just finished rome on emperor. including whipping exploit, you can't even get construction in time, because of the lack of science.
took athens then carthage right away. built the lighthouse in athens. traded with babylon for monarchy and agriculture. waited for the towns in france to pop. everything else was simple. just spam prets to defend from the barbarians (no construction = no great wall), especially athens gets hit really hard.
After that its easy. let all cities flip and turtle. i took france back, had small wars with spain and england without exchange of cities and then later took egypt during a plague. hit the uhv just before taking mecca
whats a whipping exploit? a bug? or just sacrificing pop