It appears the difficulty is too highly dependent on luck. Is this normal at all? The difficulty is Metropolis for all games since AI acted funny in lower levels.

In one previous game, one AI nation had over 4 nomads while I had one, in turn 5 or 3 I can't remember. In another I had to keep nomad culture until turn 50 so I can fight neighbors while getting healed.

Then, in the current game, I got two dumb neighbors at southern end, built one city each next to each other, and their armies were all single units. A few turns later both had their capitals taken and then died after contributing one more to me. Happened in the ancient era, before there were any warriors or archers. I only advanced culture to declare war.

Now my Mycenaean Promachoi has no enemy to kill, no city to capture. The continent should be huge (2-4, huge map), but I couldn't find anyone else. My strategy was to capture others' well-developed cities since I don't know what to build or research.

And I have little gold, no resource, nor even horse yet. So what to do now? The speed is endless and it starts to feel really endless..