Well that helped a bit with resources, although now I'm in North India Ah well, I guess it's Civ 3's world map all over again (should look into/for a mod about that, maybe).
Right now I have a North and South empire, the North one is one of my cities and about 5 Arabian cities I took rather easily, AI's army was 3 warriors and a Spearmen. Was funny to see my worthless ally, Ghandi, jump in and take the last city after the Arabians were broken.