My civilization looked like this in 530BC:
Let me make a few observations as to what was going on at this point. You can see first of all the German archers walking past Tyendenaga in the south off to fight the Romans. As far as I can see, the only purpose of this war was to raze a few outlying Roman cities. Notice the iron a little bit northwest of Tyedenaga? There was a Roman city there that the Germans razed for me. I put a city there a few turns later and claimed the iron for myself.
The Russian city of Novgorod is in control of the horses near the starting position. Their settler beat mine there by 2 turns; I had to settle for founding Centralia next to it. I thought I could steal the horses by cuture expansion, but the Russians rushed one of their cheap libraries (24 shields on Deity!) and stopped me. Akwesasne, the gem city, was a major coup for me; since the location is completely surrounded by mountains, I put a scout on the one open tile and stopped Russia from founding a city there. This allowed me to get the gems when the Russians really beat me to the site by a good 15 turns. I was rushing a temple in that city at the moment to prevent the Persian city of Samaria from stealing the gems by culture. I was successful in that respect, though it was a close call, as I found by diplomatically investigating the city.
Tyedenaga was another luxury race I lost by some 2 turns to the English. It sits on a silk luxury, but that English city of Norwich controls two silks. I would put bigtime culture pressure on that city, but it was very resistant to a flip to me.
As the little status box indicates, I was in monarchy by now. I would stay in monarchy for a very long time, as I needed the military police to prevent disorder for quite some time. I held off on going to republic until I could get my second core running well under a Forbidden Palace. I think this was the right move, but I'm not quite sure. It seemed to work well for me in any case.
So what was going on in the game at this time? Well, the AI civs were researching through the tech tree at a furious pace, leaving me in the dust in the Middle Ages as I had nothing to trade them for techs. It was about this time in 500BC that I realized that the only way I could possibly stay caught up was to trade away anything even remotely valuable to them for tech. Thus the great trading game began; I traded away my furs and gems, leaving only 1 luxury behind for myself, in exchange for cheap techs. I was able to get two early middle age techs for one luxury most of the time, allowing me to make some progress in catching up.
The map didn't change that much for a while. Here's the western half of my civilization in 70BC:
You can see I've founded Kahnawake on top of the iron and claimed it for myself. St. Regis is about to complete a harbor, which was important because it would hook up my mainland to iron. And that iron would be used, not for myself, but would be traded to the Japanese for exhorbitant amounts of tech. It was a very nice deal; I don't know how I could have been even remotely close on tech otherwise. Mauch Chunk is being prepared for a Forbidden Palce build at the moment with its courthuse. My galley is bringing another settler to found a desert city that would link the southern cities to the northern ones within one cultural group.
The AI civs were getting ready to enter the industrial age at this point: they reached it in 10AD! I was, um, not that close to the industrial age at that point. However, I was slowly catching up through my trading. By catching up, I mean that I was roughly 7 techs back instead of the 12 or so I had been earlier. The next big event in my game happened around 200AD, as the Russians went to war with the Germans and the English delcared war on the Romans.
