New game, still Large PerfectMongoose 310 map, 12 civs, Snail, Deity/Nightmare difficulty. No TD, Teleport Hunting Awards, no Peace Among NPCs this time.
Starting location has a Volcano and Caves nearby, but otherwise is somewhat poor in terms of resources and plot yields. WB tells me I'm on one of, if not the, largest continents, in the Northwest portion of the overall map. I've managed to build 4 of the early Prehistoric cave wonders, making up for the mediocre location. For the first time in quite a while, an AI civ has beaten me to Sedentary Lifestyle, with a significant margin to boot. It's currently turn 399 (16484BC), and I'm currently 2.5 techs away from SL myself (halfway researching Earth Oven, then Celebration, then SL itself). My economy has been very badly tanked by my early rush on and capture of an AI secondary city far to the south of my capital, because it's on a one-tile isthmus that allows me to cut off land access to my region by at least two AIs, leaving only one (contacted) neighbor in my area. I'm honestly not sure if it was worth it, because that city is costing me 20+
per turn in maintenance costs, and my capital has been spending effectively every other turn building Lesser Wealth to prop up my economy. That said, I've managed to put together a small force of Obsidian Swordsmen that should bring in some much-needed cash by raiding the other AI's various newer settlements. I'm at three cities, my capital at 7 pop, the aforementioned captured city at 3 pop, and a new settlement at 1 pop.
Leaving Peace Among NPCs off has had a pretty significant negative effect on my hunting yields. However, I think something's not working right. Not only am I seeing far fewer animals to begin with, I'm seeing a much higher proportion of predators to prey animals. I'm not certain if this is the result of predation or misconfigured spawn rates, though, since even in large swathes of predator-free land, I'm seeing almost no prey animals spawn. I'm really wondering if the increase to the prey/predator spawn ratio that's supposed to happen when Peace Among NPCs is off is instead being activated only when PAN is on? Particularly, in my last game, with PAN on, I was buried in Pigeons, Lizards, Eagles, and Hawks. It got to where I wasn't even bothering to kill them anymore unless they were in my units' way. This game, I'm barely seeing any animals, and I highly doubt the AI is managing to hunt down all the animals quite that efficiently.