As the Pahlava I managed to cheat my way into becoming the Persian Empire at its greatest extent for less than five turns, through add_money cheat and taking advantage out of crappy diplomacy which involves offering trading rights in exchange for all the cities the other faction's got =P

I only use this for testing purposes, since the pahlava does not start out in provinces able to muster the reformed province resource. In official matters, this isn't an encouraged method of playing the game, so I will be the first one to discourage everyone else from doing it, besides for the shits and the giggles. This is a showcase of how the hard-coded diplomacy hampers the potential of improving the AI for the better.