This is my proudest achievement to date!
With the return of half cost mercenaries, and their new UU in 1.10, the best unit in the game considering the era, the phoenicians are a military superpower. I realized that when I did the UHV last week, so I set myself on domination with them.
I settled in place for the capital, and sent the 2nd settler to the salonae spot on the adriatic. The reason is, there's only 3 spots available to settle: Carthage, Salonae (named Utica for the phoenicians) and sinope. Salonae seemed to me the best choice to me considering eventual competition for settlement in that area from the greeks and the romans.
Sur worked on a granary, followed by a settler, sent to found carthage to hook up the all important Ivory. Research path was agriculture, then horseback riding for the elephants.
I hired as many mercenaries as possible, and along with 2 flipped vultures, quickly overwhelmed mesopotamia, conquered Babylon and razed the 2 extra eastern cities to deny them to the persians. Next I turned to Egypt which was equally easily conquered. The UP really doesn't have much usefulness beyond this point, but it does make for a terrific start.
I could have conquered Greece with mercenaries then, but I didn't know that the ERE spawn depends on Rome being alive, so I let them live. This leads me to think that the finish date could even be improved since I could have worked 2 extra cities for quite a few more turns (Athens and Constantinople).
I joined with Greece when they attacked Persia, and conquered Parsa. The Greeks conquerors got the rest and that was it for Persia.
Rome attacked while I was building up troops to invade them, but this really didn't matter. War elephants were already in position to squash them, and with a few catapults I pushed into their territory and captured Rome. A few turns after, their conquerors conquered Greece before they collapsed.
At turn 164, I realized that the ERE didn't spawn, so I conquered Constantinople and Athens. independant Ankara flipped to me, and I disbanded it so I could resettle as Sinope for my 10th city. Research output wasn't so hot then, but I gradually recovered with currency and code of laws, and with 2 great merchants and the silk road spreading to my asian cities, I was able to run science at 100% for the last 1000 years or so.
I fought off the arab independance war, destroying their army at the gate of Sur, and then negotiated peace. I also refused the carthage flip and engaged in a phony war with the moors, which ended after rougly 10 turns.
Next Russia peacevassaled to me as soon as I met them, which is a huge boost for domination. Spain peace vassaled in exchange for dow against the viking, which I did. I did the same to get England (dowed against France), and capitulated France. Around that time Seljuks were easily crushed as soon as they spawned by a mix of war elephants and knights.
I then started to build up cuirassiers in anticipation for the turkish spawn. There were no war on spawn, so they lived a few turns longer. I refused the flip, and they mostly migrated north. A bunch of them went south toward babylon, outside of the defection zone and were squashed. The rest conquered Stravopol, but I sent cuirassiers there to destroy most of their armies and the russians took back the city.
I also fought the mongols around that time, destroying their seljuks and russian expeditionnary forces, and then they capitulated netting me my 5th and last vassal.
The next phase was teching up to Radio and rushing cristo redemptor with an engineer, gifting the russians a massive amount of settlers, settling a few cities in america and africa, and turning up the culture slider to 100% once I had all the civic oriented techs (nationalism, communism).
per city. 
