Here is a rough draft of that article if it helps someone. I dont have time to finish right now with a baby due any day and work, but instead of it sitting on my hard drive for a month or two I will post it here for whoever would like it to read. It is unfinished but I will hopefully get to resume finishing it in a few weeks.
@WastinTime- dont forget city maintenance at Deity and its much harder to keep the AI from building the Hanging Gardens... did you really have 3.5x pop? So a huge map would have 10,500/3000 population?
Background
Inspired by VirusMonster's high score game, I began playing some Huge Immortal and Deity games in order to see how high a score could be attained. The results are interesting; I was able to score 700k my first game! Many people have asked for a writeup, but I thought I could hit a million with the BTS scoring system, so I tried a bit more. The final result was 1,085,000 points. Here is how it was achieved and why the high scores can reach higher. Hopefully someone else will take up the challenge.
BTS Scoring
Im certainly not an expert in BTS scoring, but the gist of it is the added turns in BTS allow for a higher multiplier with the BaseScore. In other words, a domination victory can be achieved in 400 turns on huge marathon, regardless of CIV version; however, BTS grants you a bonus since the max turns are significantly higher. Furthermore, the CIV equivalent of agricultural civs, Corporations, theoretically allows for EVERY city to have 15 extra food at least from Sids Sushi. The AI is a bit better, but just calls for different tactics than previously (ie, they are still bad). Add in events like the health generating event and BTS is the only choice for scoring high.
Civ Choice
I chose Darius. He has 3 things going for him: 1) An early UU that can take cities by itself; 2) The organized and financial traits- organized is very significant as pointed out by A Turkish Guy and VM for managing large empires and financial furthers that ability; even though you wont have many cottages for the majority of the game, the bonus to water tiles, special tiles, and windmills is huge; 3) The UB is pretty good, surprisingly, adding what is essentially +2 food.
Since this game I have tried Inca and Ragnar on deity with similar settings and really, you can use any civ. Inca can hit a wall if you have too many cities (no organized trait), and industrious does not make up for the lack of organized at all, its merely a small bonus in a couple of wonder building cities. Their UB is good, and the UU is excellent if you can economically handle having large numbers of them roaming around the map with catapults. Ragnar has swordsmen almost as strong as praets coming out of the gate (aggressive), is financial, and his galleys move 4 tiles with the UB and circumnavigation bonus on archi tiny islands. You can island hop and try to get free hut technology with his starting scout and a galley.
Map Settings
Terra was chosen. It has a nice domination limit, and it also means you have a nice new world to colonize, picking out the best food spots well before the AI can grab them up. It also provides a safety net in case you destroy too many AIs; you HAVE to get to the new world to reach domination so you could theoretically dominate all the AIs in the old world without worrying about domination. Finally, using Terra essentially gives you a free tech, Astronomy; there are so many huts on the new continent on huge size, that ferrying over a scout/explorer with caravels gives a very good chance to pop it out, saving several turns of research. The following are the techs that can be popped from huts, perhaps you can get more than astronomy with a fine tuning of tactics:
=====Ancient=====15=
Fishing
Hunting
Mining
Mysticism
Agriculture
Archery
Priesthood
The Wheel
Masonry
Pottery
Animal Husbandry
Sailing
Bronze Working
Writing
Horseback Riding
=====Classical======10=
Literature
Iron Working
Mathematics
Drama
Monarchy
Calendar
Construction
Compass
Currency
Metal Casting
=====Medieval======1=
Music
=====Renaissance=====1=
Astronomy
Now, there are several other map types to be tried, including Big and Small and Archipelago and similar map types. These might also yield high scoring potential.
Speed- Marathon
Low Sea Level (maybe you might use high seas for less land and more sea population?)
10 AIs- this gives you a 56% domination limit as opposed to 51% with 17 AIs.
Barbs- None
Goody Huts- On. On deity you may consider turning huts off as they help the AI too much, but on Immortal you benefit even if you never pop a single hut. The AI researches comparatively slow, and you do too in the beginning. If a couple of AI pop key techs early, you get a research bonus for them knowing the tech. Usually you can get a couple hundred gold as well, allowing for maximum research in the early going.
Rivals- Mansa, the Germanies, the Indians, Mehmed, Washington, and Elizabeth
Attacking Huge Immortal
Expansion: Rapid expansion is always grand. Your friend in expansion is the cost/benefit ratio. Since settlers on marathon cost 300 hammers, any city you can take with less than 5 Immortals (60 hammers) lost is a net win. Since most unthreatened AI cities have 2 archers defending, and immortals have favorable odds against non-hill, non-cultural defense cities, military is almost always the best build early on. Immortals are even the best unit usually when there are 5 archers in a 40% culture AI capital; theoretically, each of the first 5 should damage the archers enough to allow 5 more to capture the city. With the retreat bonus of Immortals, you should still be able to make a net gain in those situations, not even counting the city improvements like granaries that often come with these types of cities and the terrain improvements already in place.
Furthermore, you do need quite some workers to be successful on this level. The easiest and most cost effective method to acquire at least 3 workers in the early going is to worker steal. BTS AI is better at covering their workers with archers, but still many times they will leave the worker all alone during the first 100 turns to be captured by a warrior. Sometimes they are just irrigating on the outer portion of the BFC, sometimes they are roading to a second city, but if you are patient you will capture one from each civ you try. I like to "Skip Turn" rather than Fortify the warrior so I dont forget about him sitting there and miss worker stealing opportunities. Never steal one in a situation in which you will end up on a tile with no defensive bonuses and that is right next to the capital so that an archer can kill you; the exception to this is if the worker is mining metal there before you get immortals. Then, by all means attack the worker; even if your warrior is killed the AI will often delete the worker anyways even if there is no more threat. If you have some aversion to worker stealing, building your own workers works fine, it just takes longer. For marathon level in the early going, I like to have 3 workers per city, which enables 3 turn forest chops, 7 turn irrigations, and 4 turn mines. Once your empire is a sufficient size in the ADs, you can turn each and every city to build a worker and before long you will have 100+ to help irrigate and make population.
Military: 4 initial warriors to start, at least the first two produced using the highest shield tiles available at the expense of growth. You never know if the warriors getting to an AI quickly will pay off, but the benefits of a new worker earlier are immense.
The second phase is production of Immortals. This phase lasts until 500 BC or so. The concept is simple: make as many as possible and take cities, workers, and harass the AI. If playing as another civ, swords/cats/axes is the concentration.
The third phase is Immortals+. This series of wars may be fought with cats, axes, spears, maces, etc., depending on your tech level at the time and current empire needs. Cats do two things: defense against spears and softening up of cultural defenses so that you can again attain a satisfactory cost benefit ratio. They also can collateral damage, but I generally refrain from using them to attack cities unless I have to or they are promoted to CR3 to achieve high odds. It is better to lose a 60 hammer Immo than a 100 hammer cat in city attacking.
The final phase is Currasiers+. Once longbows appear, you need a bit more punch for your attack, and curassiers provide that; they can be combined with airships to increase their odds of winning or later be turned into cavalry for a final assault. The AI should never reach rifles unless you let them or frankly, you are doing something wrong, wild, or crazy.
Of course, if you desire to build the Hanging Gardens, you have to play a completely different game. Your wars will be conducted entirely with cats and ancient units, and you have to eliminate everyone down until you have only 1-3 AIs left, hopefully in subpar food locations. This is a two edged sword; you can do whatever you want at this point, but your research will be bad (no foreign trade routes) and the AI will not trade anything they have researched (no problem, just steal things like Feudalism if they make it that far). Finally with this method you must make many more settlers than in the game I mention here; you cant take cities from the AI as they wont have many good ones to give!
Exploration: Your initial scout will do a lot of things. With no barbarians, he is not at risk of dying unless you are in a war with an AI. He will pop huts and get a general description of the landmass, but most importantly he will find horses in your nearby vicinity for your first produced settler to acquire.
AI Research: For the purposes of a game like this, you really want the AI to research well. They will provide several nice techs, metal casting, machinery, engineering, calendar, ironworking, etc. Most importantly they will research alphabet early as a priority, which means you dont have to research it and can concentrate on economic technologies, like Currency and Education.
Research: Initially, you want to acquire Mining, Bronzeworking, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, and Writing. If you plan on building the Oracle, naturally you would want to research to Priesthood before Pottery and Writing, and then enjoy a research bonus on Writing without having delayed finishing the Oracle. You can take a variety of techs with the Oracle, but CoL, Currency, and if you are lucky, Civil Service or even Education is possible.
Walkthrough
So, in the year 4000 BC, King Darius decides to settle on a plains hill, with a cow and a gold hill. The greatest start in the world it is not, but it will do for our purposes here. Really this game was to try the Terra map out, and work on the endgame strategy, which it accomplished.
Phase 1 to 1000 BC
As you can see in the replay, I stole workers from France, India, America, and England during this period. Worker stealing is the key to fast growth, and you really need 3 in the early going for your capital to provide 3 turn forest chops, 4 turn mines, 2 turn roads, and 5-7 turn irrigations depending on terrain. I think 2 commerce tiles is all you really need, and if you can get pottery early, several floodplains can make up for the lack of a gems or gold.
The first builds are typically 3-4 warriors to go out worker stealing in all directions. In worker stealing, naturally you want to try to grab workers while they are on the outside of the BFC. If they are covered by archers, just wait until the AI builds a second city (turns 50-75 roughly); at some point they will leave them unprotected and you can move on in. A helpful tip I use is to skip turn for each of these waiting warriors each turn so you dont forget about them and can act as soon as possible. Also, you can camp a resource if its on the edge of their territory; they will get around to it eventually. The AI likes to irrigate special tiles, and if doing nothing else road around their territory. An animal husbandry resource like cattle they will wait usually if they have other tiles to work; so if you are camped by a cattle, and it gets up to turn 60 or so, go out looking for the second city and catch the worker roading.
The next project is a settler to found by horses (if playing Persia/Egypt). You want a high shield location with decent food, as this city will produce quite some military. You can pre-road if possible, with the goal to hook up horses asap. Here horses were close to the west, and I could hook them up and then road towards India, who had Stone and Stonehenge built.
Indian war
Pretty quick matter overall, built 7 or so Immos and declared. Received good RNG vs. the archers at Delhi and didnt need reinforcements to take Varanasi. Finished the road over to Delhi from Persepolis, and sent the Immos west to Napoleon.
Napoleonic War
Another quick matter. Moved in and grabbed his cities. Nothing much else to report as it was straightforward. I seem to remember he captured Delhi with a wandering archer but I took it back asap.
Washington and Elizabeth
Managed to make some spears, but eliminated the copper asap on both of them and poked around until I had them where I wanted them with enough forces in place. BTS AI will move units to reinforce a threatened location better, so if you camp one city on the periphery, often they will move archers from the capital which you can kill in the open field and move to take the capital. You shouldnt have any units threatening the capital while you do this however as they will sit there.
In attacking cities with 20% culture and no hills, I usually send 2 immos for every archer, and if there is 40% defense or hills involved, 3 immos per archer.
At the end of the English war, I am on the verge of bankruptcy. Luckily I was able to plod along to Priesthood barely and take currency. Currency is the most important ancient age tech for games like this, as you can trade gold from the AI and enjoy the 2nd trade routes for your existing cities to further solve your gold problems. To achieve a fast tech pace, early on you will only have the libraries and academies, so you really want to run high research at a deficit to distance yourself from the AI. Dont forget to look for gold trades after you build wonders.
During this phase, Delhi built Pyramids and then Hanging Gardens; since I hadnt sent immos to harass the far away civs, I couldnt wait to build the HG. I typically have two wonder building cities during this time, the best production city and a Moai enhanced coastal city to build The Great Lighthouse, Colossus, and anything else lying around like Temple of Artemis. I wouldnt worry about wonder distribution and GPP pool contamination as you will just use most of the great people for golden ages anyways and you will need a variety of them. The most important wonders are Pyramids and Mausolleum of Maussolos
Events
There are several events in the HOF mod that will be helpful to you. Consult Oris Strategy article on Events for full details.
1) Health tests- free +2 health with possiblity of -1 population. If you get this event early before growing to size 2, there is no penalty.
2) Guns not Butter, Marathon Runner, & Sports League- free golden ages if you have the right wonders under your control. If you get these events, Taj, and 5 GP enabled golden ages you can spend 216 turns in GA with the MoM!
3) A few of the others are marginally helpful, like Blessed Sea (free prophet), Horse Whisperer (+1 food for stables), and Warships (+2 commerce for harbors).
Phase 2 to Education
Once Currency is in, and you are playing for building HG/reducing all AI to insignificance, your main purpose is to maximize science through tech selection. Lit (+15 science (2 free scientists+Representation+library), CS (bureau), Metal Casting (Colossus), Calendar (dye/incense plantations and the powerful Mausolleum) and Education (Oxford) are all important to concentrate on.
Espionage
Since you have whittled the pool of AIs down now, you can concentrate your EPs on them to 1) Steal a few filler technologies and even an important one like calendar or aesthetics and 2) keep tabs on their research and what they are building (like the darn HG). There is no reason to detour to Music for the free artist at this stage if the AI isnt in a position to claim it. You can pop music from a hut later if you play on Terra; Big and Small might be a different story as there may not be as many huts if you are using massive continent/small island setting.
Technology
You probably will need a few courthouses in the farther away places, and this is also a good time to build the Forbidden Palace. The FP needs to be built as soon as possible in a farther away location as its benefits are immediately significant. If CS/Education will provide you with the best science outcome, shoot for those. A scientist for Education isnt bad if you have 11 cities w/ libraries ready to build unis AND you have stone available for the capital to bust out Oxford. If you have several coastal towns, now is the time to get a coastal wonder powerhouse going, with Moai (Stone again!), Great Lighthouse, and Colossus to add a bit of a boost to your bottom line. This city might even need the National Epic to produce your GPs in solid numbers.
Philosophy is a nice to have at this point so you can take a golden age and switch to CS/caste/Pacifism.
Phase 3 to Biology
Economic civics like Free Market or Mercantilism can add to your bottom line significantly. 50 cities x an extra 6 beakers or 3 gold+3 beakers can certainly make a sizeable contribution to the economy. Really Mercantilism might be better to beeline than education if you have many cities and Oxford isnt worth as much due to 10-20% science slider.
Technologically, you want to head to Biology first, Communism second. I tried both approaches and it seems getting the growth first is more important in your trip since you cannot spread Sushi in Communism anyhow. This may be different from the other jargon in this article (I have to vet and clean it all up). This is where you want to pop Astro, and free up Sci Method for research, and on to Liberalism->Biology.
Wall Street should be a priority in one of your holy cities; it will house your Sushi Corporate HQ as well, and cut down on the vicious corporate maintenance costs. Gold producing buildings should be your priority at this time rather than unis or observatories (probably the last things you would want to build at this time).
Finally, this is the time when you should be producing settlers and workers. I like to switch all cities to workers for 2 rounds, and get up to at least 150. Hagia Sophia hasnt been as much a of priority previously, but perhaps it should be built sooner rather than later.
Phase 4: The Endgame Milk
There are a number of interesting things that I have discovered RE: the last phase of the game.
Civics
For the most of the builder turns, you should be in Universal Sufferage, Nationhood, Serfdom, Pacifism, and Free Market. US is obvious, it allows you to buy rather than whip away precious pop, and FM provides -25% corporation costs. The others are seldom used government styles so why are they included?
-Nationhood has no upkeep and 25% espionage, also a barracks provides +2 happies. The upkeep can be quite significant, and eliminating that gives you more $$ than bureau or free speech. The barracks bonus will come in handy for your large cities. The 25% espionage is handy for keeping tabs on what the AI is building, and destroying the Hanging Gardens if they start building it. I also destroy the aqueduct in the HG city, and the AI seems to mill around and build a lot of other stuff until they get back around to making the aqueduct and starting HG again.
Free speech also has the unfortunate culture effect that of doubling Sushi culture, and those perfectly placed food cities by floodplains will get a second and third border expansion earlier, and force you to either plant a city in the desert or just ignore them as wasted tiles. At this point the extra commerce from cottages is frivolous. You can probably use FS with communism/representation in your latter part of the research phase.
-Serfdom- workers work twice as fast and LOW upkeep. The benefits for growth are obvious with faster workers (8 turn irrigations of grassland w/ Hagia Sophia!) and the low upkeep is important for cash.
Pacifism- no upkeep and faster GP for those crucial 5th and 6th golden ages. If you have some extra GP lying around at the end, try bulbing some technology if you wont have enough for a final golden age.
Some other civics that will be useful:
-Representation- during your research phase to Radio, this will be your key civic. In such a large empire, you research at 30% without state property, and the Rep bonus is huge.
-State property- should be your next stop after Biology. Cutting the majority of city maintenance allows you to run 60-70% science and finish up your last bits of research. The bad thing is no spread of sushi while running it
.
-Free speech- as mentioned above, can provide a cash/research boost for a while pre-Sushi as long as culture doesnt get out of control.
-Environmentalism and Free Religion- both are used at the very end, Environment for the extra health growth and FR for some extra happiness and small research boost to finish out a tech or two. Note the +25% corporate maintenace with environment, if you are not through spreading Sushi you will soon go broke by continuing to expand it.
Actual Milking Pros and Cons
The two most important worker improvements are farms and windmills. We want explosive population growth, and therefore will farm over everything, leaving those research/cash boosting cottage tiles (now towns) for last. The only things you dont want to farm over are: 1 each of your health/happy items, and pigs. Cows? Irrigate them. Sheep and bananas? Doesnt matter if you irrigate or pasture/plantation them; the only consideration is having a few extra of these "neutral food" healths to trade to the AI for gpt, if available. The +2 food for farms in biology is very significant.
On windmills, naturally you want to keep some production cities to build wonders like Rock and Roll and Christo Redentor up until the end. Electricity provides a large (15%?) boost to your economy based on the additional commerce output for these improvements. It is also on the way to Radio.
So what should cities build? I usually build growth, unit, happiness, health. This allows your cities to keep growing; happiness ahead of health is important as an unhealthy citizen still produces food whereas an unhappy one does not. This works out to a build pattern like:
-granary, lighthouse, catapult/archer/immortal (if you never take HBR!), theatre, market, colloseum, grocer (+5 w/Persia), aqueduct, hospital, with harbors thrown in for coastal cities at some point in the middle.
You want to build the most hammer efficient city improvement available for the citys needs. What I mean by this is, for example, a unit is the cheapest way to maintain happiness, next is a theatre which will provide +2 happy with dye. You may build a market before the theatre if there are significant happiness problems in a high growth city. A colloseum provides +1 happy regardless of lux slider. The apothecary is a great build for unhealthiness, and the aqueduct is cheaper hammer wise than the hosptial in terms of health per hammer. If you still need happiness, you can try spreading religion and building temples for smaller benefits, but if the problem is empire wide you will need to raise the culture slider.
Another note: Once Communism is in, you will go on a buying spree, since every city simply must have a courthouse with Sushi. Otherwise the maintenance is in excess of 100 gpt! 50 gpt is a lot easier to swallow. It is also probably more efficient to buy market, apothecary (or equivalent), and a bank before you buy the other buildings. Now a city limited to size 15 or so growth probably doesnt need these things, but for most of your cities they are necessary so might as well buy them early, enjoy the benefits longer, and get the best return on your investment.
Wonder Buying
Another thing with Communism is the Kremlin. Once it is complete you can buy wonders for less than 10K gold with a turn or two invested. Since you make 3-5K gold at this stage, its not big deal. I have now taken to buying Redentor, Rock N Roll, etc. and it is very helpful. Your two or three wonder building cities can then build other things like execs and settlers. This also means that you only need to set off enough golden ages at a time when you know you can reach Radio for civics changes.
City Placement
Where should the cities be placed? At this point in the game you are making cities for the high growth spots on the map with the most food. You should also look to see how many land tiles are in a new citys radius, and attempt to minimize those. 1 tile islands with seafood resources are the best spots. They are negligible in terms of domination limits but provide a lot of high growth potential with Sushi.
Floodplains can be great, but the effect is minimized by having desert and moutains present. One desert in the radius wipes out the bonus from 4 floodplains! If you have 2 deserts and 6 floodplains, an all grassland irrigated city comes out as the better spot to place a city.
I would shoot for 150-200 workers at this point to fully improve everything in the fastest possible time. An easy way to do this is to turn every city to workers, and buy them/produce them naturally before you reach Sushi. You will have +/- 150 cities but many of those are already improved, so 200 should be enough with Hagia Sophia and Serfdom.
Building the Hanging Gardens at the end of the game
If you went the route of destroying the AIs early and keeping them from building the HG, you can get a nice 3-10% score boost at the end of the game by finishing the HG on the last turn. To do this, you should build the HG up until one turn left, and leave it in the queue until the end. On the final turn, settle as many city spots as possible on the map and/or attack as many AI cities as possible and take those. You can make hundreds of extra population by doing this.
Im sure there are several other things that do not come to mind atm. But basically, with the endgame you want to do a couple of things:
1) Grow population. This is accomplished by keeping your people healthy and happy, and having enough workers to completely irrigate/windmill the whole of your territory, which should be the most food rich land on the map. Further, spreading Sushi should provide about 15 extra food per city.
2) Avoid the domination limit. Be very careful with Sushi's extra culture, it will easily get you past the limit unless you pay close attention.
3) If you can achieve max population (3000 citizens) by turn 500, you should make 2 million points on Immortal.
Your tech speed will be cut by half at the very least, so 2M+ not as easy theoretically as you claim 
each. That is a hard task. I expect at least 50 of your cities will have halted population growth for at least 20 turns to produce 50 settlers. So producing 100 settlers will take 40 turns. If you want to go for more settlers, let's say Sushi and goldbuying would allow you to get your settler goal in 50 turns.
