Prince to King

Went with Babylonian on Frontier and bordered Spain on a snakey continent of maybe 8 tiles wide, before I knew it she declared war on me. I recovered fast and using some strategic placement I could stop all her advancements with just two crossbowmen. Tried to spread my religion but sadly Arabia was just a 6 tile ocean away and spammed his religion. I could do nothing against it, his natural pressure was strong enough to even block my holy-city from flipping.
Germany pretty much settled everywhere he could, even on my continent and I was just stuck with crappy tundra tiles for the most part.
The religion spam combined with what seemed to be 2 civs per land made simply ragequit the game. It wasn't fun.

(Though I could have taken out Spain and Arabia with some effort, their defenses were crap against Trebs.)

Into my second try, again with Babylon.
Rolled a desert start filled with floodplains and bordering the sea, space for maybe 3 cities but all I got was Spices and Sugar (with a distant Cotton and Marble), wanted to get the Petra to make a powerhouse but decided to not get a religion for a change.
Pacal was just 8 tiles north of me and pretty much blocked me from settling further inland. Never met the dude but apparently he's a warmonger and he made me roll back to a save (multiple times) when he suddenly charged me with +20 units.
Could not counter-attack because his land was filled with jungle. Siege wouldn't work, had to play defensive.
Long story short he got killed by a joint attack from Ethiopia (my ally) and England (former ally, now a huge b***h).

Have the worst everything on demographics, was 3rd in science but I just barely managed to get 1st after rushing all science buildings and going science focus.
Everything else is still worst, but to make things even worse Egypt is in the game and his capital has Marble and he has pretty much build every single wonder in the game except for 2 I rushed with a engineer (he also got petra ._.).

Started as Augustus of Rome on a snaky continent with Siam to my North and Songhai to my South. I decided to forego religion so I could make an early push to settle two more cities and build up to CBs to protect myself, since I knew I was going to piss both neighbors off. My first settler blocked Siam from settling a second city. My second settler settled right next to Songhai's first settler, so he pulled back and made his second city close to his first in a non-ideal location. After rushing a bunch of archers and upgrading them to CB's to cover my ass, I rushed to Legions and used my size and UU advantage to wipe them both off my continent fairly easily.

Now it seems like I'm back at Prince level, but my early rush made me 5th place (out of 5 remaining civs) in founding & enhancing a religion and the first wonder I was able to grab was the Hanging Gardens.