I tried to hook up
resources to keep the culture slider down.
Interesting, I tried to keep the culture slider up to get a better score. This might have made the difference^^
But there are more differences in our games:
Capital produces 3 or 4 workers first, an initial chop should suffice to get them at a 1/turn rate. Then factory - coal plant - barracks(+maybe stable) - pentagon - tanks. Chop if anything needs more than a single turn. Might require to hire additional engineers for early GE, don't remember exactly as I often played with Gandhi (1740 submission was Asoka though). Tried to synchronize secondary city barracks with Pentagon to get three 9xp tanks asap, but it really never worked...
No settlers; 2nd/3rd city produce 1-2 workers first, holy city 2 missionaries, then exact build order as capital.
I never used US(maybe a mistake) - started with Representation and only once switched civics, the turn the Pentagon was built, to Police State - Vassalage - Enviro - Emancipation - Theocracy.
Considering the length of the game (exactly 14 turns of war and 14(13?) turns before), I didn't care at all about captured cities. The earliest to come out of resistance produced a worker or two, but it really didn't matter.
I might add that the city sites were not exactly optimal in my final entry. Too many Tank/2turns, too few forests around. So a turn less in the beginning might be possible - the 14 turn Blitzkrieg was quite perfect though.
EDIT: The biggest difference of course is that your games take 1 hour, mine take 4-5
EDIT2: I played without barbs to be able to leave cities undefended. (And I don't know nothing about milking, nor about QScore)