I started a new game yesterday and today I reached Sedentary Lifestyle. The game is on Immortal difficulty, Marathon game speed, Huge map size. SVN version is 9946. My leader is Alfonso I, he doesn't have positive or negative scientific traits but his Populist trait gives -5%
in every city. Tech diffusion and Win for Losing is on but I turned on the No Tech Handicaps for Humans too. I turned off the Teleport Hunting Awards option, and I turned on the Raging Barbarians, the Brabarian World and the Start as minor civs options on in the hope of some extra Fun.
I researched Sedentary Lifestyle in turn 546. The first civilization did it in turn 529. I researched 97 techs so I averaged 5.6 turns/tech. I am the second most advanced empire. I have 4 cities. I have met 2 other civilizations. One have 1 city the other have 2 that I know about. It can be more, he is on the edge of the unexplored territories. My starting place is quite good, I have a tile with bamboo forest which gave me 3
from the start. I also have nice resources around my capital.
Tribal Villages didn't help much I was able to explore 4, one gave research two gave money and the last one was hostile. I lost my early units quite fast. I started to hunt with Stone Throwers from the start and I tried to hunt as much as possible all the time. It was very hard at the start, I lost a lot of units for wildelife and for the occasional barbarian, but I forced the issue. Building that much units slowed down the improvement of my capital. It got better after I got my first Master Tracker. It cleaned the area around my empire from the dangerous animals. From this point on hunting helped me a lot and I started to emerge from the bottom.
At the end of the Prehistoric Era I was able to get some Tribal Village islands around the continent. They gave me some techs and some research breakthroughs.
Turning off the Teleport Hunting Awards option did the trick. It slowed me down significantly. I wasn't able to explore as fast as in my previous game, I still didn't explore my whole continent. The unit maintenance expenses for the subdued animals didn't allow me to build as much cities as earlier. It's a pain in the arse but it works.
I want to play this game for a while, I will tell about it on the end of the next era.