So the save is at 25AD? That's not an even turn, so I'll only play 9 and leave it back on track at 250AD. I've got my checklist from the recent posts (thanks Compromise), so off we go:
Inherited Turn (25AD):
I switched immediately to researching Lit, showing at 8 turns but at a large deficit. That's 13 once switched to near-sustainable the next turn, sadly.
Trading with the AIs: They all have Meditation, Monarchy and Iron Working, and Caesar will also trade Mathematics.
With Caesar: Code of Laws gets us both Meditation and Mathematics.
With Bismarck: Code of Laws and Polytheism get us Monarchy and Iron Working.
I did not trade with Qin, as he's up by Currency and Calendar, and not willing to trade either, so I want him to have to find Code of Laws for himself if at all possible to slow him down.
I then immediately used the Prophet to get Theology, which founded Christianity in Kufah as desired. I sent the free missionary to Damascus, since that's the one in the biggest cultural war.
I flipped us to Hereditary Rule as well as Organised Religion, since flipping to No State Religion was easier with a little happiness compensation from HR. I also flipped us to No State.
Medina is finishing the Granary (2 turns) and will then build an Aqueduct until it can best be whipped, and then straight to the Hanging Gardens.
Iron was found by Munich, two diagonal spaces from Kufah, so there are reasonable odds we can take that culturally.
END TURN
50AD: Mecca Library -> Settler. I know missionaries and monasteries are all nice, but Caesar has a settler galley coming down the coast, and this is the only way to beat it to the last spot we want.
75AD: Following the above plan, Medina -> Aqueduct.
100AD: Damascus finishes an archer (for the new city) and goes back to Confucian Temple to help push Hamburg back. Munich's borders expand, so (cultural) force will be necessary to get Iron.
125AD: The Roman settler galley turns back, making that somewhat easier. Damascus grows to 5, and instead of letting the governer pick another 2/1/0 tile and keep it growing at +3, not all that fast anyway, I pick the 0/4/1 hill and leave it in a great production configuration that it can stay in for ages, growth won't do much for it anyway. We'll need the production for the Great Library, after all.
IT: Bizzy offers us some wines for our spare Horses, which I accept gladly. Anything to mitigate the -3 penalty we've got for close borders already, eh chum?
He'd also discovered Horseback Riding, not that he will trade it or that we want it.
175AD: Parthenon BIDL. Good thing we didn't try for that, then. I'm sure that's not normally built so early either, so maybe we really are facing an industrious civ ahead on tech on another continent with stone and/or marble. Nobody said that this was going to be easy, right?
I whipped off the last bit of Medina's aqueduct, growing back to 5 and starting the Hanging Gardens next turn.
200AD: HG due in 10. Mecca finishes the settler and starts a Confucian missionary, we kinda need to pull our economy back up a little.
225AD: Basra founded out down south of Mecca, with the Stone and a couple of grasslands. Sadly it didn't alleviate the military cost as much as I hoped (yes, we're paying for military. Maybe we coudl afford to disband the warriors?) and so our economy dropped even further in the drink.
Qin gained Metal Casting, which is of course untradeable at the moment, but I'm not sure he has Copper either, so who knows about the Colossus.
250: And the Hanging Gardens got BIDL also. Well, that was quick. The two turns we put in got us 84 gold, at least, so we have enough cash on hand to finish off Literature with the correct timing with the Monastery in Damascus so that it can go straight onto the Great Library in 3 turns.
I debated what to do with Medina for a little, and decided that Chichen Itza while periodically switching out to whip in Monasteries and Temples as the population and happiness become available (leave it at 5, it's got 3 food resources and a granary so it's growing *quickly*) could be an interesting plan. Obviously no turns have been invested yet, though, so if you prefer either a couple of workers (the other thing I was seriously considering) or some Buddhist missionaries there's no loss in doing so.
Mecca has finished on Confucian missionary, currently heading for Medina, and is building another one for Kufah. I think workers after that if Medina hasn't built them, or monasteries if it has since the palace commerce is still providing quite a lot of our science, and the culture doubling won't go amiss. It's got to be the place for the Sistine Chapel once all the higher priorities are done, though.
I'm thinking Lit -> Drama -> Music -> Philosophy from here, probably. Plenty more wonders on that path, and another religion if it doesn't fall elsewhere.
There's our Civ. No tiles fell on my turns, though the cows are down to 51% German and the first ring of Munich is already being pressured sorely.
Sullla is up.
(I don't currently seem to be able to access the upload server to actually put up the screenies I've taken, oddly. Neither of them were vital, though, so we'll live, and attaching the save is fine.)
Garath
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We need to ditch the research into Iron Working and go whole hog into Literature. Build the Great Library! 
We'll have to discuss where to build National/Heroic Epic for the culture too. (After that, Drama/Music for sure.) Oh, and we have monopolies on both Code of Laws and Alphabet. Garath can almost certainly clean up every tech the AI civs have, especially by giving outdated stuff to Bismarck. We want to try to hold onto Alphabet and give out Code of Laws (which the AI always researches soon). At the very least, we need to get Math IMMEDIATELY and have one of our cities start Hanging Gardens. Maybe have Damascus do Hanging Gardens and Medina do Great Library (?) Let's talk about that briefly before Garath plays. We should be able to get Monarchy too if we trade smartly. 
Let's get some more feedback about our current direction from the rest of the team.
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) building list over the next thousand years is monasteries in our cultural 3 is monasteries. It's early enough that we should get some decent culture from their doubled +2. A +10% to research in Kufah would help too, once it gets cottaged. 
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