Rome to France game. (speed: marathon, difficulty: paragon, 4000bc start)
I got lucky with Rhegium Julii prebuilt by the Greeks. So when it flipped to me I had sufficient armies to take out Carthage, Greece, Egypt,Persia, Babylon, and Phoenicia (in that order)
With the additional starting settler
(I got only two startingsettlers in stead of three because the aforementionted city flipped to me. The mechanic works! Well done 
The tradeoff of some additional units (and the opportunity for early conquest (even without diplomacy repercussions) if you are lukcy) and an suboptimal city for an optimal cityplacement is usually worth it. So much in fact that the start without a flip feels a bit underpowered in comparisom, maybe tie another archer to every starting settler?)
I founded the city of Lapurdum (on the wine south of Burdigala) (future Bayonne) and had it built
a monument (more wood from chopping insde cultureborders and convert early food into production via rush one turn before it is finished) and a forge to speed up future wonders.
I razed Carthage and Sparta, I kept Athens
(the great lighthouse was built there and it provided a center for production of an additional settler for the city of Aemona Iulia (the additional health is nice but I build it primarily for the larger expansion stability tolerance) and additional defence (legions) against celts and future barbarians and catapults) I conquered egypt just to late to prevent them from rushing Ishtar gate with another great engeneer. (or did they just build it? I forgot, anyway) The city of Diospolis Magna (former Thebes) had the Pyramids, the Hanging gardens, the Temple of Artemis and Ishtar gate built by the time I conquered it.
Avaris (the city on the mediterreanean coast on the riverisland on the spot to the right of and next to the wheat in egypt) had taoism as a religion which was nice because it gave acces to confucian/taoist wonders and (even more important) another cathedral for paris down the line.
I gifted it to India for now though, to keep my number of cities down to reduce upkeep and expansion penalties down.
Upon conquest I gave the persian cities to India so I did not have to bother defending them. And also not suffer more negative expansion stability from razing. After I conquered their (the Persian) core they collapsed. The Babylonians and Phoenicians (former Carthaginians) suffered a likewise fate. India now had control over the great Sphynx in Babylon
(a great wonder to help civs who need lot of culture asap (eg Greece to Japan) I wondered if I should eventually use it to give Paris a head start in culture with the help of some great prophets.) The Kashi viswanath (hindu shrine) in Patalliputra (their capitol) and the
Temple of Salomo in Indraprastha so they got to Zoroastrianism before Persia spawned. That was a nice surprise.
(They also had the holy city for Buddhism in Nagpur which counts almost as half a wonder because no one else can build it.) This gifting of cities is to a rival civ is still a form of covered warfare in this incarnation of rhyes and fall of civilization because the increased expansion stability penalty and increased domestic stability penalty from additional religions will make them eventually collaps.
The independents had the oracle built in Kalhu (former babylonian city on the copper I never bothered to conquer because it lies outside a core) on which i perfermed an eternal siege to farm xp on my catapults. By the time I gifted them to france I had 10 catapults bombarding Kalhu every turn, seven of which had great generals attached to them and two of them were already maxed out on upgrades. I guess a small nerf (similar to the spynerf) is in order.
I propose increasing the siegeunits' withdrawelchances with one percent (always) and give them no xp upon a combat chance of 100% victory. A bigger xp-reward upon an unlikely withdrawel would also be nice (or is that already implemented? I rarely start fights I am unlikely to win because of the penalty in combat stability defeats bring along)
I razed the Tamil cities because they were to small to gift to India asap (by the way, gif is dutch for poison, which results in the english verb of gifting haveing the connotation of poisoning for someone dutch, like myself, which in this case is rather proper
) And ehtiopia was too far away to gift to India, so I had to have them stick around (in hindsight I should have planned a war with Ethiopia before a war with the tamils)
I was lucky that China collapsed all by itself. India did succumb to to forces of internal pressure and desintegrated
I ignored Korea, the Vikings and Japan. By then I had my hands full with barbs (that is a literal translation of a dutch proverb meaning being very busy with) anyway.
I captured Lutetia Parisorum and built the cities of Augusta Trevorum (Treves. two to the right of Paris) and Nemausus (Nimes, spot of Marseille) rather late so I could get to the techs to build most of the classical wonders sooner (I never got to construction because I preferred feudalism for the huge boost in stability entering the mideaval era and adopting vassalage gives) I got Shwedagon Paya and The Muasoleum of Mausollos built in time before the French flip (chopping the spanish and german forests helped a lot, but I kept the forests in france intact for better health), but not the improved stables I got in a completed quest in all of the cities. (I did not even had Gesoscribate/Brest (the city that used to get crab from the english coast) built by then)
I opted to raze Avaris, as I would not flip to arabia, so I could keep my acces to the gold i needed so badly to finish shwedagon Paya in time by refusing the flip and sitting the siege out in a heavily fortified Diospolis Megale (egyptian city). So no taoism in Paris
I built landlocked Valencia so the Spanish would be rather weak and easier to vassalize and a vassal which cities' first ring did not overlap with my future French cities and right before the flip I shifted my capitol to Athens so I could gift my Italian cities to France (after which they opened borders so I could provide them with veteran nay, spartan catapults so that they could conquer all of europe. All of europe? All of europe! (and turn them into vassals, kudos for who gets the reference to the comic))
As France I conquered every european civ (including the moors) as soon as possible and let them reasearch printing press. The winner was (first to discover printing press) scandinavia
after which I set their research on astronomy so that they could colonize north america for me. In hindsight a stronger spain might have been more usefull because it took them a veeery long time to get to astronomy. In the mean time I researched the techs for the wonders for the uhv (both the necessary wonders and the wonders that helped a lot, like himeji castle and the sistine chapel) and the cathedrals. I built the opera house in Paris but ended up not needing it because paris had achieved legendary culture (about twice as much as needed) by the time it had to have a certain amount of culture for the uhv.
By now (1789 AD) I am well on track to research steel (another six turns and I already have electricity) and I have a great engeneer waiting to rushbuild the eiffel tower. But I probably have to reload a previous save to colonize america myself... ...and a bit sooner because conquering america
(they won't become my vassals because like the Netherlands before them (I even built a city north of amsterdam so they would be less in the way of my core cities, ungratefull bunch, them dutch(<- pun intended
)) as they deem me too mighty) won't net me 40% of North America in time.
That my english and spanish vassals collapsed (as did my holy roman, viking and polish vassals) also did not help (they were my vassals with most holings in north america (besides portugal by now))
England respawned but I can probably ignore it like prussia because my remaining vassals still controll enough of Europe.
I would have liked my game as the French even better (eventually becoming first in tech is pretty good fun
) if:
I had acquired more religions for even mooore wonders and cathedrals.
An improvement I can implement in future games myself by making better decisions or acquiesce in more modest achievements
The wine under Bayonne would have been improvable.
I could do it manually with the world editor, but I imagine a rather easy pythonscript could do it for me without me feeling like a cheat. (eg check spot the city is being built on has a resource if so then check random other landsquare in bfc if it has a resource, if yes then check if other landsquare in bfc has resource, if no then delete the resource from the original square and place it on the last checked square. If no landsquares are available to relocate the resource stop searching and leave the resource in place and then build the city)
Paris is a rather crappy city compared to most of the other cities that could be built in adjacent squares. It would be more fun to not be forced to build paris for the uhv. A spot that would facilitate the uhv (eg a unique resource only visable and usuable by france that when improved by building a city on top of it gives an additional 10 culture per turn, named Ille de France) to incite the player to build paris on the historical spot would be awesome.
Also I would like to point out that two of the uhvs for France are conditions on a certain date. And that conditions on a certain date are conditions before the next date and after the previous date. Making them condititions to be achieved before a certain date with an extra clause. That extra clause could be extended to a date a bit more before the certain date to create a between condition for uhvs.
