I trained a Galley and explored the coast to the west. I didn't make it far before the way was blocked by ice. Woops.

Although I heavily customized this map, I did not pore over every detail and commit it to memory, so this was a surprise to me, as much as it will be to any other players. I knew more about what would be found to the east, though, including that I'd probably run in to another type of barrier over there. (More on this later).

That barbarian city in the shot above popped its borders as my ship sailed past on the return trip. (Heh, that's not a good sign!)

I did not just stick the barbarians out there. I actually gave them a few settlers spread around the large continent (where player starts, and where no AIs were started). So everybody should have the oldest barb cities in roughly the same locations. Where others pop up will likely vary, although within a fairly limited range, since the algorithms (as we've seen in past events) tend to prefer the same "juicy" sites for putting up barbarian cities.

One such "new" city is Hittite. I expect a barb city will pop up there in many if not all games, but it will be interesting to see any games where it does not show up.

You can see my exploring Axemen have found an unguarded Goody Hut -- along with the inset showing the results from the next turn. A tech! Farming. (Yay.)

Well there it is:

The "other barrier" of which I spoke. You see, one of the free barbarian settlers was put on an island off the east coast. That city is likely to build some barbarian galleys, and that's all she wrote. (My ship, of course, was killed. Not much you can do at sea in the early going in Civ4, other than to pray to the dice gods). Oh, and note the barbarian city border on the left side of the shot. (Hard to see because it's black, but the straight edge is a clear indication anyway). I found out while testing this event's initial setup that the barbs won't just plop down their cities the way the AI tends to do. They actually walk them to "recommended" city sites. Heh. In some cases, the barbs walked several turns from where I initially put them, but I decided to let them do what they wanted rather than to actually put down the cities where I would have preferred they go.

I founded my fourth city ON the Silver in the southeast. My fifth city went on a Plains Hill south of Rome, in the hole between my first four cities. My sixth city went directly ON the Iron to the northwest, the only one in reasonable range.

With six cities, and with more units than I get free maintenance for, I'm already down to 40% science rate. (Ouch!) This with an Organized civ, too! Regular civs would have had to stop at five cities.

My Walls at the new iron site were completed just in time to help out against the first enemy Sword unit.

You can see that Rome is unhappy, despite having Gold and Silver connected. I'm heading for Monarchy as fast as I can, which is not all that fast, I'm afraid.

I've got four of six cities founded ON various metals: Gold, Copper, Silver, Iron, in that order. I've got four cities on hills and two others on military metals on flat ground. Can't really play more defensively than that!

As my Praetorians hit the board, the opening phase of the game has come to its close.

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