1.08 has turned the game into an utter wasteland, wholly unworthy of playing on. There's no resources out there to make building a city by worthwhile, but that's ok, because there's no way you can afford building anything like a city.
You can't afford to research crap because there aren't any libraries out there anymore, and you can't pay for studies. You can't pay for studies because you can't afford to waste your mind numbingly scarce food resources to get gold (really one precious, precious food to get 1 measly little gold). I'm well over two hundred turns in and there hasn't been a single metal resource to be found anywhere, but I couldn't afford to build any fancy troops with metal weapons or armor anyway, because I'm not earning enough gold to equip more than one party of anything anyhow.
There is literally NO REASON TO ACTUALLY BOTHER PLAYING THE DAMN GAME ANYMORE
I think I had a different experience. I successfully set up 4 growing cities before running low on food. This isn't much of a surprise, as I played Empire and they have difficulty finding food. However, low and behold, my opponents had food. Conquering time. After culling those conquered cities down to only a few houses, I was able to expand one of my cities to Level 5, and two others to level 4. The rest I kept at 3. You only need one Level 5 city.
Metal was difficult. I am of the opinion it should be. You use it to make a couple catapults and you'll walk all over your opponent.
I had 3 Lost Libraries. At the end game I discovered 2 more. I had 30+ research and flew through the tech tree.
I actually like the scarce resources. It makes you feel some desperation when you overextend yourself.