Hi guys, I think what scooter wrote with regards to city placement is spot on. If you want to speculate what could have been done better, based on my quick glance here are couple of other topics to consider:
- With wheat and so many forests I think I would have considered a must-have to get either Agri or Mining as a starting tech. Agri so that you could reasonably go worker first instead of work boat and mining so that you can get started with chopping faster. Actually, this being a snake pick, I would imagine that you had multiple civs that get two techs out of Agri/Fish/Mining available and I would have to consider Japan's UU and UB quite a bit stronger that I would not go with one of those (not sure if Japan was significantly buffed in this mod).
- IMP creates a temptation to get your first settler out asap, but again, with so many forests around, getting a 2nd worker before the first settler has a lot of value. So if you have time to play with the sandbox, you could try an opening where you get 2 workers before your first settler and then try to settle the gems and copper cities that scooter suggested ASAP (while getting a 3rd worker between the 2nd and 3rd cities). And then you can compare how things look at T40/T50 vs your actual game.