As in all of my games, I managed to discover Alphabet first in 480AD. That enabled a lot of trades during the next turns:
I like the trading game when Alphabet is discovered! 
I also wanted to fill
my peninsula peacefully and undisturbed by any wars, so I tried to appease Genghis a bit.
...to which he immediately responded only a turn later:
Sheesh, now let me expand in peace for some time, will you? 
In 750AD, the Pyramids provide me with a great engineer, which I used to immediately rush the Great Library in Orleans. I wanted to limit Paris to wonders that create great engineer points only, and having the Great Library in Orleans would put even more pressure on Genghis uncultured cities. It worked - though not with the culture from Orleans, but from Paris:
Well Genghis, you should have built up your culture instead of foolishly attacking me, hm?
Old Sarai gave me wheat, silks, and pigs, and relations with Genghis actually
improved - we now had only a -2 penalty for close borders instead of the -4 penalty we had before...
Meanwhile, Alex had declared war on Gandhi in 600AD, and made peace with him in 810AD again, without gaining anything out of the war. Genghis had declared war on Gandhi as well, but made peace with him again only a few turns later. In the meantime, I was busy founding new cities, researching new techs, and once I had currency in 870AD, I began to sell my outdated techs for over 900 gold to sustain 100% research - 50% would be even research for me at that time. I also signed open borders with Gandhi and Washington finally to improve relations.
I built the Hanging Gardens for great engineer points and the immediate boost of population, and the Great Lighthouse to improve my economy. Because I wanted to play a peaceful builder's game, I'd really liked to have good relations with Genghis, so I gifted him Code of Laws, which then allowed me to sign an open borders agreement with him. This in turn allowed me to flood his lands with Buddhist missionaries. I hadn't yet converted to any religion, but Gandhi, Alexander, and Washington were Buddhists, and in 1125AD even Montezuma converted, so I'd liked to become a Buddhist myself sooner or later. And indeed, in 1145AD I succeeded in converting Genghis, and so I converted as well. Here's a shot of my empire from some turns earlier:
I had already founded Avignon on the small islands north of me, and now founded another city on the iron island there. Island cities are harder to defend in general, but these cities were rather close to my capital, and securing an iron resource is never a bad idea! And as it turned out later, there were more important resources there...
While I built the Colossus, Alex declared on Gandhi again, then made peace with him. Then Genghis declared on Gandhi, and Alex joined that war again...poor Gandhi! He did well defending his empire, though.
I had focused on building a lot of cottages which now where towns mostly, so one of my research priorities was this:
After that, I researched Education for universities, then Liberalism which I discovered first in 1360AD. I took Gunpowder as my free tech. Two great scientists had already built academies in Oleans, my main science city, and Paris, so I was way ahead in tech now. Now that I had Liberalism, I adopted Free Speech and Universal Suffrage, so that my towns would increase my otherwise mediocre production. The Hagia Sophia was built in Paris, I discovered Economics first which provided me with a great merchant, and now I adopted free markets and free religion, to speed up my research even more.
While Gandhi was still busy fighting Genghis and Alex, Washington became the victim of all this useless aggressiveness next. Both Alexander and Montezuma declared war on him, in 1435AD and 1445AD, respectively, and he lost Philadelphia and Seattle to Alex. Finally an AI had managed to achieve something in a war, but probably only because he had help from a second AI...but overall, the same as in most of my games happened: The AIs who declared and fought wars often fell behind in tech rather quickly. Although both Gandhi and Washington had to fight off two AIs each, they advanced a lot faster through the tech tree than the aggressive AIs. At the end of the 16th century, I was the clear tech leader, then came Gandhi and Washington, and the others were about 10 techs behind! War does not pay for the AIs it seems.
What was funny was that somehow, the Parthenon had never been built. Genghis finally completed it in 1495AD(!)...I, on the other hand, preferred to build the Notre Dame instead, and then the Taj Mahal and started a golden age for the great French civilization!
The wars had subsided finally, but Genghis apparently decided that there was one player from the peaceful builder's faction who should be stopped before he would become too powerful.
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