I've always felt conquest UHV's should be more ambitious, and now with the longer game I feel even more strongly. Technically, for Alexander's whole empire the Seleucid UHV should include Sindh, Gandhara, Bactria, and Sogdiana, and the Umayyad Empire should include Baetica, Iberia, Lusitania, Armenia, Sindh, Sogdiana, and Ferghana, as two examples. I haven't tried the Seleucids yet, but I never had a problem getting all of the Arab territory and still winning a UHV even on the old speed (of course the date would be changed to 710 or 715 to be historical).
To weigh in on the tech speed thing, I got Mathematics through Philosophy by 160 BC with the Ptolemies, so I think it's fine. I realize they are a strong research civ, but still...
In fact, I think they are a bit too easy. But I'd much rather see a more difficult UHV than a weaker civ, as a general rule - it's just more fun to do something difficult with a strong civ than to struggle to do something that should be easy with a weak civ.
For some reason it seems like the AI is obsessed with building roads instead of improving tiles. They'll have super-intricate road networks and no resources around their capital improved. I've tried giving them more workers in the WB and they just keep building roads.
The Great Lighthouse is pretty lame without fairgrounds or foreign trade routes (and switching from Tyranny to Tribal Custom as the Ptolemies seems wrong). Maybe the GL power could be +1 route and could override the foreign route limitation? Currently, Alexandria is a far cry from the greatest trading port in the Hellenistic world that it should be.
in early game? Did you touch this since your return? Something with the game feels just way too different then before...
, Archery 1949 
