This is with a small map and 4 other opponents. My starting area was absolutely horrible, but later I found out that the whole map was like that. I began in a small mountained off area with about 4-5 resources, and it was fine for one town that capped at 400 people. Yet to get past the mountains to the east I was forced to teleport my army there. An Empire AI was in that area but I founded a small town to the north of theirs. This closest Empire AI had a small area to play with, but one much larger than my own, however they too were cutt off from the rest of the world by mountains. To the north I could see a Kingdom AI but couldn't contact them because I was still cut-off, and only our borders touched. I took out the Empire AI and attempted to research the spell to reduce mountains but the game started crashing about that time with the tactical battles against monsters before those north mountains, and after having to restart the computer 5 times I gave up on that game.

 http://screencast.com/t/MDE1ZTIw