"Discover why Firaxis decided that the combination of traits you select to play is forbidden."
"Discover why Firaxis decided that the combination of traits you select to play is forbidden."
GP #11 Great Spy. Don't really need more espionage or his beakers from settling, so save for a golden age.
GP #12 Great Engineer, save for Mining Inc. Economics Great Merchant, save for Sushi.
GP #13 Prophet, second half of the 2-man GA.
GP #14 Scientist, third academy. I stopped keeping track around here - Scientists went for more academies, everybody else saved for Golden Ages.
I pulled what I'll always think of as the Timmy Slingshot - Liberalism into Democracy. Zara Yaqob unexpectedly researched Education right away, but the Taj Mahal Golden Age got me to PP and Constitution just one turn ahead of Zara getting Lib.
I paid Monty another package of 5 old techs for him to declare war on Zara, then paid just one tech (Liberalism, now not useful) to Mansa to declare war on Monty's back side. That will keep all my neighbors nice and busy. Louis then also joined in on Monty.
Then the Apostolic Palace declared war on Louis. Ridiculously abusable. (If I'd known this was coming, I could be pretty easily setting up diplomatic voting blocs. But I haven't been beelining towards Mass Media, and am committed to space.)
Just for a change from the usual path, I drove to Railroad for Mining Inc as my first corporation, rather than the Sushi path. The intermediate techs towards Railroad (Levees, Iron Works) were more attractive than the path to Medicine: I have no National Park plans, few farms for Biology, and Sci Meth would expire a ton of stuff.
Zara managed to capture a city at the border choke from Monty. That gave me space to jump in with two extra cities.
And one of my Academies is going to go here. Ahmedabad was just founded, but it is going to be one of my better cottage cities and is worth an academy. And by doing it now, it's free culture to help in a flip press on Tlaxcala.
One later Spy went to infiltrate Zara in order to steal Fission that he researched early (after demanding Electricity from me I think.)
Pentagon, Broadway. I forgot about the Kremlin, but then Catherine offered me Communism in trade and I got it.
Poor guy just doesn't get it. I've been paying the bullies to beat him up for his lunch money, and he still loves me as a best friend.
I paid Monty a boatload of techs for yet a third round of wars (he declared on three enemies at the same time). Not that this has anything to do with the game concept - most Monarch games can take this kind of a lead. Usually around this time I have fully-built cities start throwing out some infantry, to claim a power graph lead and deter attack, but that wasn't necessary here. My continual war bribes kept every AI busy. Never did a single AI blow the WHEE-HORN when I might have been the target. I never built a single unit later than a longbow.
I've gotten my spaceship tech path pretty much down to a science. After food and hammer corporations, straight through Refrigeration - Superconductor - Genetics, building the supermarket and laboratory along the way as the best accelerators in the late game. Then to Plastics for the Dam, while allowing the AIs to research Rifling and sometimes (not here) Artillery for me. Then Rocketry, and by the time Apollo is built, the last four techs are Laser, Fiber Optics, Fusion, Ecology. Ecology goes last as it has the cheapest part and no other use. Apollo with four techs left makes for just about the right timeframe to match up production and research. Assign one part to every city, and they will complete in 8-10 turns, along with the rest of the research.
Apollo finished in 1710 AD. So here is a well-organized civ, with nearly every city working on a spaceship part (except Delhi still building a wonder of course.) The other exception is Madras, my second-best hammer city. It's actually correct right now to have the two top hammer cities NOT on spaceship parts, so that they are available to start immediately when Engines become available. All the current parts go to average hammer cities which can finish them in that 11-turn window.
The time window became slightly shorter when Delhi finally put out a Great Engineer (yes just ahead of the one from Fusion) to finally sling the 3-man Golden Age. I launched missing one engine, as is common. To correctly build both engines requires either a different tech path with Fusion sooner, or for the second-best hammer city to be only one turn slower than the best hammer city, which is rare thanks to competing against the Ironworks. Plus also the third-best hammer city must be able to complete the other last part (the Ecology or Genetics part) fast enough that the second-best hammer city doesn't need to.
Launch in 1765 AD, but Delhi isn't done. Continue research to Mass Media and Robotics for three more wonders. 
It also built the Manhattan Project which I thought was a wonder (durr, Project is right there in the name.) When I got to Robotics, though, the Space Elevator wasn't available. Not the latitude restriction, no city could build it. It gets disabled after you launch, I guess? So Delhi built the Internet and SDI instead.
The UN election was surprisingly close to being a problem - Montezuma nearly matched my vote count, the swing vote was Elizabeth but she voted my way even only at Cautious.
Delhi very neatly came to exactly double Legendary just before victory.
Space Race Victory in 1810 AD. The scoreboard shows where the AIs are.
Actually added up to only 252 GPP/turn in the end, and that includes six specialists on top of the wonders. As always, the real value of Philosophical is getting great people sooner, not so much more of them. In the later game, National Park abuse is actually a better way to create huge piles of GPP. But in the early game, I'd run down the list of Things To Do With A Great Person very quickly: settle for hammers, settle for espionage, lightbulb a religion, rush a wonder, and pop a Golden Age all before 1 AD.
2) Have fun playing the game - check.
3) Write up a game report to share with others - check. 