Epic 8, a monarch game on a crammed pangaea with 7 opponents. Sounds interesting and the inital turns actually turned out to be very interesting indeed.

Variant Rules: You may not declare war on any rival prior to 1000BC.

For my case, I was actually given the start as English in this game. The settler is hidden below the warrior and I decided to move the settler.

 

Moved settler south onto the forest and decided to settle there. Rice, gems (for early commerce) and dyes didn't look too bad to me.

I decided to go for agriculture to get the rice up (for growth and to be able to work the gems). My first hut gave me money.



Well, Sirian had provided us with more huts, let's see what I can get here




I don't think it can get any better than this, BW popped very early in the game, this helped me to decided where to settle next. But there wasn't any copper nearby. So, I went for AH to check where horses would be.


The horses were just outside my city radius but could be connected. Since I was getting surrounded by Egypt and Mansa. I decided to also check out iron and found it just west of my capital, this would be the 2nd city for me. You can see that Egypt had already settled nearby and being the culture queen she is, would steal the iron eventually.



I settled York and was ready to connect the iron


But, what is this? No way I was going to accept this, time to get HBR and prepare for an early war

Some turns later, I gathered a small force to whipe out that city and connect iron

 

go page 2 to check what happened in the 1st Egyptian war