Not really. I was up against Suryavaman, and given the chance, Sury will rush you with 80+ stacks of ballista elephants (he started next to me and had 2 ivory sources in his BFC and well as stone) and catapults with a few swordsmen thrown in, and he will hog EVERY single wonder in the game. For some reason he always does that, even though he's neither aggressive nor industrious. I do not like Suryavaman II at all. He is hard to keep good relations with, too... he has double the negative for refusing to help him or give him tribute, or refusing to stop trading, blah, blah, blah...
And on the other side I had Saladin, who is protective, builds units quite well, and founds a bunch of religions. Plus, somehow all of his cities (well, all 5 of them when I came over to visit

) were on hills. CGIII/Drill I archers are NOT fun.
Past Sury, there was my old friend Monty. Actually, he wasn't that bad this game. He declared war on me when I had already pulled my two just-victorious 12 units stacks with 1 GG in each towards his borders and backed them up with a medic III GG and a few catapults. There was a bit of back and forth over the first city I capped, but after that Bismark and Augustus jumped in the fray on my side. I am amazed at how well Bismark did... he captured a city with 2 axes, a spear, a sword, and a chariot.
So anyway, I was surrounded by 3 formidable wartime enemies and a tech/wonder freak (that's Gandhi). So I think it's only fair that I got that start.
It isn't fair that I got all that beautiful land around my empire, but I fought for it.
High sea level maps with 18 civs are so fun... ever notice how there are a lot of resource clumps around capitals? Well on this map, they overlapped. I had one city with 2 copper sources right next to each other, 2 iron sources opposite each other, 1 plains ivory, 1 corn, and 1 pig. Wonder powerhouse. Hagia Sophia in 16 turns without marble.