Early game, my goal became to build Hanging Gardens in the capital - after I noticed no one else opened Tradition, and I had met all but 1 civ - and Petra in my 2nd city. I saw that Assur was also building Petra and paid the Greeks to attack. This worked...too well, perhaps. The Celts also followed and together they wiped him out, with the Greeks taking the 2 Eastern cities and the Celts the capital. Fun fact: later in the game, the Greeks liberated Assur!
The celts founded a pantheon and religion absurdly early, so I didn't try for religion. I got a late pantheon and Desert Folklore was available, so I took that and instead of founding a religion I planted 2 great prophets. The Celts got Jesuit (I want to use this more in future games!) and I think I faith bought 5/5 universities, 1-2 schools and 1 research lab, as well as a great engineer and a great scientist.
T96 Poca entered Renaissance.
T105 I finished the Oracle. Having completed Tradition, I opened Commerce, as I wanted (and eventually got) both Big Ben and Mercantilism.
T112 Education
At T119 my science per turn re-passed my turn number (128 science).
T127 all 5 cities with universities up and all 10 slots being used, partly thanks to 2 food caravans being sent to the newest, 4 pop city. Science at 161.
I hit Plastics at T200; think I used 2 mid-game GS bulbs, I each to get to Schools and Labs.
T211 I got Freedom Ideology passed. I proposed it when I was the only civ with an ideology, put a fair bit of money in to diplomacy to help get it through, and then at the vote I was still the only one with an ideology and no one voted otherwise; might have wasted a lot of money here, delaying getting all 5 Research Labs up.
My late game was pretty good, for me at least. In my previous attempt, I finished with a extra free tech and extra GS. This time around, I timed things much better.
I think this could still go a fair bit faster: I didn't build any cities by mountains, didn't sign a single RA (I did get Porcelain Tower), and I feel my build order can still improve quite a bit. For the RAs, I feel I didn't have extra money for much of the game, though I had lots late game as things finished very nicely.