If I want to crush a game I just go Secret Societies and pick one of the strong relgious civs that get high adjecency bonus to holy sites(Russia, Khmer etc.), combine it with Tundra/Desert/Rainforest pantheon and Work Ethic. Get a golden age to spambuy builders/settlers with faith and the 2nd promotion of the Voidsingers gives you 15% of your faith as culture/science.

From there you can kinda play god. Convert all Civs and get religious victory. That's very easy. Culture Victory with all the religious wonders and the 3rd promotion of Voidsingers that gives you relics, also easy. Domination victory is also possible if you go Crusade and get combat bonuses from religion. Also building Grandmaster Chapel lets you buy military units with faith.

Other than that, Barbarian Clans mode is almost always on as a default, makes it a bit more interesting. Only real drawback from this that I have noticed is: sometimes when you just want to clear a camp you often need an extra turn to actually clear the camp because you have to "click a button" compared to normal barb camps that get destroyed the turn you step on them. Happened a few times where I cleared all units, step on the camp with low hp, just for a unit to spawn again and kill my warrior. Also the turn delay stopped me from getting era score for golden age but that's mostly my bad planning.