Updating on this run.I played a bit of my first game, sitting at the second escalation of the first crisis.
Went completely random and got Rome + Revolutionary Napoleon.
Hence, I tried to do a militaristic/cultural game. Had a lot of fun with it, but encountered more resistance than I expected. Tubman of Egypt had 5 settlements and produced 3 to 4 chariots per turn somehow. So it took quite long to get her down, and I think I've never built/killed so many units in the early game before. Already on a lvl 9 and a lvl 6 commander... Oh, and now Himiko declared war for some reason
I'm really bad on science (I think I need more cities vs. towns) but blazed through the civic tree with all that culture from kills. Napoleon's extra movement will spoil my next game, I'm sure of that - especially for archers, this is such a good and comfortable bonus. Legions are quite fun to play with.
Really enjoying this round! I don't think I've ever played that militaristic on a first round of a new civ game. I usually go much more peaceful and focus on buildings etc. In contrast, with this first game, I still feel that I have no clue where to put my urban districts and which buildings need prioritization.
Side notes:
- the tutorial popups are awful.
- there are many visual bugs. Maybe just because I'm on mac, but some are really annoying, like health bars not updated (i.e., a city shows it is at full health when it's actually not) or units that once were on a specific tile are still displayed there, despite having been moved away. They disappear if you move into the tile though.
- got the pestilence crises, which seems rather irrelevant.
- didn't have much chance to befriend IPs. There just so much to do with influence, and the other civs jumped on the IPs rather fast.
- only got for militaristic quests so far.
I went with Spain through the Exploration Era (ending turn 110).
Difficulty went downhill really quickly. With Tercios, Spanish Traditions, High Level Commanders, and Conquistadors, there's only the Settlement Limit stopping you from conquering the DL civs within a few turns. In contrast to Antiquity, the AI felt like a pushover. Maybe I need to increase difficulty to Immortal next time after all. The AI also built considerably less units than in Antiquity. Napoleons extra movement is still great. Shame that he has no Steam achievement!
While the AI competed for wonders in Antiquity, it can't keep up any more in this measure as well. Also, I ended with 24 settlements, the best AI has 6 or 7. This is sovereign difficulty btw. My cities seem generally pretty strong - while I couldn't build all I wanted in Antiquity, I've built every available building of the age in multiple cities now.
Completed the Military and Cultural legacy paths, missed Economy by one Treasure Fleet only. If I realized immediately that you need 5 treasure resources until the ticking starts, I would have gotten it - but I sat at 4 for many turns thinking it would already start.
I picked the 2 relics from cities with a wonder belief, which sounded very strong. But as you cannot convert holy cities, it's not quite as good. Still ended up with a relic overflow thanks to the House of Wisdom. Converting your cities back all the time is annoying. At least you can buy missionaries even in settlements following a foreign religion.
Exploration of the Distant Lands (including all the navigable rivers) was quite fun. However, there were only 4 IPs despite 3/4 of the DL was not settled. The other HL civs took very long to establish themselves in the DL. There would have been spots for 3-4 very good cities still at the end of the Age, but I was already above the settlement limit by quite a lot.
The plague crisis hit me much harder than I expected. Next time, I need to react immediately to it. Maybe it's much harder if your empire is stretched over the whole map.
The resource reset at the beginning is super annoying at first. Without camels (which are lost at the age change), I had no chance to slot all the resources.
Some volcanoes are going off every other turn as it seems.
Swimming in gold and culture (completed all trees in exploration), spending all influence once I get enough to do a good action, not finished all science masteries.
Really wishing for a preview of the social policy effects! I have no clue at all how much I gain from a +1 of X adjacency card! It could be +10 or +40.
Side note: if you get Napoleon‘s artillery quest, try to complete it and enjoy the bonus.
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Decided to nevertheless focus on setting up my capital for the 7-wonders path, which went well - built Great Stele, Weiyang Palace, Gate of All Nations and Petra in Parsa. Took my eye off the ball in terms of expansion though and suddenly saw Amina trying to settle the navigable river (and only viable direction of expansion for me) to my south and had to take action... only to be double-teamed by her and Ibn Battuta 
Fortunately I could plug in the Persian "Kara" tradition (50% production of infantry troops) and overwhelm Amina, finally setting my second city on the giant navigable river and building Mundo Perdido there! Finished antiquity in 2nd place behind Amina, having failed to secure 7 wonders 
UI - seems Firaxis are aware of this by now. 
