Already back up to playing as high as Emperor. Spent two games messing around on Prince just to see what was new.
Mid-way thru that game right now on Emperor, playing as Japan, I encountered what is normally a pretty lousy start: heavy jungle, and on a coast.
The key to saving bad starts now is trade-routes. I fed Kyoto, the capital, with food and production (whichever I needed at various times) from Tokyo, and was able to keep from having to cut tile after tile of jungle. Found some iron, got some Samurai, and just took over the whole continent before saving and quitting for the night. Still wasn't a good start, but rather than being an upward struggle, I managed to get out of it alright.
And before anyone asks, it wasn't the sort of start where I could have re-positioned the starting settler; to get all three luxes workable, I needed to have the city where it was, as anywhere else, one lux was out of the workable tiles. And we need raw-gold now more than ever now.
Mid-way thru that game right now on Emperor, playing as Japan, I encountered what is normally a pretty lousy start: heavy jungle, and on a coast.
The key to saving bad starts now is trade-routes. I fed Kyoto, the capital, with food and production (whichever I needed at various times) from Tokyo, and was able to keep from having to cut tile after tile of jungle. Found some iron, got some Samurai, and just took over the whole continent before saving and quitting for the night. Still wasn't a good start, but rather than being an upward struggle, I managed to get out of it alright.
And before anyone asks, it wasn't the sort of start where I could have re-positioned the starting settler; to get all three luxes workable, I needed to have the city where it was, as anywhere else, one lux was out of the workable tiles. And we need raw-gold now more than ever now.