Well, I tried the strat online. It didn't go exactly as I intended but I won the game anyway. I played as Zeus and I was playing against a Norse player ( there seems to be an overabundance of Norse don't you think? ).
I scouted him out but he didn't seem to be straying too far away from his base for his gold (it was still early in the game so he didn't really need to) but I did come across a caravan with 10 of those nasty little dwarves collecting wood.
So I attacked them with 2 centaurs first (as that is all I had raiding at the time) and killed 2 before they ran after me. By this time I had 5 hipp heading that way so I let my centaurs run past my charging hip and it was goodbye beardies. After that I decided to move my raiding party out of the way of a counter attack which just happened to be the same place as a Norse temple. I had built up another raiding party by then, Hip only, as wood was getting scarce (archers queued), so I attacked the temple with my raiding party and then sent the second raidng party up as a second wave. The expected counter-attack came and we ended up cancelling each other out but my econ was booming by now so I kept building hip/tox with some Hydras thrown in (IMO hydras are excellent vs. Norse) and when I hit my pop cap I started upgrading. I took one of his forward tcs with the army I had built up and I sent some villagers up to take it as my own when he had massed an army of his own and attacked my villies. I then used Ceasefire then (I picked that up from someone on these forums - thx whoever it was!!) and by the time the Ceasefire was over it was my tc and I had a huge army sitting there.
It was all ever after that really. I just made more units than he was killing and with the help of the old catapults (petroblos??) it was gg.
From looking at the post game data it seems that the Ceasefire was the turning point of the game (he actually was beating me in every aspect most of the game)
Now, I am still a rookie as I am only 1599 (after that game) but I have won 3 games in a row now. Hopefully 1650+ awaits me soon......