I had a slow beginning. Four barbarian camps spawned nearby and I made the mistake of waiting for CS quests before making units and taking care of them. All barbarian units seemed to converge on my cities. After taking care of them, I went for the camps, but got beaten at clearing most of them. I finally managed to steal 3 workers pretty late. However, I forgot to make peace with Spain after a while and Isabella seemed pissed at me all early game. I went 6-city Tradition since the map had a lot of good expansion locations and achievement C required the Tradition food bonuses. I went early 3-city NC followed by 3 quick expansion (bought a settler, pre-built a settler for a long walk and a quickly made a settler after NC for a nearby expansion). Happiness was extremely tight all early game. Being friends with nearby Mercantile CSes however helped. Isabella seemed to take offense in the fact I had more cities than her when she was going Liberty. Hiawatha was worried about my Machu expansion. I promised to not settle near him, proceeded to settle near Gibraltar, but he didn't seem to mind that one. All game he was worried about that expansion, but never attacked me.
Early-mid game, all AIs weren't very fond of me. Spain got Brazil to denounce me just after she did and then proceeded to become friends with Pedro. I however had 0 interaction with Brazil at that point. She literally convinced him to hate me. If early game, most AIs didn't like me very much when their help was needed for trades, they however changed their minds after my WC proposals and became all friendly asking for DOF when of course their help wasn't needed any more and I was aiming for wonder conquests. It was also not a very good game to go for a CV since most AIs also went for Aethetics and generated a lot of culture. Pocatello was the runaway and of course he had to build the Sistine Chapel. The nations of the East were very war-like and could be bribed against each other. However, in the West, they were all buddy-buddy and wouldn't go against each other at any cost despite cross-expanding each other.
Since happiness was tight all early game, I decided to wait for Ideologies before starting the conquests. I also waited for some DOFs to expire. Being first to Ideologies, I chose Freedom expecting Brazil to follow suit and maybe some other AIs which were all friendly to me at this point. All the Tourism generating civs however chose otherwise: most went Order including Brazil. Iroquois and Aztecs went Autocracy and one-city 2-tourism Portugal went Freedom. It was the first time in a long time, I had to change Ideologies. Under civil resistance, with all Freedom happiness tenets, all Mercantile CSes as allies and access to all luxuries on the map, my overall happiness was at zero just after taking the small city of Porto. All wasn't lost however, as I had built SoL and picked the Foreign Legions. Having only 10 tourism (and lower culture generation) at T200 made me also more susceptible to Ideological pressure. Freedom happiness also comes too late with useless buildings like Hospitals and Medical Labs and some less common uniques such as Mints and Water mills. Having a lot cities left to conquer, I switched to Order for an immediate big boost in happiness.
While the spread the wonders to conquer wasn't ideal (one wonder-spamming civ in his capital), it was also not the worst (Aztecs building any would have delayed the game even further). Lisbon, Palenque, Rio de Janeiro and Te-Moak all held the necessary wonders. As I found out during this game, late conquest for a CV has two main big disadvantages. The first one is that wonders are usually built in capitals and these are huge at the end of the game and stay in resistance for a lot of turns (not giving you extra Tourism with theming bonuses for a lot of turns). For example, when I conquered Rio de Janeiro it was pop 38 and thus in resistance for 19 turns after being taken. The second is that at this point of the game, the AIs have a lot of cultural buildings with Great Work slots in all their cities and can move out their Great Works to other cities before you capture them. Unless you capture a city in one turn (with Bombers and a cavalry/tank maybe), they move them out. I captured a city in two turns and the AI still moved them out. So unless you go for a civ with not many cities (and limited slots) or decide to wipe them out, there is a high probability they will move them out.
Lisbon had already been taken by Spain and was easy to take with Infantries despite the Great Wall. Maya was lagging in tech and didn't have a big army. Palenque was taken with Battleships. Rio de Janeiro took a bit more time. Pedro was pumping one Pracinha per turn and I had to take the coastal Sao Paulo as a base. Te-Moak was the hardest. Pocatello was the runaway, had already taken down Hiawatha, was sitting on a 650K army and was Hostile toward me. He also went Rationalism (with Aethetics which is rare) and had Atomic bombs online. I diverted his troops toward Spain and sandwiched his main army with my two allied CSes. I then proceeded to
snipe Te-Moak with a Nuke and Paratroopers. He then nuked some of my cities in retaliation. Nuked Terrace Farms look like burnt chocolate cookies in my opinion
TLDR; slow start, many big cities => happiness cap => delay conquest, Ideology switch, slow finish
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