Well, right off the bat, my fog busting was more effective! I moved my settler 2 west to pick up the cow. I got a lot of usless land, too, but all my cities fit well around my spoke, and the early cows can always make a big difference.
I took a slightly winding path to alphabet, crashing my economy along the way (8 cities at 350 BC?) Then I picked up Currency really fast, making all my cities build research. Then I could let them build money, so I could get science or something else. Got CoL quickly, and started building courthouses everywhere. They and libraries were my sure builds.
Wonders were totally out of the question. I thought about trying for pyramids. However, only my capital had a chance of getting it, and thanks to 160 hammers invested in the palace from turn 1, it would put me over the limit alone.
I went to war farily early, before I got Constuction, but just bearly. I ripped Mutal from Pacal's hands, though I saw how far behind I was in tech, since my swordsmen had to hack though longbows. I sued for peace, got a load of techs to help me backfill, and then started trading around CoL and/or Civil Service to catch up. It worked pretty well, but João won the Lib race, by just a few turns.
I was still about his equal in tech, and I didn't really care about Theology or Divine Right, anyway.
AP went Hindu, and so did I, with Brenus and João. Both were friendly with me, but would not help me in my second war against Pacal. I took one city, it had some usless buildings, so I razed it. Then Shaka declared on me. He wasn't happy with me, so I am not sure if he was bribed, but his one elephant attack made it look quite unplanned.
I gave him 20 gold a few turns later to go away.
I was the first to gunpowder, as another Mayan city fell to me. It had some good things, like an academy, so I held on to it, in spite of the fact it had SH.
Unfortunately, I lost a city to João by culture at about the same time. It was a fairly usless ice city, since his culture had taken the wheat already, anyway.
Then Willem just can't take my hinduism anymore and decides war is the only answer. His buddy Fred soon joins him. The majority of my army was on the eastern side of the map, and they were obviously invading from the west. João wouldn't stop trading with either of them, saying he liked them too much.
Their numbers were just too much. I had superior units, but they had superior numbers. After they took about half my cities, I just gave up. I would have been able to take my cities back, but I was so far behind, João was just going to run away with it.
It was interesting, at least. I learned a lot. Buildings are more important than I thought. Not building the correct infastructure is suicide, and a big army can't make up for it (and that goes double if the army is too far away to defend.)
With that thought, the correct wonders work...wonders. I used to spam them, and now I am much more selective, but I never shy away from them. Not being able to go after wonders was a terrible pain. With so much water in so many cities, I can think of at least two of them that would have helped a lot...
Too many units and not enough buildings...not a good thing. Hopefully playing this game like this will help me move up (I have played Noble for quite some time and have won on Prince the first time yesterday), since I have learned a lot about just how vital they are to running your empire.
I only had dificulties in that game because I thought that we couldn't get grens and MGs before the AI . I just thought it was a interesting later complement for a game where your buildings are capped 
). Fail-gold from a wonder you have the resource for could be a major difference given the relative lack of modifiers you'll have.
