What things actually matter on Emperor

[Saurus]

One more factor I have noticed but not seen mentioned too often that has a major impact on how the game on emperor plays out is that witch A.I:s shows up. While warmongers most of the time kill the human player early on, they often fight each other willingly also.
My latest game were my rivals turned up to be Saladin, Alexander, Monty, Genghis, Tokugawa and Qin turned out to be the easiest game on emperor so far because of constant A.I wars.
Sure I was attacked 6 times myself also but because of A.I constant wars, I managed to easily pull of a cultural victory and I in fact newer had the need to lift my cultural rate above 20% witch for me is uncommon.
And still by the time I won, no A.I had even built the Apollo Program yet.

[Shaka II]

That's the key, to make the AI fight a lot, though you don't want them to be too successful, just weakened and behind in tech development. If you can bribe one AI to attack another, hopefully leader AI, that starts the ball rolling. From then, it can be worked into an escalating situation, where the love fest has turned into a free for all. If your mercenary civ (or civs) becomes too strong, then he's made a number of enemies that can now be bribed to help take him down.