I decided on Monarch, with as many random settings as I could get away with.  I tried a couple of proto games before this one, but both ended up with me being stomped out of existence by the Iroquois in depressingly early times with warriors - in one case, I was alone on an island with them, in another case, they just decided to kill me.  In this game, however, everyone started on a pangea, and spent most of the game having pretty large wars over the rights to what would have been my pretty large starting spot, or the odd Nike wars - they just did it.  Among other things, this allowed India to gain a pretty large second core by obliterating England, and Korea to kill Persia, the Ottomans, and the Mongols.  Greece, despite being the world superpower forever and ever, almost died to the Korean juggernaught as well.

Meanwhile, I merrily picked up wonders as fast as Babylon could produce the things.  Not that many as it turns out, but it was enough - The Oracle, the Great Library, the Hanging Gardens, and JS. Bach's after I missed both Sistine's and Shakespeare's (ouch!).  I also fell totally behind in the Industrial Age after tech prices got enormously jacked up.

In the end, though, it failed to matter.  The AIs spent so much time warring, they couldn't finish up in tech, and despite my pitiful run at culture, I managed to win a 20k in 1976 anyway.

And here's Babylon in 1975, right before the win.

Yes.  I'm researching Refining for no particular reason at all.  Note the pathetic remnants of Greece and the Spanish.  The huge chunk of India closest to my little red dot is where England, terror of the Middle Ages, used to live until she was obliterated by cav.  The Mongols had the long skinny peninsula in the far west.  They annoyed Korea for some reason in early, early times, and paid for it.  Persia and the Ottos managed to live until late game, located just above Greece.  Then they, Greece, and Spain all paid the price for meddling in the giant colonial wars.

This was another Monarch game.  I tried a couple of proto games on Emperor, and got stomped badly, so I decided to go straight back to Monarch.  As it turns out, I got a whole bunch of water starts (about 5), which mostly involved me being obliterated by one AI or another in the Ancient Age.  Clearly this is something I need to work on.

This game ended up being another pangea, standard map, five other civs.  It played just like the first game, except better for me.  I cleared the Oracle, the Great Library, and the Hanging Gardens.  Amongst other things, I managed to get a hut settler (ha!) which went towards boosting Mecca's population.  I also got something I've never seen happen before - Babylonian Elippi tried to flip to me, twice, on consecutive turns.  I guess they really yearned to be Arabian, or something.

That's not surprising, actually, considering that, once again, the AI was involved in raging, raging wars.  And boy did I pick the wrong world to get involved on - France and the Ottomans are rather tame, but my three nearest neighbors were Babylon, Rome, and Russia.  Eep!  In fact, I even got attacked by the Russians at one point, but their warrior lost to my regular warrior, and they never bothered me again, though they did sign alliances with Rome and Babylon, which was very worrisome though ultimately nothing came of it.

As to Elippi, it attempted to flip during the first great AI warring phase after my war.  Babylon managed to annoy somebody or another, and it was a vicious world dogpile all over the already small and weak Babs.  They were the first to go, in the early Middle Ages.

Second to go was Rome, at about the same time I was cleaning up on the Hanging Gardens and my choice of Sistine's, Bach's, Leo's, Copernicus' or Sun Tzu's.  I ended up with Sistine and Copernicus (after losing Bach by 1 turn to France!  Ack!), somebody else got the other two, and Rome ended up dead just before I built Shakespeare's to a whole bunch of Otto Sipahis.  I almost scored Newton's, as well, but it was not to be.

I fell far behind in the Industrial Age once again, despite 40 turning my way to the first few techs.  At that point, though, with as much culture as I had, the result was inevitable, so I cranked research up to full because I could, and sat back to watch the raging AI wars.  And raging they were.  France, the Ottos, and Russia spent quite a while duking it out with cav all over the place, including smack in the middle of Arabia.  All my people sat around in Shakespeare's and watched the show:

France ended up doing slightly less filling, less teeth whitening OCC action on a one title island out in the middle of nowhere, at which point Russia and the Ottos signed an MPP just in case one of us got uppity or something.  "What's that, Mr. Osman?  You want my map and 19 gold?  Sure, anything you say!  Please, come again!"

Not that it did them any good.  20k victory in 1900.  Suckers.

Railroads, you ask?  Bah.  Who needs em?  Not I.  Not I.

So, I started this game at about 9:30 am, and said to myself, "Well, you've got class at 12:30.  Think you can play out the game before class?"

Yup.  In the single-fastest game of Civ I have ever played, no less.