I'm not convinced I agree that Persia really sucks. Maybe I'm just nostalgic: when I started playing against other humans I started with Persians. I made it to about 70th on Case's Ladder back when it had 4000 players playing exclusively Persian in singles and teams.
The trick is that you have to play them very differently from any other civ. Back then, in the dark ages, no one tool rushed. Persians _have_ to tool. They have a tremendous economic advantage until tool; they hunt like other civs shore fish, but you can always hunt in the early game. In the really good games, I never built a wood pit; I scavenged wood from near my hunting pits. Barracks is the second building you hope to build in order to tool. Build clubmen while you tool; rush with axemen and scouts(you have to scout a lot with Persians anyway if you hope to win).
If things go well, you can often win the game right there. Start mining gold early; the Persian bronze age is really terrible. If things go well you can usually _still_ bronze with the Persians around 14:30 after a very heavy tool rush and send in cavalry.
If the attack stalls, never, never, never try to fight a bronze war. Wall in as well as you can and shoot for iron. Persian elephants are deadly in early iron, more so with priest back up. After a really heavy tool rush you often don't need to wall in too much; most opponents try to rebuild their economy if they can get to safety. They expect you to try to win in late bronze, which is very very very hard with the Persian unit mix.
Now, having said all of that, I should probably qualify it. You won't win games against a really good opponent(and far more players are very good now than back then). In team games, you have to ignore everything and go for a lightning iron, which is not really a Persian strength, but not really a weakness either; I used to be able to do it around 20:00 or 21:00 pretty consistently. Then you pray that they don't get lucky with priests.
Everyone has the wrong reflexes against Persians; since no one ever plays them, no one ever seems to run archers and peons away from the fast elephants in time to save them. It's imperative in iron to heal elephants: you won't be building very many of them, since you have no economy. About the only place you can keep up is in the priest department since Persians aren't really worse at mining gold than most civilizations and don't spend much on the main unit. The trireme bonus is pretty fantastic if your allies tribute you wood; otherwise, you might as well forget it. Still, if you do end up playing Persian in random multi-player, I recommend closing your eyes, forgetting about walling in, and gunning for the fastest iron. It can win games. Honestly. Build like, 2 cavalry in early bronze and send them at whoever is closest. No other military except maybe boats until iron. You should have about 10 minutes when you have the fastest toughest army in the game and get to yell at your teammates about not properly supporting you with chariot archers to kill the bad guy priests.
I never used to build any kind of archers when I played Persia, which I find hard to understand now, but, hey. I met with a lot of success without them. And, really, without two of the range upgrades, it's sort of pointless...anyway, that's my view. If I were ranking one on one civilizations in the old AoE, I'd put Persia somewhere around fifth...a bit worse for multiplayer. I'm sure it was better than Egyptian or Hittite: I'm torn on whether I thought it was better than Minoan.
Since RoR isn't available in my city yet, I don't know how well it can do these days. I'm pretty sure Romans can rock the Persian world...but, then, I've never tried it.
See you guys on the zone.