to briefly sumarize, i just leveraged petra to spam wonders and ally cultural CS. when i had the pop for it, it was giving me +18 food/production/gold or more.
i played as arabia - desert start bias ftw. under the same start persia or korea should do much better, but i didn't want to do the 100s of rerolls needed.
i played 2 games, the first i screwed up significantly by annexing a couple conquered cities instead of puppeting, and it wasn't a great start anyway. i finished about 175.
second game, i had the amazing start i posted a screenshot of earlier. i moved a couple turns to settle next to the mountain, surrounded by river desert hills. i had marble and barringer happened to be in my borders too.
i found a culture ruin very early so didn't build monument, went scout scout, also got a warrior-> spear upgrade so did significant early bullying to rush buy stuff.
policies were tradition -> legalism -> landed elite -> aristocracy -> monarchy -> finish tradition -> all of piety -> most of patronage (including get great persons) -> all of freedom -> all of liberty -> finish patronage
religion i took desert folklore (obviously), +15% production bonus, cathedrals, 2 faith per foreign city, faith for gp expending
16 desert folklore
32 GL
40 religion founded
43 TOA
49 petra
51 golden age
55 hanging gardens
58 stonehenge
61 masusoleum
65 chichen itza
67 oracle - golden age
73 great mosque
75 terracotta army
78 great wall
85 hagia sophia
88 angkor wat
91 alhambra
93 machu picchu
94 declare war on gandhi - 5 culture, 3 maritime, 2 religious allies declare with me
98 capture mumbai
99 sistine chapel
102 golden age and capture delhi (killing gandhi - yay)
106 forbidden palace
113 taj mahal
118 porcelain tower
121 louvre
124 leaning tower
129 eiffel tower
131 big ben
135 kremlin / declare war on egypt