Thank you, Tone. Without further delay:
Civ=Celts Babylon is ok, but I rather have the increased growth on lower levels. On a higher level, I think Babylon might be better. I have bad luck with the Sumerians, so I dont use them anymore. Plus Im not too fond of the Endiku, but on the other hand Im not to fond of the Bowman and the Gailec Swordsman is overpriced.
Opponents: Germany, Russia, Sumeria (although I dont know why I took Sumeria, I would have preferred Ottomans or maybe Persia. Aggression level set to minimum.
Settings: 60% water, pangea, warm, dry, 5 byo. I hate jungles and marsh, I rather deal with deserts, they dont take any longer to road or irrigate and they are as good as plains to the Celts, so mark another one to agricultural.
As I mentioned before, I played through around maybe 20 maps to get some sgls. I got tired of giving up after discovering alphabet and decided to give this one a chance. My research path is alphabet, writing, code of laws, philosophy, republic (free hopefully) and then literature or what ever I think the AI doesnt have. I like to let the AI do as much research as possible otherwise and even on warlord in this game Sumeria had mysticism and polytheism for me when I finally found them
It looked nice, and I personally find constantly restarting tedious, certainly not fun. Sometimes this seems less like a game and more like work. I as got my settler factory set up as soon as possible and tried to produce as many cities as I could.
Good news/bad news.
After just accepting that I might have to handbuild my wonders I get some good news!
He will be Pyramids as soon as Im in Republic. I find the golden age in this game to be somewhat extraneous so I dont really care if my empire is ready for one, just to be in republic, which soon comes free after philosophy.
My next research project gave me my 2nd leader!
Which becomes:
I was quite happy at this point, that is until I finally got a good look around, theres a ton of desert here not far from my core. This is going to slow my growth. (This is when I stopped for 2 weeks. To get the necessary sgls and not have the grassland was making me frustrated. ) Then I had an idea. I put the aggressive settler building campaign on hold and start an aggressive worker building campaign. This was going to slow short term growth even more but hopefully increase growth over the long term (which it did somewhat, grass would have been better) Furthermore, the stupid desert ended in bands of jungle, with marshes, too!.  I got my workers busy irrigating asap. Because corruption is so total I dont bother roading very much, just so all cities are connected then irrigate everything around, food is shields!
Here you can see the less than optimal terrain. At 1000BC I had 24 cities. I like to have at least 25, so I wasnt too far of the mark. I actually switched the Statue of Zeus and Forbidden Palace around, I wanted the statue sooner. After it was finished I didnt build another military unit the rest of the game, and 4 culture per turn doesnt hurt either. Luxuries werent the greatest on this map, too. I had 2 close, but a third was across the desert a fourth across even more and jungle and the other four were claimed by Russia and Germany. I was fully prepared to not fight the whole game, the Russian luxuries were just in the borders so I knew my super temple culture would snatch them away, but stupid Bismark had to settle on the furs. My army destroyed the offending town, and I was heading for Berlin but my Ancient Cavalry pooped out on me, they couldnt beat the German spearmen so I took a peace treaty with Germany mostly intact. They never tried anything again and the Russians were completely cowed, so that corner was stable. The Sumerians actually spread around pretty well and were average against me, but they didnt pull anything, and my merciless culture drove their borders back.
I made the switch to middle ages and gifted everyone up and got engineering and monotheism from them, but I had to research feudalism, then invention and gunpowder. Then single scientist on theology. 100% taxes from now on out, I just about bankrupted myself, cash rushing every settler I could get. I got my saltpeter hooked up and the switch to feudalism was made around 170BC.
I was disappointed my city total topped out around 140. Some poor placing and the aforementioned slow growth, poor play, and bad terrain all contributed to the low city count. But continuing on, I started my whipping. I always go library, cathedral, coliseum. Libraries and cathedrals are the same shield cost and same culture per turn but the cathedral maintenance is more, so I put off some fees that way. Running 100% taxes builds up the treasury enough so that by the time the buildings are completing I can afford many turns of deficit spending. When the coliseums are done, I start wealth and try to hire taxmen. As you can see here:
My feudalism is running in the black.
Towards the end I join some workers to certain towns to get those last coliseums out.
Lots of whipping later: