Feedback on the game concept and map are welcome. Hope you enjoyed your game.
I enjoyed it very much! Thanks for putting together such an interesting and less-predictable setup.
that conquistador dominated my diplomatic thinking for quite a while
Yes, me too. My conquest victory in 1655 was about the least memorable aspect of the game. From the other spoiler posts it looks like not everyone was discouraged from taking a chance on a quick rush, but I like the way the advanced units worked to force/encourage a different strategy in my game. It was also interesting to observe how totally incompetent the AI is with such an early unit advantage. I wonder what the AI would do with, say, three or four machine guns in 4000 BC? If the AI could be taught not to be so stupid as to keep them all in the first city that might make for an interesting "developmental strategy" scenario -- especially if the victory conditions were limited to conquest only.
"Isabella settled East of our starting point, at the tip of Yucatan in the real world (I’d be interested to compare other people’s games, whether she settled in the same spot for everyone)." After much trial and error in testing, I succeeded in getting Spain to settle at the end of the Yucatan about 5 times in a row, but I wondered if that would happened in everyone's game, so I'd also like feedback on this.
From all the other posts it looks like your testing worked well. The settling pattern was the same in my game. I've attached a screenie from 700AD so you can check for yourself.
The main problem was an archer blocking the one-tile wide stretch of land around Panama, and who just wouldn’t budge, forcing me to build a galley to get round him.
Yes, that was done by design with task set.
Cool, except apparently I didn't explore down there soon enough to find him myself. Instead I had a different kind of bizarre barb experience. (Other than the scouts, I mean.
)
Think this was a function of having no barbs as an option, then placing some on the map. Testing did show barbs entering culture early. Usual rules didn't apply. Very interesting about the archer that early. He must have taken an almost direct route to get to you that fast. Never came close that early in testing. I only had warriors, scouts, and panthers anywhere nearby because I didn't want to penalize players badly for making normal assumptions regarding barb behavior. Archer started much nearer London.
Sometime around 1500 BC two archers came marching through my territory behaving, well, oddly. By that time I had just expanded to three cities, with the most recent one placed between the bananas and the copper southwest of Izzy's capital. I had only a warrior in the city and no way to whip an axe there anyway, so you can imagine I was somewhat "upset" to see these two archers coming up from the south marching directly toward my new city. After completing my string of expletives (and watching family members flee the room), I resigned myself to losing the city. But then an amazing thing happened. The two barbs marched right past my terrified warrior and kept going toward Tenochtitlan.
On their way, they breezed directly by another warrior I had fortified in the jungle on top of the spices. These knuckleheads were like zombies on a mission -- never mind the easy opportunities to sack, pillage and loot, they were determined to walk right into the capital and the axes I knew I could whip there.
Go figure? I'm not complaining, mind, but that was about the most bizarre part of my experience with this unusual setup. I went back to the autosaves to get some screenies just to make sure I didn't dream the whole thing. Crazy.
As some of the other players, I had some trouble with the wandering archer and could have made my own life harder by stealing a spanish worker very early, but fortunately I was able to get a cease fire when the conquistador and the musketmen were arriving at my capitol.
I too stole a worker from Spain, but for whatever reason Izzy made peace instead of crushing me with that conquistador. Part of the AI's incompetence with the disproportionate unit advantage, I guess.
for whatever reason you can use the 
slider to get them 
. Each 10% gives +1 
to prevent him from making crossbowmen (severe threat to my 100% melee armies). Another thing which helped me to win faster was my fighting both in North and South America in the same time in later game 
