Ha, and again!
After Liberalism, I would continue research to Nationalism for the Taj and Hermitage, and to Military Science for Grenadiers ("in case of emergency, pull pin"), then shut down to 100% culture.
Nationalism and my Taj Mahal came not a moment too soon - Willem also had the tech and just popped a Great Engineer of his own. Hermitage ended up going in my capital. Chiron Preserve had gotten all the cathedrals while the capital built wonders (and Oxford), and Song's slots were full with National Epic/Park.
Three hundred and sixty-four Great Person Points per turn. I claim that as some sort of record. :) My 8th Great Artist popped on turn 264, 1190 AD, and it was already time to save them for Great Works. My top two cities had culture multipliers of +350% from buildings and Free Speech. 6000 / (14 * 4.5) = 95 turn payback horizon, but my cities were already past 750 culture/turn and about 70 turns from victory.
Ha, nice! There's a shortcut to a flip! And the city even came with its Jewish Temple prebuilt and intact. I'd been hoping for this earlier, but lost the AP residency to Willem on a revote, and had put aside the thought. But Willem helped me out by running that vote to give me the city! That's also my ever-vital city number nine to finally complete my roster of cathedrals (not that a city with 26 artist specialists needs any, though...)
Ha, and again!
Presently this random event popped up. I'd previously gotten the Horse Whispering quest to build Stables, and a quest to build Castles, but neither seemed worth the effort for fairly paltry rewards. But this quest could be knocked off in about one and a half turns (cheap Creative colosseums).
I had looked up the rewards online, and another Golden Age sure seemed worth it. (I do wish the game would tell you the quest rewards in-game. Little is more frustrating than not knowing the rules of the game one is playing.)
Another set of wars happened, with Catherine getting torn up. She offered to vassalize to me a few times, but I saw nothing to gain in doing so.
Even with research off, I actually kept up in tech the entire way, using my Paper - Education - Liberalism - Nationalism portfolio to pick up and broker for everything else: Guilds, Banking, Optics, PPress, Mil Trad, Constitution, plus loads of cash to keep running deficit culture. Willem got the Economics Merchant, cashed him as a trade mission, then paid me the 1400 for one of the techs.
Song of Planet kept spewing Great Artists - now I had eight settled and seven saved. One last look before I fire seven Great Works on my last turn here:
Cultural Victory in 1470 AD. That's even better than my 1550 AD result in Friendly Takeover! I think that's an extremely strong result and frankly I'll be surprised if anyone beats me, at least by any more than a couple turns.
GNP graph, with a blowout as usual, though of course the latter half of that is enhanced by a double Golden Age and by putting the commerce through 400% culture multipliers.
Production does a better job of telling the story of the forests. (Hmm, the tree hugging game had great industrial production?)
Despite finishing earlier than Friendly Takeover, that game was still 50% ahead of this one in score. I guess the corporation game gobbled more land, with truckloads of culture coming from all the cities rather than just the three. Good thing Realms Beyond doesn't score by that arcane in-game formula. We can make up way more kooky and fun scoring systems. :) Thanks to Sullla for the game!