I've attempted this run a few years ago and won in 3200 BC, but didn't submit it at the time since I knew it could be manipulated better, just not easily enough. I finally gave it a few more tries recently, using a lua script (my first real experiment with lua), and won in 3740 BC (14th turn) after only 3 minutes and half.

Randomness in the game is affected by player input, so just pressing random buttons for a dozen frames (without any delay) gives a very wide range of possible results. Unlikely events (see below) were bruteforced in lua by entering random input.

There's about 50 possible world maps, or 2 per landmass/temperature/age setting. I looked at all of them and experimented with some, the one I picked was the best I found.

Starting positions are determined at the end of the "Just a moment please" screen. I needed to get everyone on the same continent and near each other, but there's a minimum distance so I can't just group everyone on a tiny island. I've bruteforced through many thousands of results on a few different maps, and this is the best one I found (even though it still doesn't look perfect).

When any civilization dies, the other one of the same color (France/Germany for purple, etc.) spawns at a random position, avoiding any city (higher minimum distance than above, too) but not units, so I made them spawn right next to me so they can be instantly destroyed! This took some more bruteforcing as well, since the odds of showing up exactly where I wanted were usually in the order of thousands ...

I also manipulated houses to give cavalry, fights to be won, and 2 Mv moves with 1 Mv left, but that was simple enough to do.

Other than bruteforcing, the lua script also showed the full world map (with 1 and 2 Mv tiles) with all houses, units and cities:

The re-record count isn't accurate either, since it doesn't include the lua bruteforcing (it'd be well over 100000 otherwise), and I reused early parts to try different maps and starting positions.

cpadolf: Can't really say no to a run conquering a big strategy game in a few minutes. Accepting for publication.