My first game was at Chieftain. It was a cakewalk, even though I didn't know what I was doing. I even auto'd my workers. Second game was Noble. Built no military (oops) and got crushed by the barbs. I played Noble again, built a military, and micro-managed my workers, so I could learn something about tile development and city site selection. It was another (easy) spaceship win, and I had to force myself to finish it.
I moved up to Monarch, and did pretty well for a while. I eliminated the Aztecs to the south, and took Munich from the Germans in the north. I made a series of mistakes, including researching military tradition, without having obtained the tech for knights first (so I couldn't build cavalry, which was the whole reason I'd spent eons researching it in the first place.) The Germans took Munich, and I wasted most of my - by now, badly outmoded - army taking it back. When the Germans showed up with cavs while I was
still researching knights, and I realized all the cool stuff I'd built in Munich was gone, I decided to try again.
I had a couple more early-aborts (poor start position, or AI's taking my land just before my settler gets there), but the game I'm in now looks very promising. I've built a series of four cities along a long river valley, with floodplains and a fair number of resources (stone, copper, cows, pigs, and fish). The Romans are behind me, and the rest of the AI's are to the east. My goal is to eliminate the Romans, to protect my rear end, and to gain some more land, but the Mongols just declared, so I'll have to tread carefully to avoid a two-front war I can't afford, and probably can't win. Fortunately, I have several "brothers in the faith," to the north. Hopefully, they're willing to help a brother out. :>
The game is
much more fun if you play at a competitive level, rather than just pressing the buttons and waiting to see what happens next.