Well I decided to play this one just for practice mainly (I'm just starting Monarch with some difficulty in my normal games). I chickened out on starting an early war. Turns out that the Mongols ticked off the Persians and were removed ~100BC. The Dutch and the Russians are atop the tech chain and are at war with each other. The Zulu are down to about 3 maybe 4 small towns. The Persians are far removed and are on the other side of the Dutch from me.
I've been planting cities when openings arise, but I'm having trouble getting techs from the other civs. I have research on 0 and am trying to learn to trade for techs. I've been able to keep up, but I feel as though I am slipping further behind. right now it is somewhere around 1000AD and the Dutch have Knights Templar so they have Chivalry. I'm not sure where everyone else is but I have Monotheism. And everyone else has at least Fued. & Eng.
Somehow RoP are a NoGo from here on out because I apparently sneak-attacked the Zulu. I don't know what happened here, as I almost certain that I had no RoP before I attacked their capital. So I'm not sure if MPP are out too.
Any suggestions? I'll probably finish it tonight or tommorrow. I don't have a save (I'm at work now), but I could probably answer any other questions. BTW I managed to get SoZ out of one on my cities, so that's been a source of free units.