As I said at the beginning, I started from 4000BC. After I hit the AD times, I downloaded the 'Start with Help' to see how Sirian had started it. It actually turned out very similar to the start that I had - on the gold hill for protection and early, quick commerce. The only difference appeared to be an extra warrior. I was fairly pleased that I had diagnozed the start that this game needed.
As I said, I turtled in the middle of the game and fell behind in tech (behind even the Barbs). I should have pushed out fog busters and city raider Praetorian to raze the Barb cities. No cities, less modern units (I think). I should have also been out pillaging their copper and horses (no axes, maces and horse archers). I am actually replaying (just for fun) from about 250BC to see if I can put this plan into effect. I could still be playing the original game, nothing was going to eliminate me unless I caused trouble. Instead of that, I developed a strategy to gain some lands, resources (the land Qin had on my island contained uranium and aluminium) and proceeded (try) to execute that strategy.
I thought my promotion approach was fairly good - it will be interesting to see how other people approach this part of the challenge. It was unfortunate that the XPs maxed out at 10 against Barbs - a SDK mod that removes this aspect of the play would have resulted in some insanely promoted Roman units.
Total playing time 22:16