As the title would indicate, about this time I started running into barbarians in spades, which caused me no end of problems. But I should first start by posting the map from this date:
Orleans has just been attacked by barbarians in this picture, and it would be attacked again later. I found a perfect rhythm for Paris and settler building: it would build a settler at size 5 and shrink to size 3. Then it would build a warrior (2 turns) and take 2 turns to regrow to size 4. Then it would build a settler (4 turns) and take 4 turns to grow to size 5, at which time it would shrink back to size 3 again. I wasted some shields on the warrior build, but overall it was extremely effective at producing warrior/settler pairs. And notice two workers building a road in the forest to connect Paris and Orleans? Those I bought from England, after checking both England and Babylon every turn to buy workers. They were immensly helpful early on, and their loss crippled England's growth. And I got them for free too, or nearly as the money to buy them came from sacking barbarian camps.
Oh yeah, I'm on 0% science here for a few turns to get my income back to a safe level after buying up the workers from Emgland. In another 2 or 3 turns I went back to researching again. But as to the subject of barbarians, I had many problems with them. The south was all tundra, so I held off settling there until all the good land was claimed. It became a breeding ground for those things. And I had terrible luck against them. I had a warrior fail to take out a barb camp no fewer than 3 times, which was very frustrating. I had a barb horseman charge up a hill and take out a veteran spearman in Orleans (which is on a hill, by the way) thereby sacking the city. It was ugly. After a while, I was glad that the AI warriors knew where the camps were in the blackness because they were helping to take the heat off of me. The AI civs, particularly the English, were walking through my territory non stop all the time at this point, which irritated me quite a bit.
As soon as I traded for writing, I established embassies with England and Babylon. This was what I found when I founded my embassy in London:
Awww, Elizabeth! 
The AI, for all its advantages on Emperor and Deity, just doesn't know how to use them properly. Which is good because otherwise a player would never have a chance! This picture was from 2030BC, if you're curious.
Well, I continued settling at this point. I was pumping out settlers very quickly from Paris, while all the other cities were mostly building temples or military or workers. It worked well, because by the time that I took my next screenie in 1625BC I had as many cities as any AI civ and was beginning to pass them. Sometime after I got Writing, I traded (and brokered) contact between civs and thus came to know about the Americans, the Iroquois (yellow in this game, oddly), and the Indians. When mapmaking became available, I similarly traded for everyone's world map and raked in some gold. But this was not as crucial in this game as it was in my Deity game, since I was still on an even footing with the rest of the world. Here was the world in 1625BC, with much of the total map revealed:
Now that I had contact with all civs, I was back to 0% science again. I never had trouble staying caught up on tech in this game, which kind of surprised me since this was Emperor, but I guess my good start was enough to stay even. You can see there are more barbarians attacking Orleans again; those things were all over the place. From the minimap, it's clear I have 5 cities, just like all the other AI civs. There were a ton of luxuries near the start too; I made that a priority and began sending settlers to claim them. I was able to get both the silks and dyes over by the English, because their growth was so stunted by losing their early workers. The incense by the Babylonians has a much longer story to it...
Babylon and I could not get along in this game. It wasn't my fault at all, as I was playing honorably. But around 1500BC, Babylon (the world leader on the power graph) DEMANDED iron working from me. I ignored his demand and Babylon declared war on me. Hammurabi and his high aggression level. 
I was in no position to fight a war, but fortunately neither was Hammurabi. He didn't even send any forces against me until some 6 or 7 turns had passed. I was able to defend against his bowmen, though I had bad combat luck and many a swordsman died to bowmen. I lost no cities though, and after some 15 turns I was able to get back to peace, which was all I wanted. Most of my cities were defended by warriors at this time! But Hammurabi would not leave things alone, and future conflict was inevitable.
