An Immortal difficulty adventure (more details are here at Realms Beyond). That is all that you know (pre-save) about this game. Sullla hasn't even given you a screenshot of your starting position. Just a big green box tied in a red ribbon. Oh, and a bow - how nice.
This could be anything. I open the save and ... Oh look, we are the Americans - Washington to be precise. I settle in place, start a worker (because I always do) and send my warrior out exploring. I set tech to hunting because I don't fancy being able to grab a religion and I want a scout to help with the exploring. From there I go on complete auto-pilot and just pick up a bunch of starter techs (Wheel, pottery, Mining and finally Bronze working). Pottery was to get some cottages up because I really needed to up my tech rate and Bronze Working was to find my copper so I had some better defense.
So, I do the usual, zoom all the way out, toggle on the resources, select general and then search for copper. Hmmn - none. Select 'show all' and ... errr ... no resources. What type of screwie map script is this? I then zoom in and take a good look at my capital - no resources, zippo, zilch, none. Hmm - bloody Sullla and his right mouse button. Right - we are screwed. Immortal level with no resources and he expects what? And to top this off, we are isolated. Great.
Well, luckily I had just been reading 1 or 2 threads at CFC ... one about isolated starts (see Lonely Hearts Club where groups of people play starts to test different ways of overcoming this - they say that concentrating on commerce is key) and one about packing your cities in close so that saterlitte cities can help the center cities (things like working cottages while the capital bangs out a high hammer item. Well, lets try that - pack the cities in close (happy cap should take help here - lol) and concentrate on commerce ... cottages, cottages and more cottages.
Washington has 2 farms and lots of flood plain cottages so it can generate a good amount of commerce and build workers / settlers at the same time. I decide that my first city would be a hammer ok city but close enough to help with the cottage maturation process. Thus I settle New York as shown below. Notice that the barbarians have started to come in - I'm not worried by that warrior because it will be attacking a city, plus across a river.
So, I settle New York, survive the warrior attack and start to mind the plains hill so that I can get some archers up for protection. Next turn a barb archer pops up near New York and kills it - no more New York. Did I say I was screwed. No resouces, no happy, settled my first city in 1440BC (turn 64) and lost it in 1320BC (turn 67). Gee - I had it for 3 turns - what a great boost to my nation that was.
So, I start another settler, send it over to the ruins and found Boston (any baseball fans reading this - grin). I also send an archer this time. I knock out a few more cities and explore the rest of my island with archers (scouts and warriors suck against these barbarians). I find a barb city that doesn't have resources either (a small plus) so I will not be seeing barbarian axes - phew. I also set the tech to optics so that I can try to grab the circumnavigation bonus and start trading with the other AIs.
While exploring, I find two huts that I would like to pop - both guarded by Barbarians. One a warrior and one an archer. There is nothing I can do about the archer at the moment, but I can sure do something about that warrior.
That is the highlight of the game so far ... 200AD, I'm researching Iron work and I have 3 cities. I suck at this game ... really suck.