Having played 6+ games from 200-300 turns (I never finish anything) I gotta say it can
seem like a drag to really sink your teeth into the tech tree, but it's cool. There's plenty to do in the early game.
Animals last for ages (they stop eventually, about 150 turns, right?). Standard sized maps take forever to fill out between you and the AI. Barbarians actually take root, founding pretty reasonable civilisations by themselves, thanks largely to Orthus and Archeron.
All in all, I think the pace is close to perfect as it is. The free tech with writing is a bit of a female dog. The AI always gets it, unless you start with Chants and max out commerce straight for it, leaving you with one city, 10 warriors and miles of naked terrain but not much else. Philosophy (a la Civ3) could be a better alternative.
If you really want to grab a religion, Runes is fairly easy to get. Fellowship and Overlords seem to get taken by the AI pretty quick, at least in all my games they are. It's not until the late religions that any worthwhile gains can be had by them anyway.
I would really like to stick to a game to see the last half of the tree, but things start to go wrong for me by the time I get to the 4k beaker techs (Monarch, normal speed, standard maps), like Arcane Lore. Up to that point, though, I find the tech pace pretty smooth. A little unilateral in the comparative beaker costs, if you know what I mean; not much variety of cost within each tier. A balanced structure, nonetheless.