Usually my games don't last longer than 3 hours or so. I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
Standard size
Ancient era
Normal Speed
Usually Erebus map (I hate when civs start right next to each other, best one I've found for avoiding this, though it doesn't always work)
Temperate Climate
Medium Sea Level
I allow Time, Conquest, Tower of Mastery, and Altar victories.
I disallow
Cultural (no interest in winning this way)
Religious (I've done it this way, no particular thrill there. Plus playing Magister's mod everyone seems to gravitate to Runes and Leaves. Maybe the AI does things differently in picking a religion if a Religious victory is enabled, but it doesn't interest me enough to play with it.)
Domination (I don't like losing this way. I also don't think it would be very interesting to win this way either, so out it goes.)
I disallow the compact, because I don't like the way it's implemented here. Too many infernal factions wind up on the map, and the Mercurians are a pita to play against.
I turn Orthus off, mainly because he is:
a) Just a delivery mechanism for his axe (I don't have problems with him, sometimes the AI does, but usually not.)
b) He quite often spawns, hangs out somewhere, then shows up with his buddies when you are tired of waiting for him and are Rexxing. Depending on when he comes, I might not have the troops it takes to kill him in the open field without some dumb stack of 20 warriors to throw at him. If he comes when I have horsearchers, he is toast of course. I mainly turn him off because he can quite often take one of my new cities because it is garrisoned by only a couple of axemen or warriors. If he does he will hang out in that new city a while, but I don't feel like waiting till I have units that can take him (warriors and axemen usually don't do anything but feed him xp).
In short, he is an annoyance, too much so for what his axe is worth. If he promptly shows up, attacks your city, and gives you his axe, he is fine. But if you wind up in a situation where he occupies one of your cities for 20 or 50 turns, depending on where you are in the tech tree and production he just isn't worth the bother.
I keep Acheron in, mainly because you get Mithral from his hoard (you can't always count on finding it). Also the AI seems to take a lot longer than a player does to take him out, so he is good for keeping other civs off your borders while you build.
As for the rest of it, I build a bunch of workers and automate them. I typically only direct them when I have a resource I want a road to, or something developed right away. Sometimes I manually direct them when a city lacks hammers, but that is not often.
My goal is always to make it to the endgame, where you actually see all the high end units. If for example the Khazad or Ljolsalfar are eating everything with their sprawl civs on another continent, I throw in the towel unless I decide to go for a Tower or Altar victory. Going through all of the 20, 30, or more cities these civs wind up with is too painful. If puppet states could actually do something, or I turned off the armadeddon counter I might do more with conquest.
But with puppet states at least, I get tired of having to supply troops/garrison all these conquered cities the puppet state can't hold. I've tried all kinds of things, giving the puppet 10,000 or so gold, resources, gifting troops, they just can't deal with the Ljolsalfar/Khazad mega stacks on their own. Or a stack of pyre zombies.
My favorite civ to play is the kuriotates. They are strongest with Runes, but they often lose the race to that one. So usually I found Leaves, go with that, stay pacifism the whole time, and go for engineers to build wonders. By the endgame I have usually gone through a ton of great people. Usually I am Republic/Pacifism/GoN the whole time. Runes is better, but you can't count on getting that, or the Form of the Titan. As far as civics go, I don't really worry about war weariness.
Troops I go with centaur archers, chargers, knights, Herne, mages, and PoL's. Most often I have 3 archmages in my three cities with Unyielding Order and Creation 3 going. No unrest, no health problems. One archmage is running around with a stack. My dryads and Yvain are with some stack or other, though Yvain can hang out on mountains so I run him around solo frequently.
And then there is Eurabates... a lot of games I don't build him because it would be too easy.
At this point my Kuriotate cities are past 50 population. I'm not sure I've seen 70 with one, but I've gone past 60 several times.
I expect the Sidar could do even better, but I don't really get in to that civ.
And the Grigori can do that Unyielding Order/Creation 3 thing easily too. I've had games where I had 8 or 9 heroes running around. Usually I find other things for them to do, but I think I've parked some in a city running Order/Abundance. It's not really necessary for them though, because they can sprawl like all the other civs.
Basically I might not be a good player. But from the sound of it, I don't think I want to be one. I don't really want to agonize over building a farm or workshop, or whether my stack of 20 warriors is enough to take out that city with the archer. (don't laugh, an archer with a lot of drill promotions is scary unless you have horsemen or shadow mana if you only have low end units).
I also don't get this financial trait/aristograrian thing. In my experience money just rolls in when you get to currency/taxation. BUild all the money buildings and the Bazaar and your money troubles are over. If you go Runes you won't have money troubles anyway. Even without a philosophical leader I often go Republic/Pacifism for the great people.
Stuff I try to do: Never lose units (impossible of course, but you can come close with 95% withdrawl rates). Build. Make high end units.
The only civ I like doing the warrior rush thing is the Doviello. Mahala's upgrade trick, and the fact that the Doviello have some of the most effective palace mana in the game for doing this make them a lot more fun to do it with than other civs. Plus it's fun to see how many levels you can get for Lucian before he is obsolete.
Also I don't play higher difficulty than Noble. I want to found a religion, and it seems more and more difficult the higher you go.