Civilisations
Mediterranean 1
Mediterranean 2
The civilisations come in several flavours. Every civ has some bonus, apart from that the technology tree and the period in which the bonuses matter decide how strong civilisations are. Some civs get economic and military bonuses, others only get the military ones. As a consequence there are fast civs and slow civs.
Fast civs have economic bonuses that can be used right from the Stone Age. This group includes Shang (cheap Villagers), Assyria and Yamato (fast Villagers), Minoa (cheap FBs). Some include Phoenicia (gather wood faster and can carry more).
Gold dependent civs are all civs that don’t get chariotry and therefore can’t get any advanced units once they run out of gold.
Then there’s the question of build-up in an RM game. Most civs work well with a berry start and a standard routine of building up after that, Persia and Palmyra require a special approach but can be very strong if they get through their weak start.
DM is entirely different of course, here the military bonuses are more important in the early phases of the game. Cheap units (Yammy, Choson’s Priests, Phoenie, Minoa, Macedonia, Rome) only matter when the players run out of their initial supplies.
The remarks about the computer player in single player games (by Peter) refer largely to nomad starts. Remarks for Multi Player are by Phill Phree; remarks for DM by CenturionZ_1, assuming a standard DM – RoR, Iron Age start, Revealed Map and Hill Country Map.