Ah, I accumulated units into two armies and went south into Italy immediately. In debt from Turns 3 to 9, but after capturing Mediolanum it was all good. It is now turn 263 winter and I'm slightly slower than you (you're the master of katanking, after all :P), but I'm at most 2 turns away from marching into Rome. Could've been faster if not for the fact that I didn't have enough money to build roads in the Alpine provinces... I know the Brits were going to attack me anyway, so I decided to surrender my settlements to them if they attacked. I don't war the Brits until I cripple the Gauls. Meanwhile, I'm concentrating all efforts on a speedy conquest of Italy. Cities are falling about one every one to two turns.