The issue with this game is the lack of science adjacency early combined with so very unproductive sites apart from the capital and a city to the SW.
Rapa Nui and Vilnius are not the best 2 culture CS but finding them early gives such a boost to culture you can easily forget to grow culture. Another option would have been to start with a theatre because you had Babylon in the game but do not know that and also it risks an accidental CV.
General strategy the same... really push both inspirations and Eurekas and the slow start helps in this regard. A key thing with this is to get some commercial hubs early to be able to get a merchant and 2 markets and 4 trade routes.
Culture was also an issue as you do not want the districts so my 3rd settler went straight south and settled a grass river where we used some Rapa Nui statues in combination with Pingala but Pin only stayed there until Magnus was finished in the capital and Kilwa was built about T110.
As it was King and SV is best done violently I went for a knight rush which worked incredibly well. Built 2 teams of 3 knights to take out both macedon and the Netherlands to get me at the Ottomans who had taken out Fez quite early, This allowed 3 free envoys with the CS. The pillaging of much faith meant I ended the game on 5K faith. Japan and Norway were then taken out for both pillaging reasons and to allow Suzerain of more CS at Globalization.
Taking Free Inquiry for the classical Age is a no brainer and the 50% eurekas is a benefit above harbours that helps the science catch up but the harbour temptation to take free inquiry at Medieval is a trap on king, the eras are too long and you need to buy those builders en mass for chopping but also to get one charge builders left for rocket chopping. Its a bit of a pain managing them all but I wanted to get the speed of victory down.
When I got to Rocketry and moon landing I had got to Ideology in the culture tree which is a little over the target but roughly where you want to be for the moon landing, it meant I did not have to chop in any science projects.
There was 2 great chopping locations with about 13-14 tree chops worth which allowed me to use one for moon landing and one for chopping in lasers. I chopped in 6 lasers on the first turn of the launch of the exoplanet expedition and my 11th laser took a turn off the travel time so 11 is of value.. 6 turns for the expedition. Chopping the front and back is better than the middle which has the time to be done by builders. powerful production costs a lot to make and only shaves a turn or 2 off for a lot of production. Without Hong Kong production becomes a little better but with it, production is Meh.
My tundra chopping place I managed to get many chops due to Marcus Linius Crassus and he is a great GP specifically for this type of thing, highly underrated by many players (pic of city below)
I used Liang during the early stages of building my 'project' rocket site at London as the 20% toward districts really helped and I only got that from a Great Merchant which is another reason for early commercial hubs.
Buying 2 rocket sites takes a lot of gold and finding 4 CH with Norway was a godsend in this regard, it allows me to avoid Public transport which I hate using, I think it is naff to place a whole lot of neighbourhoods and not finish them.
I was tempted to take warlords throne but decided the early builders using AH would be more handy since I had got to feudalism quite fast. I delayed quite a few builders until them and chopping them in at that stage was very fast. Used intelligence agency as I had no use for extra units and they do eat up maintenance.
My governor order was Magnus - Provision then Pingala - Connoisseur - Researcher
I built pyramids very early which helps with early builder chops, Big Ben, Forbidden city ... that was it missed the wonder eureka due to priorities.
No vertical integration used, the map does not suit that or Coliseum apart from perhaps using Macedon cities which is where I placed one of my coal plants. It is very efficient to build a central powered factory providing +10 to each surrounding city but doing the opposite of producing a lot of factories to provide a single city with mega prod is not necessary, especially on a map with Hong Kong.
Here is my early culture city, used for one of my two CH which I chopped in as Bologna makes it worth doing. Those few culture tiles made a big difference early but took a few workers to get done.
One of my two chopping cities, I used airports because they are +10 production for England and also give a Eureka... I did not get 3 in time for the globalisation inspiration.
My other chopping city, used for the moon landing. See all the 1 charge builders ready to chop, like pink ghosts in the snow.
So I poked kamikaze with shiny robot of death a bit.
Somewhere along the line here I've gotten my slinger far north enough to find another barb camp and eureka archery (which I haven't worked on yet, as I'm lining for RND).
