Start suited to Cultural
I was intending to go Cultural from the outset with a Philosophical leader and a Marble start, things surely couldnt be much better
until we got Bronze Working and found a nice close source of Copper!
The game was a traditional; Focus on technology, then focus on Gold, then Focus on Culture style approach. No Corporations, and no Mass Media bee-line.
The Phalanx Rush
Like others I settled on the Marble and set my mind to putting together a SoD of Phalanxes. Indeed the Carthaginians were just the ticket. After the Worker and Warrior, I built a Barracks and took eight Phalanxes into Carthaginian turf, and took out Hannibals only city. Fortified on a Hill, the Archers certainly put up a good fight, but we had the weight of numbers.
From this point, I really felt that there were a few
moves that crept into my game. Without divulging too much the real life circumstances in which I played this game were far from ideal and led to hurried decision making, which Im sure took its toll on my performance here.
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Early to Mid-Game Development
Happy Cap
The lack of happiness resources was of concern it took some time for my Gold city to come on stream, and while I captured a Barbarian city that had the Jungle Gems in its fat-X, I had by-passed Iron Working in preference to more artistic pursuits. In fact, many of my cities were Barbarian cities they were not always ideally placed, but my slow natural expansion rate prompted me to hang on to most of those that I captured. I was able to get Julius Caesar to trade me Ivory for Cows and Clams. I was also fairly slow to get Calendar, which protracted the problem, and I wasnt focussing specifically on getting Monarchy with so many other competing priorities, so Hereditary Rule wasnt secured especially early either.
Grrrr ...
Not everything went according to plan. I missed The Oracle by one turn, I missed founding Confucianism by one turn, I missed The Pyramids by six turns, and later, I was to miss the Taj Mahal by one turn. I could not get Hinduism (Athens first religion) to spread further for love or money, and Athens always seemed to have more pressing priorities than Hindu Missionaries.
Space to grow
With the Carthaginians out of the picture, a huge desert between Persia and Greece, a somewhat smaller desert between Celtia and Greece, and the Jungle Gems city in effect blocking Rome and Egypt, I had the room to comfortably expand. As per above, the Barbarians did me plenty of favours by settling the inland areas, where City Raider Phalanxes were able to comfortably capture pre made settlements.
A dominant religion
Buddhism was founded in India, and taken up by Asoka, Julius Caesar, and Ramesses, so it was not a difficult decision to adopt the faith. It was Darius who took Confucianism, and this became his religion until he got to Liberalism and then switched to Free Religion. The other heathen was Brennus (Hindu), but a series of unsuccessful wars with the other Buddhists had knocked him back to a minor player. Although not founding a single religion, Greece was able to work with five by the end.
Mish-mashing CE, FE, and Hybrids
Despite Alexs Philosophical trait, I did put a large emphasis on Cottages especially the three cities to the east along the river leading to Carthage. Questionably one of these became my unit pump city too, as it was able to grow to a decent enough size while supporting several Mines.
Damn you Great Library!
I dont think that Ive ever regretted building The Great Library, but this game I did. It landed in Athens, and proved to have a significant contaminating effect on its
pool. With the National Epic, the Parthenon, and the Mausoleum of Maussollos, and the Specialist Artists I was running all having a Great Artist influence, Athens just kept churning out Great Scientists.
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Later Game
Trades ebb and flow
The years seemed to fly by, and my trading partners seemed to push through their technology trees in fits and spurts. Rome was pretty reluctant to trade unless Friendly, and Egypt spent half of its life as a vassal of India, failing to garner good size. I had Education well before most, although Darius could well have beaten Greece to Liberalism had he not veered into other parts of the tech tree. As it happened, I was able to self-research Nationalism, and took Constitution as the freebie. Active tech-ing finished at about Rifling Corporation Democracy. I crawled my way to Chemistry through The Great Library, and was able to pick up Military Science in a trade with Rome, giving me Cavalry to support my Rifles.
Attack or turtle?
This was a watershed point in my game; focus on spreading religion, rushing Temples and Cathedrals, and then flipping the culture slider
or spend a bunch of turns on building a SoD or two and taking out Darius? Persia was cornered but in Free Religion, so past tensions had dropped from a boil to a simmer. That said, his few cities were likely to be Cottage laden, and these
rich cities could help propel Greece along to a faster win in the final stages of the game.
I cant believe I made the same dubious call as I did with the Stalin game!
Opted to stay moderate in size (as it happened, I was still the largest tribe by not a lot)
and chose not to go to war with tribes with a military tech disadvantage. On one hand it sounds like a solid move to stay focussed on the victory and not burn turns on unnecessary wars, but with hindsight it was probably the lesser option.
It would come back to haunt me (kind of).
Strength in numbers
Firstly, Brennus, the wooden spooner on the scorecard decided to vent is Furious stance with Greece by declaring war in 1818AD, when Greece was about 15 turns from victory. A stack of about 30 units came over the border a dozen Trebuchets, a dozen Knights, and some other bits and pieces (Maces, Crossbows, Horse Archers). He was a long way from my to be Legendary cities, but if he made it past my defending stack, it could be a tight situation indeed. The Jungle Gems city of Cimmerian was strengthened by hurried Riflemen and the odd Cavalry unit, but the bulk of my force was over on the eastern side keeping watch over the Persia-Greece border.
My Cavalry were not geared to do flanking damage to Trebuchets (a curious rule), and when Brennus hit, the Rifles took care of the Trebuchets, but not before they got our troops down to about 5
each. The Knights came in, and the short of it was that they took the city.
A small stack of five Greek Cavalry were able to make it to the front a couple of turns later, and were able to grind down Brennus invasion force to the point where he would have difficulty in advancing any further. The Celtic Trebuchets were gone, and many Celtic Knights too had been disposed of. This had however disrupted the push to the Cultural win, with most Greek cities directed to Cavalry builds rather than building 'Wealth' to support the culture slider.
A real threat emerges
More concerning, in 1834, with six turns to go and the army swung over to the west to fight the Celts, Darius declares with Industrial Age troops at hand heading straight for Sparta one of the Culture centres. The stack, while not so large, was certainly enough to give Darius a good shot eight Riflemen, six Trebuchets, three catapults, and two Cavalry. The best Sparta could muster in time was a Rifle, three Cavalry, and a War Elephant.
As it happened the clock ran out on Darius before his stack arrived Sparta had gone Legendary only a few turns after Carthage and Athens, and behold, a mid-Nineteenth Century win.
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In Hindsight
Some weaknesses that might be of interest to mid-level players as 'traps to avoid':
Poor management of Workers. Nine Workers for nine cities is arguably insufficient, compounded by relatively poor planning for Iron Working (Jungle clearing), Animal Husbandry (Pastures), Monarchy (Wineries), Calendar (Plantations), and Replaceable Parts (Lumbermills) with Workers usually out of position. This was especially true around Carthage and Athens key cities that already had many improved tiles meant that the Workers were miles away when new improvements could have been undertaken.
Semi-specialisation. Not too bad, but elements of hybridisation crept into the game. Probably an over-emphasis on Cottaging and under emphasis on unit production. The original Phalanxes were upgraded to Macemen and then Riflemen, with relatively few new units produced until the Industrial Age and even then
no clear Great Person Farm also
Athens and Cimmerian (Jungle Gems also in a culture war with Egyptian Thebes) produced the bulk of the Great People but there wasnt much structure to it. Im not a fan of using the Capital as a de facto Great Person centre while under Bureaucracy especially when it kept popping the wrong type of Great Person.
Small number of cities. I opted to run with eight cities for the bulk of the game (the ninth; Incense-Iron in the northern desert was quite late in the scene) leaving several gaps and the islands south of Athens unsettled. A few more unit pumps would have aided the Celtic and Persian end of game predicament.
Reluctant trader. Alex chose not to pursue several trades with Rome and Egypt due to their lopsided nature that if taken possibly would have knocked 10 or 20 turns off the finishing date.
Hesitant on National Wonders. All three of the Culture cities were fairly slow to get around to building some of the key Wonders; Maoi Statues in Carthage was held off as I was uncommitted to building them there should I have found a better home to the then unexplored north, The Globe Theatre was deferred in Sparta for a Grocer (health problems and #1 gold city) and University (thought about building The Oxford University in Athens an idea later aborted), and the National Epic in Athens due to other competing builds and uncertainty on the placement of a Great Person Farm.
Too Passive. Following the capture of Carthage, I was not involved with any warfare until the last 15 turns of the game, although agreed to a faux war with Brennus when all of the other Buddhists were beating him up. I could have taken a couple of Celtic cities during this Classical Era conflict. As mentioned earlier, Persia could have been smacked around when it was a Cavalry versus Longbow proposition.
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Luck
I really didnt have too many complaints with the RNG this game in terms of warfare. Lost a few 80%+ers, but overall didnt strike any horror runs.
Buddhism being accepted by Egypt, Rome, and India with a non-dominant Persia or Celtic empire made the switch easy from a diplomatic perspective and staying in Pacifism rather than Free Religion a comparatively unapprehensive option.
Five religions made their way into Greece, which helped considerably in the push towards multiple Cathedrals.
The spread of some religions was however difficult. For some reason both Hinduism and Judaism were really tough to get accepted with lots of Missionaries failing. A frustration here was that in each case there was one city only with that religion and able to produce the (failing) Missionaries.
As noted earlier missed two desirable Marble-based Wonders by one turn each. Nice payouts, but Id rather have had the free technology and Golden Age. As also noted earlier, Athens kept popping against-the-odds Great Scientists when I was after Great Artists.
Perhaps the luckiest of them all Persias invasion came about five or six turns too late for the A.I. Had Darius attacked earlier, his Rifles and Trebuchets could well have taken Sparta, and the Greek cultural ambitions would have been up in flames.
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This was pretty much a regulation Old School approach to a cultural win. The early game rush was pulled off successfully, but from that point there was not a great deal of interesting stuff
build up a mid-sized empire, tech to the early Industrial Age, gold rush Monasteries, Missionaries, Temples and Cathedrals, and in the meantime make some effort to keep the military at least semi-potent.
I suspect that if Athens had built The Pyramids (in a do-over it could have been chopped out), it may well have very much changed the complexion of the game.
As said at the outset, I'm pleased it was a win, and don't want to sound too conceited to players at the Noble-Prince levels, but it should have been better.
... but I'm sure that won't be much of an impediment to your victory! 
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