I don't really remember the early game in detail because it was a while ago and I lost the initial autosaves. I was pretty lucky with barb hunts, got 4 of them (2 archers 2 warriors), and managed to steal a worker from Denmark. He never forgave me and it was a real pain because I wanted to settle El Dorado but I couldn't because he would capture it (I reloaded because of that). I was planning on getting Copenhagen anyway so I built some archers myself and rushed Construction to end the deal. This delayed my NC (early 100s) but overall it was a good decision as Copenhagen got Statue of Zeus and it actually went well with my panzer strategy.
I opened honor to see the barb camps, and then went for full tradition, I wanted to do a 3 city set up, but I found el dorado while building my second settler, and apparently I was the first one so I bought a settler with the cash. I didn't use the 3rd settler because of Harald and his mighty army, but I just kept it around. The terrain really helped, I mostly trapped his army in the marshes and destroyed it unit by unit. When he was weak enough I founded my 4th city and used my first GG on a citadel near copenhagen. I went for early Iron Working and upgraded my Warriors to Swordsman, and after that I managed to get the capital. They were soon eliminated from the game by russia, so they took the heat.
I managed to have friendly relationships with all my neighbors despite my early warmongering so I just turtled my way up to modern era basically playing a science game up to ST, with honor left side for filler policies before rationalism. Then I did Electricity for oxford Radio to get Order, and switched to the bottom part of the tree. After Combustion I started building only landships and once I got to Combined Arms I upgraded them all to panzers and launched my attack.
I chose Order instead of Autocracy because of Kremlin and the Hanse. I think order really compliments the Hanse bonus well. You have Worker's Faculties for fast factories (and a nice addition to science), then once you get the five year plan rolling you get a lot of raw production that will be buffed by Hanse. For tier 3 Spaceflight Pioneers I think is better than Iron Courtian for my strategy (attack with a massive amount of Panzers) there really wasn't any reason for annexing, and I stopped the internal trade routes to set up the Hanse bonus.
With railroad bonus, Hanse bonus and all the other buffs to production from order, the cities had a really good production. Berlin, with Kremlin, was building landships (and later Panzers) every other turn. There was loads of oil, as I allied all the CS that had it.
I managed to win the World Fair (first proposal) and that helped me fill my policies faster. I even opened commerce with the intention of getting Wagon Trains but never got to it.
I was really bummed because I lost Brandenburg Gate to Russia, but luckily with Military Tradition I was getting a decent amount of XP for my panzers. After terrain level 3, I was taking repair and then blitz, but really just a few tanks got to that point.
The first to go were Ethiopia who still had a functioning Great Wall, but with 6 movement from my panzers I didn't really care. Then Russia who had lots of land and 2 capitals (the also had the Mayan capital), Polynesia, then a little break to try and get England to break a DoF, but gave up and broke it myself (with a nuke, dowed Egypt at the same time with it
) and 5 turns later it was over finishing with Egypt (it would have been 4 turns if I hadn't stupidly upgraded my Panzers and lost 1 movement point). For Thebes, because I forgot to put a spy in the capital, I was killing my own units with nukes, but I really didn't have the patience to bring all my panzers in to finish the job.
I mostly used panzers for city capturing with the exception of 2 English cities and the Egyptian capital, which were weakaned with Nukes. I had a decent number of bombers which I used for hitting units, and sometimes cities. Russia gave me a huge cash deal on peace treaty so I bought a good number of nukes to use on England as they were the strongest civ left. The detour to nukes was really worth it, and it was really satisfying breaking a DOF and dowing both my last targets at the same time with a single nuke. At last no warning message for Declaring war on someone.
I didn't build a single siege unit, as panzers did a pretty good job and I could grab a 100+ strength city at full health in a single turn with them.
.. Build just enough CB to stay alive until machinery (should be easier to stay alive or even kill him at that point)
