I got the victory in North Dahshur (without the expansion pack) in 209 months, at Hard difficulty and no use of personal funds. (I expect it'd take another month or two with the EP, to finish polishing.) While nowhere near Max's record, I think it's pretty good for a first attempt. (Well, not really a first attempt--I reloaded the previous saved game a few times to correct stupid mistakes, and I went back over a year to add 2 more limestone quarries.) Results were:
Culture: 50
Prosperity: 57
Kingdom: 100
Funds: 104818
Population: 3180
Months: 209 at Hard
Score: 21816
The workcamps were all by the plain stone storage yards (near the dock). A few months could be cut from the time by deleting those workcamps and building a few by the limestone storage yards (near the pyramid) when only limestone courses remained. I didn't try that, since it wouldn't have produced a record time, and I liked the looks of the city as built. Building the workcamps near the pyramid at the start might have worked better, but making a round trip to the dock area for plain stone seemed (at design time) too inefficient.
Unless I'm missing something, to finish in less than 200 months requires having work camps and plain stone in storage yards near the pyramid for at least the last few courses that need plain stone. There wasn't room in my layout to try that.
I avoided debt, maybe. Once, debens went negative and immediately positive again. The "Debt!" message never appeared.
I generally avoid micromanaging cities, but here it seemed necessary. Near the beginning, grain was imported from Abu but not from Meidum. In perhaps half of the years, reed and clay imports from Meidum were stopped to allow maximum plain stone imports. After Ra's "increased trade" blessings, reed and flax imports were shut off at 1500 imported in the year, to avoid the dock delivery bug. And, even though it wasn't required, wood stockpiling was released only for appropriate short intervals, to prevent carpenters from throwing away wood.
After completing the city, I looked at most North Dahshurs from the Downloads. Mine had a few unique features, including using only meadow farms and having barely over the minimum population. I'll probably submit my North Dahshur when I get back online several days from now (if the Downloads section is working).
One final thought. I received several gifts of 48 plain stone (as a result of completing requests) when there was already enough plain stone. Did Impressions determine the minimum time to obtain the required plain stone, and deliberately time those requests and resulting gifts to be frustrating to "speed" players?