used a Tradition/Liberty mix that came together very nicely -- Tradition opener, fill out most of Liberty, then back to Tradition for Aristocracy before closing Liberty. This is kind of my default Liberty strategy now, since the two Tradition policies go a long way toward fixing the common issues Liberty has (border expansion and happiness). It was especially good in this game. I built both Temple of Artemis and the Pyramids early, and the stacked GE points from those let me spawn an Engineer around turn 100. I used this for Chichen Itza, then closed Liberty with Representation a turn later. By delaying Liberty, I was able to get bonus golden age turns, and I wouldn't have been able to get the natural GE spawn if I had incremented the counter by closing Liberty earlier.
Conquest was pretty easy, since Persia's +1 movement is amazingly useful for battle. I took a bunch of wonders and great works, got both tall AND wide, and completely annihilated the top culture AI. That was enough to win immediately with faith-bought Musicians after Internet.
Conquest was pretty easy, since Persia's +1 movement is amazingly useful for battle. I took a bunch of wonders and great works, got both tall AND wide, and completely annihilated the top culture AI. That was enough to win immediately with faith-bought Musicians after Internet.