Now of course, I actually had to try that Great Artist plan.
Settle three tiles away from London (I know where it is now, of course) and bomb a Great Work right away. That gives me 91% culture in London's tile right away - should be good for about 5% revolt odds per turn - though that would decline rapidly.
Revolt one came in a timely fashion, only 9 turns after my city founding. (This is Normal speed again.)
And I just happened to get incredibly lucky as London revolted again on the very first possible turn! Bye bye English, and hello huge continent for ourselves! And London even comes with a free archer. :)
Of course I built Stonehenge. And what can I do with the ensuing Great Prophet? If I pick up all the cheap religious techs, but avoid Writing, that will block both CoL and Theology so the GP can lightbulb Monarchy. With wines right here, and settlers taking priority ahead of libraries, that seems like a good idea. Then finish Writing and build the Oracle for Code of Laws.
I thoroughly enjoyed having two cities almost right from the start. Aachen could build Stonehenge while I lost no time on the land grab with London starting on workers and settlers.
I then got another crazy lucky result when a mine at London popped Silver. With that, I changed my plans to Oracle Metal Casting, and also stretched out in the jungle to grab the gems ahead of Mansa. I love having a full set of Forge happy resources.
So I land-grabbed, and land-grabbed some more, then just for a change grabbed some land, getting myself into a nice satisfying economic crash. I got to Code of Laws (founding the religion although I wouldn't do anything with it), but it took quite a while until any cities were big enough to whip Rathauses. During that time, I even hit negative gold at 0% for a few turns, but stayed afloat by whacking two barbarian cities for cash. And Rome got Currency early, and bought some religious techs from me, which finally gave me enough gold to limp to Currency myself and repair the economy.
The first Great Prophet lightbulbed Monarchy as planned. Isabella went WHEOOH, so out of caution I set research to Feudalism, and launched Golden Age with the second Great Prophet. She never attacked, though.
I built the Hanging Gardens with 20 cities (that's 600 hammers worth of whipping fodder). Here's the demographics:
Triple my best rival in land area and food production. Double my best rival in hammers and population. And with Rathauses finally coming online (every city not shown building one there has already done so), my economy has recovered to a solid 30% research and a clear lead in GNP.
Mansa then blew my socks off with this offer:
Free peacetime vassal. OK, that makes the rest of the game plan obvious. Build catapults now, tech to knights (20 turns), whip out a gadzillion of them, and cruise over Spain and Rome to domination. I didn't bother playing it out in a shadow replay, but I estimate the domination win by about 1200 AD. The Great Artist is indeed the greatest person of all.