hi,
last saturday we play a seven players game in the west part of the map. Civilizations in play were iberia (first game for the player), carthage (lead the 2/3 of the game before falling back), Celts (who win the game but nobody see how exactly he did it), Rome (not a great conqueror), hellas (start bad but make a good return), minoa ( aggressive one) and hatti (me, very bad first 1/3 of the game with 2 floods and 2 barbarian invasions).
It was a very good game that everyone enjoy but it was one of the longest (14 hours of play) and everyone was exhausted at the end.

We use the system in which every tech worth 2 points, AST 5 points and city 1 points:
Celts 131
Carthage 129
Hatti 121
Rome 120
Hellas 115
Minoa112
Iberia 105 (first game for this player and not the simplest civ to play but he wanted it).

Hey

mabe in the future if you want shorter games... you could all start with say 5-10 advances

another option is to assign a gameleader that does not play. To speed up the game by doing all side-things and keep track of turns.

succes!

greets
Flo

For shorter games, may I recommend section I of the Optional Rulebook titled "Playing A Shorter Game"