Above is how the world was in the year 1530. What? It looks different from how you remember learning about history in school? Well first off, the map is not Western Hemisphere centric like we Americans get indoctrinated to, it's from a Eurasian perspective. But you might notice the colors on the map seem a bit different. That's because this is Civ V reality and this is an alternate version of history. For one thing, there are only 22 starting civilizations on this Earth and though they are True Start Location, that's where similarity with our real world ends. How they develop goes any which way from there.
For instance, take Europe. It looks like we have it dominated by the red of Poland and the red of Austria each with either black or white cities indicated on the map respectively (Yes it looks like Austria has a city in Spain.) Also Rome (purple) is a force to contend with along with some competition from The Netherlands (orange), The Celts (dark green) and Greece (white). Denmark (dark red) and Sweden (blue) have a spotty presence in the north. In Africa, seems like the civs there have lots of room to grow with Morocco (crimson) in the west, and Ethiopia (deep green) in the east having it to themselves. Asia is also a vast expanse of open land yet we have Byzantium (cornflower blue) snuggled close to Greece yet I recall this map having the Bosporus as a sea so there's some separation as Constantinople must have spawned in Anatolia. Theodora will need to contend with Arabia (medium green) on both coasts of the Arabian peninsula and it appears she may have already taken one of al-Rashid's cities, or is that Babylon having been quickly conquered? I can't be bothered to count. The Huns (grey) and India (light green) comprise the central bulk of the continent along with some straggler colonies from Sweden and Byzantium. Japan (white) has a couple of cities on its home islands plus one in Korea (did it conquer Korea?) and Indonesia (cyan) remains nestled around Krakatoa.
But our focus will be on the Americas.
Brazil (bright green) is alone in South America and likely is taking the slow road to growth since it has no immediate competition. By this point, the AI-mind of Pedro has already figured out he's on a large, lush rain-forested bulk of land with a great natural choke point at Panama to hold off Monty and company. And speaking of Monty, The Aztecs (maroon) occupy Central America with the rest of North America being divided up between the already-huge empire of the Shoshone (brown) in the west, The Iroquois (dark grey) in the north and me, America, trying to grab a wide swath of the eastern half of the continent. But I'll admit my cities are spaced too far, my resources are too scant and my competitors too aggressive.
It, as you shall see, would not fare well for me.
