I ended up having a tech lead at Aesthetics and it was such a quick jump to literature and the great library I decided to go for it. I had it before anyone else grabbed Aesthetics so I decided to push for the great library.
In the mean time, I ended up getting my first great person, who was actually (intentionally) a prophet so that I could put up a confusion founder temple thing in Medina.
From there, I decided since nobody had expanded to the area I would found Najran next to the banana, fish, and gold even though it was a bit outside of my desired range on the other side of Ragnar near Hannibal. So far though, with them in my religion, they dug me so I figured I could risk it.
It made the decision to push music more obvious, I popped up to music and got the great artist which I used to pop borders in Narjan and secure my resources. At this point I grabbed drama, figuring that I would push for a cultural victory... Things got interesting after I grabbed drama and theology (and built the palace). Everybody else had been so at war, that nobody even had paper yet, it was only 4 turns for me and with the money from confusionism I could carry 100% research so it was off to liberalism!
After liberalism -> nationalism, I grabbed divine right and stopped researching. I turned Narjan into a great artist factory and I used wealth production to fund 100% culture. I had built like 5 wonders in Medina. I had a ton of commerce in Mecca. I figured those would be my 3 cities. I spread around confusionism, buddhism, and my my second founded religion which was islam. The game was basically a lock when Ragnar and Hannibal both got the prereqs for defensive pacts and signed them with me. All I had to do was keep boudica off my back with a steady stream of gifts and love. She ended up getting wang kon and hasheput to vassal just about 5 turns before the end of the game. I beefed up defense in my important cities and prayed they wouldn't declare on me until I had won. Next thing you know it was a quick culture bomb and game over, 1918 cultural victory on Monarch!
http://imgur.com/DZ3z4&Apelh&k90dv&FBSHM
Final info screen and pictures of all my cities...
) Just came back to this thread after a week... ack!
