Well, that was a quick turnset.
I decide to leave our second warrior at home in case of roaming skeletons or something. Shouldn't be a problem at monarch but I'd rather avoid the embarrassment of being wiped out early. Train a scout.
In the east our first warrior fights off a wolf, then makes first contact with another civ.
As this guy is Evil too we start with a +2 relations bonus. We then run into a scout around the same area belonging to:
As her text suggests, the Svartalfar are quite prone to backstabbing, but are a fair distance away. As our scout finishes, we get another event!
I feel compelled to choose the most Evil option available (I suggest we roleplay when we get random events) and run forced human medical experiments throughout the city. We drop from 3 to 2 population as a result which will slow down our first worker production by a few turns. However, we gain a permanent +2 health bonus which is always handy when sitting on floodplains.
Our scout heads west and runs into the edge of the world, which puzzles me until I look up the settings and notice we're playing on Inland Sea. I send him south, dodging a couple of giant spiders, destroying a monster lair and finding a hut. The hut pops mysticism about 10 turns early, which is a bonus for us. It enables the god-king civic (a more expensive version of Bureaucracy) and allows us to build Elder Councils for research.
I revolt us into Agriculture and God-King civics, and stop here so we can discuss our next tech and moves. I have set us to research Crafting for now en route to mining so our worker will have something to do after building farms. You can't slave early in FFH so mines are critical to early production in anything but a worker/settler pump city. However, if the team prefers to go Animal Husbandry or Education instead I won't complain. I don't think there is any good reason to rush to Knowledge of the Ether immediately. At this stage of the game, we should be claiming land and building up our economic base.
. You are right on the cereal crops, a brewery seems to be our only happiness resort.
Actually one of my test games was played using those elves. Do they just rock or what? 
I loved building cottages in the forest tiles! 
I normally leave that feature off and just crop the pictures myself. It comes in handy, though, if you just want to post the images inline. As you normally don't want to go over 800x600 for an inline picture.
No specialization. When it comes to upgrades I try to have some balance but no real strategy or rule of a tumb there either. I would love to play in a SG but am afraid I would only be a burden :/
? Also, I have trouble telling what kind of barbarians (if any) will stay away from my cities. The fact that Scouts seem to be able to see hidden barbarians was another useful tidbit.
