Need help in balancing SE with expansion

[Stumpy123]

Recently, I began trying out the SE. I played as Ghandhi just now, and managed to get Hinduism, the Great Wall, and the Great Pyramids. I have about 4 cities, and decent production in the capital. The problem I have had is balancing this out with getting even more cities, and more importantly, military growth.
In my previous games with CE's, I was able to get a good start; usually, I could get the capital to churn out settlers, while a city with decent food and a good number of hills (includes copper or iron after a beeline to Iron Working) produced axeman and swordsman. The other cities had a fair amount of grassland and were therefore spammed with cottages. With the Imperialist trait, I could get a good military and economy going by about 1400 BC.
In my SE games however, I keep spending way too much time securing two wonders, even with a Great Engineer making the Pyramids. Also, I feel extremely limited to Philosophical leaders. I guess I still retain the hardcore, "anti-wonder addiction" mentality from Civ III, and am used to having more units and cities.
So, how do you experts out there pull it off, especially at the higher difficulties? Is the SE still more effective than CE without Representation from the Pyramids, or if the leader is not Philosophical? Finally, how many cities and how big a military is "normal" for around 1000 BC?
Ok, sorry to put you through all that . I have the save if anyone's interested, and ask if you need more information.

P.S. By the way, I'm trying this at Noble, but usually play at Prince (with Julius Caesar, anyhow).

 

[Mutineer]

Why do you need piramids and philosofical leader with SE? You do not have to have any wanders or philosofical to run SE.
It is common misconseption. Yes, this 2 factors help, but not essential.

 

[svv]

If you've got great wall and pyramids in the same city, you're off to a good start. Get alphabet to trade techs. Get metal casting to build a forge, and hire an engineer. Make that city your GP farm, but try to emphasize engineer points. Hopefully you'll get another great engineer to build the great library for you (same city, even though it's not engineer points), and later you can build national epic, hanging gardens and Hagia Sophia in the same city. After liberalism try to beeline for chemistry and steel, which give you great military units, and also allow you to build ironworks (same city). Now you can hire 4 engineers (6 when you get a factory) and will really be churning out great engineers.

All the while you can still be putting down cottages or production improvements in that city (if you have enough growth that you don't need to farm anything), and be churning out city improvements and/or military units (since hopefully great engineers are doing most of your wonder building). Use slavery and whip smartly (see other threads).