No iron.

Playing under the rule of Hatshepsut in Egypt proved to be harder than I thought. I initially picked playing as them because I knew that if I played my cards right I would be able to take most of Africa and be relatively unopposed by anyone, save the barbarians. My problem arrose when I discovered that there was no close iron source to my starting location. I haven't been one to build many scouts, usually just one or two, and they usually die from barbarians or wild animals pretty quickly so I couldn't find an iron source close by. I did, however, decide to put men all around the perimeter of my lands so that I could preemptively stop barbarians and wild animals from getting in (this helps, alot! That way you don't have to worry as much about relocating men to defend mines or farms.)
Not having iron ready at hand threw off my entire game because I didn't have the advancements that other nations had. So I have a slower start and wind up behind in the tech race. I am doing okay, few runnins with iron clad barbarians but I managed to not lose any cities. Finally I find iron in South Africa. Thank god. I send down a settler, worker, and some arches and build a mine and poof, I am back in the game. But it wasn't as easy to catch up as I thought. All of the world wonders are being built or have already been built and I can't seem to produce men as fast as my neighbors. And again, rather than go with long bowmen I decided to utilize my new found iron supply and make macemen and spearmen. At this point in time I am second to the worst in rankings. Julius Ceasar decides to act upon this and in all of about 4 turns I have lost all my holdings in saudia Arabia to knights. Again, I didn't have enough and or strong enough units to repel and attack. I had 2-3 units in each of the three cities I had there. Then for whatever reason Fredrick decides that it would be a good idea to amass about 10 units next to one of my cities and just kinda hang out there. Wasn't to sure what that was about and I didn't stick around to find out.
While it is true that societies need to expand and get bigger in order to advance and stay prosperous, they can only get ahead if they have access to the necessary reasources to keep somewhat of balance of power. Without key resources such as metals and food surplus's they cannot compete against even smaller countries that have these advances.