3) No iron for Scandinavia.
In my game they traded it from someone...

Which was particularly painful as Scandinavia was the obvious choice for my second core. I got a declaration of war from Scandinavia quite early and managed to capture one of their towns with horsemen. Even got an MGL from that, which I first wanted to use for the Palace rush, but then ended up using for Leonardo's for a mass horsemen-upgrade.
After that first town they suddenly had iron and pikes everywhere, and as I was only 6 turns from Chivalry, I retreated my horses, before the Berzerks got them... The captured town was gifted to the Zulus, because I thought they would be my second target, so I can easily retake it later, but I did not get to retaking that town until the end of the game...

For a long time the Zulus were good friends and my allies and I had other wars to take care of. And then towards the end, when they back-stabbed me, I did not want to take their towns, because they were the "perfect election opponent", but where only #3 in population.
So anyway, the war with Scandinavia was painfully slow. First I had to retake a flipped hill-town on my home continent

, as well as a town they took with Berzerks (never seen the AI use Berzerks cleverly before...). Then I tried three landings, alternating between a norther and a southern landing site, hoping that their Berzerks were still at the other site. I had always around 15 Knights covered by two Muskets, lost like 2-3 units after landing, and then the 13-14 Knights were not sufficient to take a town and had to be retreated before the gross of the Berserks got there! It was always the same pattern: a few losses, a few wins and a lot of retreats and the attacked town surviving by like 1-2 red-lined pikes

The final landing I made with 26 Knights, and this time finally captured a major city. That broke their neck, they had only single Berzerks left here and there, but no real resistance anymore. I worked in a circle around Nidaros, because it had recently constructed the GLib and I had shut research down after Chivalry & Gunpowder. Also it was currently doing the Sistine Chapel, so no units to be expected from that city... After I had taken all towns except Nidaros, I made a peace deal and got all their island towns.
Then I waited some time while shifting fresh reinforcements to Scandinavia. (The embassy had revealed 11 pikes, so I figured I needed 30 Knights to make sure. Also these units would then assist in the Palace jump. (I had already planted an RCP 3 around Nidaros during the war, using settlers from Carthage, so everything was prepared.) During that waiting time I parked my Knights outside captured cities, because already during the war I had like a flip every three turns. But I did not want to raze (bad idea if going for UN... and also some had already useful improvements in them, which would make them valuable core towns immediately after the Palace jump).
So by the time I had enough Knights assembled and given the AIs enough time to do some useful research for me, I redeclared, took Nidaros and the 4 cities that had flipped meanwhile and gained 6 techs from the GLib. (Basically the missing MA techs except for Military Tradition, Magnetism and Theory of Gravity.) This was in 590AD.
3-4 more turns for preparing the Palace jump, and then I settler-disbanded Carthage!
From now on it was basically 5-6 turn research and a few good trades until I got to Fission.
Interestingly, I got close to the domination limit, while declaring war only one single time in the entire game! I got the DoW from Scandinavia, which allowed me to conduct this lengthy war without too much war weariness: only at the end I had to raise lux from initially 0% to 30% for a short while. After the war with Ragnar, I wanted to turn to the Zulus, but I got a surprising DoW from Spain, so I decided to eliminate them instead. I allied the Romans and the French, which made them gracious, and then slowly upgraded my Galleys to Caravels and the Knights to Cavalry, while at the same time researching and building up Libs and Universities. During that time Spain asked for peace several times (probably war weariness pressuring them), but I let them roast over slow fire...

When my invasion fleet finally arrived in Spain, it rolled them over quickly, gaining another leader, which remained unused until the end of the game

I think this was somewhere in the 800s or 900s.
In a normal game I would now probably have continued with Rome (forming a Cav Army with my leader), so that I would get the missing 150-200 tiles and a higher overall score. But "real life time" was running out, so I just did the basic railroading & researching and other than that pressed "enter". A war with Rome would have taken at least 1-2 extra hours...
Around 15 turns before the end, I got a sneak attack from the Zulus, which was very helpful as well. They were #2 in population at that time, so a war with them seemed necessary anayway. I had an MPP with France, which got the French into the war immediately, and then the French signed up Rome with an MA. So I did not even have to sign MAs to get the other two into the war, which turned out to be very important lateron:
The problem namely was, that from that point on the Zulus dropped considerably in population. Don't know why. It didn't look like they were loosing any cities.

(I took a few size 1-2 towns they had on my continents in order to prevent them from unloading units in their harbours. But that should at most have been 10 pop points.) Have they been drafting?! In any case, 2-3 turns before the completion of Fission, the Romans had around 60 pop points more than the Zulus! So something had to be done. Now it was good that I didn't have any MAs with Rome and France, because I was able to make peace with the Zulus without breaking any deals. (Not sure, if this would have influenced the vote?!) As it was, when I got the popup for finishing Fission, I called up Shaka, made peace with him, gifted him around 15 towns and cities for a total of 70 pop points and finally changed my prebuild to the UN (this was one turn faster than using the leader next turn...).
A little shock afterwards: the Romans took three of the cities that I had just gifted to the Zulus!

I had completely forgotten that I still had a RoP with Rome and they could use my railway to get to the former Spanish cities that I had given Shaka... Fortunately in the popup that announced my completion of the UN, I was able to call up Shaka again and give him some more cities...

Just in time before the election.
Very close shave. Unfortunately I was not able to submit: a bit over one hour over the time limit. A pity, because this was a game that I really enjoyed a lot. A tough uphill struggle in the war with the Vikings and after that a highly interesting research game with a couple of "diplomatic" twists inbetween and at the end.
Lanzelot