Right now, due to the ability to create your own sov, it is entirely possible to completely wreck the game via intense specialization. How would you like to conquest the entire world in 150 turns? Own every city in the game?

Take a look.

How do you do this? It's simple. MAX. ATTACK. Pretend magic doesn't exist. Forget about it. Don't even research it. The goal is to max out your sov's battling ability in the shortest amount of time possible. To that end, here is my setup.

Notice how many flaws I'm taking. this is for a reason - All those flaws have to do with magic, heirs, recruitment, and other things that will never come into play because the game is over so quickly.

This game was run on a normal size map (ridiculous difficulty map), with the standard number of AIs, all set to Ridiculous individually. More AIs would likely make it easier.

On the first turn, found your city ASAP. Start out getting materials, etc. Once you have a good flow of those going you'll want to move onto maxing out your research and gildar capabilities. Ignore anything that isn't immediately useful. Don't worry about upgrading your food gain, you'll be swimming in it soon enough.

Start researching warfare. Send your sov out and have him murder everything in sight, you want to level up as much as possible. -ALWAYS- raise str when leveling. Period. Nothing else is worth it. Note that due to the way my Sov is set up, I can attack and THEN move twice in a single turn. THIS WILL ALLOW YOU TO KITE ALMOST EVERY ENEMY IN THE GAME by attacking and then moving. Abuse it heavily for early EXP gain. Other quick ways to get easy exp include killing a single member of a mutiple unit party and retreating, then attacking again and repeating (you get 50 exp each time) and repeatedly killing defenseless sovreigns inside THEIR BORDERS (not yours, they'll die!!) for free exp over and over.

Have your sov start capturing any cities he finds. most likely they'll be empty, unless you have a ton of trouble finding your neighbors. Either way, it'll be easy street. Every time you capture a city, build the latest unit possible from your research to guard the city. As you build momentum, you'll want to build one to take with yourself first, then build a guard as you are leaving. This is because you need some cannon fodder for your sov against the natural guardians of neutral cities, especially if they have real nasty creatures like drakes. Whenever you capture a new city, buy new items for your sov (don't go hammers until you don't need to kite tough enemies anymore), and queue improvements. Focus primarily on researching warfare, but you can grab the first few Quest techs and a few Civilization techs as needed to keep the flow up in the early game.

A note on exploring - if you find yourself dead ended, remember that the 5 mana you have is exactly enough for you to cast teleport every few turns. Use this to find new areas to scout or, very late game, to hunt down those pesky fleeing sovs.

Early on, DO NOT kill enemy sovs. Let them flee. They will most lilkely build a new city, which they will the leave unguarded for you to capture and add to your empire. If a sov offers you peace, accept it. Then kill them. There's no disadvantage to breaking said peace offers over and over, and this minimizes your own cities' exposure to attacks.

Easy peasy! Once you get high enough in research, start adding some real nasty units to your small army. You'll have teched so high, so fast, and have so much output, that you'll bowl over anything in your way in no time. Tada~