I had a slow start. The Persians settled the mountain pass first. They wouldn't trade techs with me & demanded math, so I built a stack of catapults with a few archers & fought them for the next 3000 years, with a short intermezzo for the great barbarian incursion. My hoplites guarded my cities & workers, and fought the barbs.
The Persians made 2 errors:
1) Their galley repeatedly shuttled units to the hills northwest of Athens, where I could pick them off, instead of settling and reinforcing the north coast (& grabbing the horse). I was able to slowly expand eastward towards the horse & iron, without much fighting except for barbs.
2) They sent a stack of 7 units to Sparta with another stack of 8 or 9 units following one square behind the first stack. I was just in time to red-line the first stack, retreat my catapults to Sparta, bombard the second stack, and march reinforcements (archers & my first horseman) into the city. The next turn their only healthy immortal started my golden age before I could switch to republic. So their big error was not waiting one turn to merge their forces into one big stack of doom.
After the barb uprising, I reconnected my roads to horses & iron, upgraded some warriors to swords & marched over the pass into the Persian homeland, conquering the great wall & pyramids. Note their great wall didn't help them against catapults.
I was aiming for a diplomatic victory supported by my good friends Theodora, Brennus, Ghengis, Wilhelm, Henry & whatshisname, but no good plan survives contact with ...greed.
First, my ally Brennus decided to violate an ROP & take over 4(!) of my cities, which I foolishly left unguarded. It took me a long time to recapture my cities & repair the damage, but eventually I came, saw & conquered Gaul and added some wonders to my collection.
Then it was my own greed. Sun Tzu's barracks was just across my border with the Mongols...
I was happily trading saltpeter with Henry, until i noticed he was using it to good effect against my next victim (i.e. Wilhelm). Henry demanded saltpeter when I cut him off, and declared war --probably against the advice of his own military advisor. By this time I had two armies (knights & cavalry) and I built a railroad through German territory with an ROP, captured some cities. 20 turns later it was time for peace with Portugal, cancel the ROP with Germany, and blitzkrieg the following turn.
The rest of the game was spent micromanaging 130+ mostly corrupt cities trying to research a new tech every 4 turns at 70% or 80% tax rate, and employing my 200 workers. I wasn't going to win the UN vote with so many furious civs against me, unless I could go around to their various small islands & finish them off. However, the Persians had a protection pact or two, so it was off to the race for space (in 1864), although I could have gone for domination earlier.