I'm struggling with Map Finder at the moment for this map. Is there a lack of gems or gold on a Terra map as I have only had 1 map come up with 1 gold. Takes ages to get through the maps as well.
I think it's just the sluggishness of regenerating Huge maps means you don't get to look at many good starting spots. I gave up on using Mapfinder for this gauntlet and regenerated manually so I could move units around each time and get a better view.
I found a start with freshwater corn, freshwater wheat, cows, and gold that I was happy with. Settings were: 10 AI, low seas, Elizabeth.
From a few other practice games I noticed that the AI was very fast to Alphabet. There was little chance of getting there first without 3 gems or something in the FC. So I decided to beeline to Math and use it as trade-bait. So first techs were Agri-AH-Writing-Math. By the time I got to Math, 2-3 AI had Alpha, and several more had it soon after. But no one had Math, so I got some good trades in to backfill Wheel, Pottery, BW, Sailing, Myst, IW, etc. There was a good bit of open space around me, so I set down three more cities before building a library in my capital.
From there, I went for Aesthetics-Lit-Music. I got beaten to Music by Gandhi, even though I didn't trade him any techs. I guess he was going for Cultural as well. At this time, I expanded to 7 cities. Aesthetics-Lit-Music was good trade bait, and picking up Currency let me sell techs around and keep my resaerch at 100%. I build Parthenon in my capital and later Sistine in a city with a lot of forests.
I partially researched Philosophy before Wang (Korea) beat me to it. (Zero religions founded by me.) I was able to get to Friendly with Wang and trade for Philosophy. Some tech brokering got me Civil Service and Theology, so I started on the path to Paper-Education.
The world was split into Hindus and Islamists ("choose religions" option was on). I had both religions but decided to side with the larger, closer Hindu bloc. Unfortunately, these were the only two religions that ever spread to me. My only hope for a third was taking Divine Right with Liberalism.
I won the Liberalism race in 100AD but Divine Right was already researched, so I took Printing Press and traded it for Nationalism. With Hindu and Islamic temples completed in 8 cities, I whipped the cathedrals in my capital and other cottage city, and built the Hermitage in the capital. This took a while without marble. In 295AD, I switched over to Caste System, Pacifism, Free Speech and Mercantilism during a golden age, and set out for the long march toward three legendary cities.
The next 1000 years were spent building more farms for my 6 GA-producing cities, and a few more cottages for my cottage cities. I signed defensive pacts with 4 different AI to try to discourage the Islamists from attacking me. Charlemagne had already attacked 2 of my Hindu allies.
In the end, I didn't get DOWed, and finished in 1395AD. In all, I grew 2 Great Scientists (Academy and Education) and 17 Great Artists (1 Golden Age, 16 bombed). It was a very different type of game than the previous Deity Culture gauntlet. Having a minimum of 10 AI makes it hard to be the first to anything. But having so many trading partners has its own advantages.