Ran two games as the revamped Elohim and the civ is super awesome. My only problem is that monks are unstoppable killing machines.
Once you get your second city down for +2 affinity and hit level 7 or so, there really isn't much of anything in lairs that can hurt you, so you can just keep ruins/lair diving. You get the adventurer promotion after a few and from there, it's just raking in the money/items and particularly the XP to easily get yourself to level 15. It's hard to not just conquer everybody when your monk has a 9-15 first strikes and 11 strength to roll over cities without ever losing a health point. I actually killed Archeron the first shot -- had a 40% success chance and 60% withdraw...why not? I really like the promotions, but the potency and the rate you can get them is pretty extreme. I never managed to actually get monasticism researched in either game before I won.
Also, Thessalonica is probably the most badass leader ever. The second game got me Organized, Defender, Tolerant, Spiritual, Ingenuity, Raiders.