I'm not very far from a domination victory now, but frankly the game isn't too exciting. I feel like I'm the head of some illiterate barbarian horde that hates culture, and doesn't even know what a library is. Now we're pestering the world with our armies in order to ruin the few glimpses of cultural advances that other, more decent nations have achieved.
One annoying obstacle is that I can't upgrade my obsolete troops without barracks. The closest thing to upgrades is to disband old units to add the shields where I'm building new ones, but there's also some need for the obsolete units as MP because I'm in Monarchy, and to perhaps decrease the risk of cultural flips.
'Cause heaven knows I've had to deal with flips!
And the difficulty is still only Monarch! I think the Mongolian capitol flipped back four times before i had wiped that culture addicted scum from the face of the planet.
But it has also been an interesting experience. Normally, I'm more of a builder than a war monger, and it was a new thing to have to deal with more flips than I'm used to. And I'm not used to being in Monarchy. The unit support and lack of war weariness has proven quite powerful, and when you build units only, it's not a problem if you lose a few battles. I noticed that I have to watch out so that I don't end up promoting the enemy defenders too often, though.
City placement created a need for other solutions than my usual style too, since I tried to place as many cities as possible where you don't need an aqueduct. In combination with no cultural buildings, I had to use a CxC spacing in many locations, in order to get booth free aqueducts and coherent cultural borders.
save me from that Bo Peep bonnet. that alone is a good reason to change that leaderhead. ... Which I have yet to do... 
