Played by first BNW game this weekend. Somehow I 'randomed" Venice which seemed pretty cool until I saw I had also randomed against Greece. And then the usual suspects of uselessness were present (India, Ethiopia, Askia), but thankfully they provided a nice meat shield buffer of civs.
Alexander, of course, was being his warmongering self, and once he had some expanded and conquered territory behind him, solidified his hold on the Cs'. Luckily, I was first host of the World Congress, so I proposed embargoing him to much kudos. Greece proposed banning Gold. Banning Gold passed, and the vocal majority that supported embargoing Greece (pretty much everyone) failed to actually vote for it. Second time was the charm, but Alexander got a free pass on accruing some major gold.
After that Alex was host and I took intense pleasure on sending Merchants of Venice to purchase city-states, dwindling his power supply. After another two or three Congress' he finally wised up and proposed embargoing me, which I securely bought votes against (even though the world supported me pretty unequivocally).
In the mean time I've been working the tourism route which has been great. Once Ideologies came into play, I backed the first non-Greecian one imposing further unhappiness on his empire. Eventually it flipped on him and recently other civs have started prying away City-States from him as his cash has dwindled to nothing from the still active embargo.
I've locked up all states but Greece culturally (Haven't trusted him to have open borders since the early game). Some advice to AI. Constantly flipping between Hostile and Friendly doesn't fill me with trust. Alexander sudden'y was all "How about an embassy?" "How about Open Borders?" at some point. I turned down the latter and a few turns later saw a small Greek Navy had amassed outside the water of my capital. Subtle.
Edit: Oh yeah, only one game, but I think I see what was said about BNW AI being much more passive. A few states bordering Greece have declared war on and off but even though the world, as a whole, hates him, there hasn't been an organized full-fedged declaration on him (not that it'd be successful, because LOL, AI)