After opening the save and making the initial moves, I was highly suspicious that we were on an island off from the main land mass. What I didn't expect was to find the main land mass far, far away.
Was the % of landmass manually adjusted downward for a large map? If so Perhaps it would have been better to mention that fact. It definitely didn't play like what you would expect from the description.
The second island gave us a chance to fight our way toward victory with required resources, if one was so inclined to fight! I assume it was added in. If it and the resources had not been there, it would have been even more difficult.
(EDIT - I didn't worry so much about the difficulty level, which lead to me wandering with my Settler, and more rashly, using my Worker to pop the huts. First one was 25gold, second was 3 barb warriors. Goodbye Worker. So I handicapped myself quite a bit.) I moved my Settler away from the starting area because I initially assumed the main Pangaea was nearby to the north. Even once I realized our predicament, I still moved until I settled at the mouth of the river on the northern coast. I think I settled between turns 8 and 10. This contributed to my slow start, but I don't think it was nearly as detrimental as the map scenario.
I went directly to Map Making to span the seas looking for civilization. I reached it first and completed the GL with a pre-build just a couple of turns later. Unfortunately it was 470ad before I found anyone. It definitely gave the AI a chance to get way ahead. The tech pace was so fast, it seemed like I was playing Deity. I lost count of how many galleys I lost crossing the wide seas, no helpful route from the mapmaker here. I did get to unite every one in trade, but I was still trailing badly.
Did the evil mapmaker adjust the sinking chance for galleys?
I decided there was zero chance of a 100K victory and only slightly better chance of 25K. Dom and conquest seemed very dicey, so I went for UN, then when Babylon got the UN I went to space. I just finished my spaceship slightly ahead of both China and Babylon, perhaps just one tech.
The key for catching up was staying out of wars, minimum military, Republic civic, and packed cities on our two islands. I acceded to several extortion attempts just so an unnecessary war wouldn't slow down my research. I wasn't to worried about a war because I had units set to practice landing denial to any but amphibious troops. This was one reason to keep Ragnar happy.
I was peaceful right until about UN time when, Babylon was obviously going to land some troops without DOW first, so I signed MPPs with China, England, Celts, and Germany. This combined with MPPs they signed, left just India and Scandinavia unaligned. Within a few turns, Babylon bribed them to war. This was the start of the end as the wars went right on through the end of the game. At one point, I had everyone aligned against Babylon, but by that time they were just too powerful. They ended up owning most if not all their continent at the end. I was afraid they were going to trip a domination win before I got to space.
Space win in 1925ad, not a very good date for the perceived difficulty, but not bad for the effective difficulty.
Not a stupid game, just one that was very difficult. You had to have Iron and horses first to have any hope of conquering the 11AIs once you found them. There are some techniques for getting off remote island starts to perhaps give you a much better chance at a military win. Read some of the Civ 3 SGOTMs and you'll see what I mean. I think one of the last couple was similar.
I may replay it without moving my Settler all over and see if a military win was possible.
