Lousy start position and powerful neighbors close by -- what more can I ask for...? This game is exactly the type that I like: a big challenge and a slow uphill-struggle.
As I am used to civ_steve's lousy start positions, where you won't find anything better even if you walk for 5 turns, I decide to settle where I am (just one step SE to get the fish into range immediately and to keep the whale in the BFC). The plan was to abandon my capital and relocate it to better lands as soon as I found them, but that plan never materialized: at first I didn't find any better land, and later when I found it, I was too weak to conquer it...
So I was dependend on cutting myself a decent production base out of the jungle...
And accordingly slow was my progress. The only good thing in the early phase was, that I managed to get the Republic sling, and just about in time: the Incans had attacked very early. Three archers appeared at my northern town, that I had settled only a dozen turns earlier or so and which was protected by a lone regular Enkidu. I did not want to risk a despotic GA especially as there was no hope of saving that town anyway, so I retreated my Enkidu and gifted that town to the Iroquois. This delayed the Incan advance for a couple of turns and when they reached the next town, I had enough archers to repell the attack. The situation was still quite messy, but somehow I managed to hang on, and when I had inflicted some losses on them, they were willing to accept peace without demanding a town, which I accepted gladly. Nothing would have been worse than if they would have drawn the Iroquois into the war as well.
Peace did not last long however, and around the time when I had revolted into Republic, the Incans attacked again, and this time I was forced to use my Enkidus, if I wanted to avoid losing the town that already had an FP-prebuild going. So I got my GA quite early, it was not despotic, but it was still one of the most miserable GAs I ever had, with only a handful of jungle towns...
At least the GA helped me to repell the attack and slowly but surely gain the upper hand over the Incans until I started capturing the first Incan towns. I also managed to sign up the Iroquois against the Incans (I think I payed with Republic or some other expensive tech). This helped a lot.
Things also became better, once I managed to connect horses. This was quite difficult: the Iroquois had already settled all the horse resources, so I planted a settler next to the closest location and quickly built a library in order to take that tile by culture flip. However, that Iroquoise town had also built some culture much earlier than me and it took an awful long time until I got that tile. It did not flip over to me until I finally build a temple in my town as well. (For obvious reasons, I did not want to capture that Iroquois town by violence, as at that time they were helping me quite a lot against the Incans... At any time in that early phase a two-front war would have meant game-over for me, so I kept the Iroquois happy all the time.)
The good thing was, that by the time the horse hill (and another one) flipped, the Iroquois had already improved them with road and mine...
I had sent out 3 curraghs quite early, so the shape of the continent was known to me quite early... When I saw what was expecting me, I made the plan, that for this game I would research up to Cavalry. So I built 3-4 libraries early on in commerce-rich towns, which would help with getting there in a reasonable time. Also I decided that because of my shield-poor empire I will have to use my commerce for producing these expensive units. So I made preparations for getting Leonardo's Workshop. Then using the disconnect-connect-upgrade strategem on saltpeter, I would be able to produce Cavalry for just 30 shields and 75 coins.
If and how this plan worked out, you will discover in my next spoiler...
