Has anyone else just completely ignored settlement limits?

Gotta admit, my first few days in game, I thought 7 sucked and I'd go back to 6. But there are so many cool new mechanics and the battle mechanics are so good, I've fully come around.

But as many long time players are, I'm a wide player. I've gone to war and won my wars and now I'm at 24/13 cap 75% of the way through exploration age (small map size). My happiness isn't great, but it's completely made up for by having 3x more settlements than anyone else. Because the happiness penalty caps at 7 over, now I'm just running up my settlement count as high as I can. I can now easily overpower any civ by pumping units from 10+ cities, I'll be able to take over the whole world pretty quickly.