1v1, large, narrows, 1.5 speed, 75 pop, no reveal, default start, random civs.
My rating is around 1700, so I'm decent. Not great, but decent. This player comes in who's around a 1656, so I figure we're pretty even. He wants to play but wants a 125 pop, so I agree. We launch the game and he gets Shang and I get Greek!!
Groan.
I figure I'm dead in the water. I get a good start and tool around 10:30, and get a bunch of walls up. He'd evedentally decided to forgo the tool rush and was trying to out boom me. No hard thing to do with shang. My scout vill had found him and I built a seige and 2 academies as soon as I bronze. I had a good fishing op going so had plenty of food waiting. I pumped out 10 phalanxes and 2 STs and moved in at around 18 minutes or so.
I don't know what this guy was doing.
My Phalanxes kill about 15 woodies and my STs are waxing the two towers he had built. After hitting the woodies, I hit the apratment complex. He'd built all his houses in a big block and my phalanxes went through them fast as you please. A few more phlanxes and 2 more STS. A few chariots show up, but my STs smear them as I'm keeping them close to my phals. Used my vill, built a stable got 2 cavs and a scout to track down runners. Mop up took about 10 minutes.
So I waxed Shang with Greek! Heh.
Final tally had him with 52 vill vs my 39, and of those 52 he had about 12 boats. He must have been WAY overconfident when he saw I'd been given Greek.
I think Greek will be my new civ.
HA!