well I'm a new GEM player (and also a new civ4 player), I like it but I have a few problems on the difficulty scale
I chose to play GEM modern, russia, Marathon, Noble Difficulty.

background story: (not required for answering)
at first I thought a couple of barbarians could be nice to slow everyone from expansion
but well ... fact is they spawn in empty places which means that almost all eastern "russia" empty lands spawns Barbarians and I am on the first line so I'm the one getting the hits while all europe is nicely protected & takes their time to develop :crazyeye:
In fact as I wasn't rushing to get war techs I found myself overrun by them in -1900 lol
I guess I'll just disable "raging barbarians"

Anyway I noticed I was almost completely unable to complete wonders before the AI so I checked. And of course some of them have the -50% on wonder production, but that aside, Cesar got such a starting position !!!! he's got a lot of production while russia starting position barely makes 1 hammer per civilian ! ok there's the stone that you can improve so that's nice but still ...

So this brings the point of this post :
it seems while the map is interesting, the different nations can have vastly different starting positions
so for example it seems europe & Roman in particular seems have a superior starting position but in real cramped space (which also protects from barbarians!)... while russia seems to be the opposite, average(bad?) starting position but a lot of space to expand ...

So the question is : What would be the relative difficulty of each nation play ? (just from their location, not their traits)

thanks.
PS: I hope this is the right subforum to post to... I posted this here because it's 100% GEM related.

I do find Rome easy, but in a good way as Rome was very powerfull as around the city of rome there is an Iron, Stone, Cow, Sheep, Fish and Wheat. But for during the roman empire Rome was at one point the most populated in the world so this makes sense.

With Russia you would be fairly weak untill the late rennaisance-modern era where you can use workshops. That large space to expand will eventually make you number 1, and it is not like russia hasnt had more 'barbarian' pressure than europe anyway, Huns, Mongols...

Im playing a RoM game now on GEM and as Carthage i was tailing quite a bit behind The europeans untill i got elephants then i stormed into rome and took italy from them, so everyone has their own little advantages.

Doing a complete list of diffuclties would be hard. but go by how good the nation historically was as i believe that is what influenced Genghis in building the map.

I see, well thanks for the answer, I understand now
As a beginner, perhaps I shall choose the roman civilization but I liked the leaderhead of catherine :D

thanks a lot in any case.

Rome is very easy. As already discussed your production is so high and you start off right next to copper. By the time you've built 4 cities it's feasible to have wiped out France, Spain, Netherlands and 1 other with a horde of axeman doing quite well agaisnt their warriors. Just don't get too excited and crash your economy without pottery and currency or you'll relegate yourself to the dark ages for a while.

Also if you tick the 'minor civ' option in the custom scenario starting options you get to be at war with everyone before researching 'writing', without a diplomatic penalty. This is great for Rome.

I've not played as everyone, but other 'easy civs' tend to be:

China
Ethiopia
India

Particularly difficult (unless played with tech trading off), are:

Australia
Anything on the Americas continent
(Otherwise you just fall behind Africa and Eurasia who have traded so many techs before they meet you).

Re Europe: I wouldn't be sure they have such a great advantage, other than Rome. The Asian civs are just as good and generally have a little more room too. Europe is great for warmongering though.