I think left side of liberty and then direct to reformation is the way to go in that case. The 9:th policy can be finisher on piety for prophet and gold.
It is weak on happiness without meritocracy so should consider both pagodas and religious centers in the religion. This leaves you with less faith for universities but significantly more for schools and labs which might be important as you will not have the commerce discount on purchasing. It depends on heavy faith generation and thus on your lands to get pagodas up fast. [The additional culture from pagodas should add to roughly an additional policy but I'm unsure what to do with it.]
This might work together with a different tech path that focuses more on growth and less on science by beelining engineering first, and only then philosophy, and then civil service, education etc. If it is possible to build aqueducts before libraries in your later cities that would be great. To really grow I would also like to see Temple of Artemis instead of Pyramids, it gives so much base food over the entire game even if you do not get the multiplication of it with tradition and should more than compensate for feed the world. If you do that policy/tech path the 25% from pyramids is not worth much as you do not have the critical other 25%. You will need more workers and worker steals to compensate but that should be ok I think.
It is weak on happiness without meritocracy so should consider both pagodas and religious centers in the religion. This leaves you with less faith for universities but significantly more for schools and labs which might be important as you will not have the commerce discount on purchasing. It depends on heavy faith generation and thus on your lands to get pagodas up fast. [The additional culture from pagodas should add to roughly an additional policy but I'm unsure what to do with it.]
This might work together with a different tech path that focuses more on growth and less on science by beelining engineering first, and only then philosophy, and then civil service, education etc. If it is possible to build aqueducts before libraries in your later cities that would be great. To really grow I would also like to see Temple of Artemis instead of Pyramids, it gives so much base food over the entire game even if you do not get the multiplication of it with tradition and should more than compensate for feed the world. If you do that policy/tech path the 25% from pyramids is not worth much as you do not have the critical other 25%. You will need more workers and worker steals to compensate but that should be ok I think.
My singleplayer balance mod of BTS: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/3u6g4b2nfa74qhm...%20mod.odt?