It was a slug, but we're here, turn 329.
I had absolutely no clue how to approach this, so I'm honestly very curious what kind of strats everyone else came up with, and if there's perhaps some way to cheese points. I was really quite unhappy with my choices in the early game, but as the game progressed I realized I may not have made such a terrible choice going into Liberty and discarding Science.
I started the very early game securing some of the early game wonders in my capital until Morocco launched a surprise attack on me, which set my conquest in motion as I cleaned up my own island, while leaving almost all City-States in tact (Melbourne fell on my way over to Assur).
After securing my own island I came in contact with Germany, who was the ''run-away'' civ of the game, for as much as that's possible on this difficulty. Upon the realization that Germany had spawned completely on their own island I decided to completely wipe them out as well, leaving them with nothing but Hamburg. In the process Wittenberg also fell in my hands as it looked like a good forward city to secure. Berlin ended up being my military base as Germany had built Alhambra there, which I later complimented with Brandenburg and many more Wonders.
It was at this point in the game where I became able to execute the strategy that I planned to use from turn 1, but was slightly interrupted by Morocco pushing me to build a military. Frigates. I basically used the Frigates to explore everywhere I could and I found the Ottomans being extremely easy to grab. After allowing them to keep Edirne for a really long time I got a bit annoyed I was unable to gain control over the Religion on the island, so I decided to wipe the Ottomans out so toss my own Religion on there.
At this point I grew slightly concerned about having to prevent a Culture victory before T330 so I took it a bit easy. Egypt's Culture wasn't too bad, but when I explored them I found out that they were on the verge of being taken out by Rome, which would've been a disaster because no other civ had much Culture to speak of. In order to prevent a Culture Victory I decided to delay taking any other cities and mostly just hang back and tech up, leaving Internet as my final tech to grab. I focused on founding cities wherever and whenever, and allied every single City-State in the game to help me grow them. After reaching the lategame I built a pretty decent amount of Stealth Bombers and XCOMs to take everything else right in time for the end of the game. In hindsight I made a pretty big mistake here when it came to taking out the Mercantile and Maritime City-States as my snow cities ended up staving and I probably lost some population because of it. I took out all of Rome/Egypt and left Atilla alone after I had made sure I wasn't going to get a Culture Victory over him. I ended up securing every single wonder in the game (including the Space Station) beside the Statue of Zeus which unfortunately was in Atilla's Court. In hindsight I probably should've kept Morocco alive to give him back his capital lategame to make sure to get every single Wonder.
I ended up trying to be a bit cheeky and building some very last-minute cities to squeeze a couple more points. In hindsight I should've probably raised more cities to create extra space. But here is my empire, and the only other civ standing tall are the Huns, who were never really a participant in the game.
I came into the game wanted to rush Frigates, but my plans changed slightly as Morocco attacked me, but in the end I mostly ended up doing what I wanted, which was settle as many cities as possible, using Temple happiness to keep my happiness afloat right up until the very end.
As for my Policies I finished Liberty -> Exploration for Happiness and Production and then opened Rationalism. After that I got Order, and snagged up all the Production Policies before finishing Exploration and then hopping into Patronage, which ended up doing nothing for me. But there's wasn't much else to get. In hindsight it would've been smart to grab Resettlement in the Order tree to get just a few more points.
The final city I settled was called Sillyon, which means I've settled 28 Byzantium Cities, and had a total of 72 Cities.
Upon punching the Next Turn button my point total ended up at 8302. I got 3 achievements out of the game as well. First victory on King difficulty. First victory on Continents. First victory as Byzantine.