I started up a game first thing this morning and played long enough to find out that I have an isolated start as Louis, standard, fractal, monarch. I have sheep, 3 hills and some flood plains in my starting city.

I built worker first and researched AH which revealed horses just out side the fat cross of Paris 3 tiles away. Then I did mining and I think pottery. So its really early on. My worker needs to just build the road to Paris then I will have chariots and I think I left Paris building a granary.

The island is pretty small, but there is room to the SW for a city with lots of hills and another 3 or 4 flood plains. Just to the north is coastal site with a river, more hills and crabs. To the east is some flat wooded terrain, but I dont recall anymore details. To the south is a largish expanse of tundra and ice. So I think there is room for 3-4 good cities plus some coastal towns.

I’d like to play this out and see if I can win. Whats the best way to go? Should I focus on a liberalism beline or should I build some wonders for a cultural win or is it too early to tell?

I think a few chariots will really keep the barbs away while I concentrate on building up those city sites I listed.

Beeline for Optics while building a good-sized military. Send out a couple Caravels to find the other civs. After hitting optics, switch to No State to avoid early diplomatic penalties. Judging by past isolated starts, aim for a diplomatic victory by finding early allies, and screwing the contender for election in UN.

Have a look at the Lonely Hearts series - particularly lonely hearts 3 - elizabeth. Its a horrible land too and covers an isolated start.

Loius is industrious I think, so trying for pyramids and running specialists might work well. Lightbulb towards liberalism while self researching towards optics, try to get astronomy as free tech.

I really like diplomacy for isolated starts. You enter the diplomatic game a lot later when you have a chance to assess the situation before offending anyone. I have a strategy article posted on this.

But with Louis he would seem pretty good for a culture win fuelled by wonders. With lots of culture you might find some islands you can settle too. If your culture covers sea you can send galleys across it even if not coastal.

I did not know that about the galleys. Thanks!

I went and built wonder after wonder after wonder; Oracle, NE, GLib, Parthenon, Sistine, Notre Dame, Sankore, Spiral Minaret, Pyramids, Hermitager, Shakeys, and even founded 3 religions, christianity, confuscious, and tao and COL slingshot. With all that you would think I wouild have won. But the wonders werent enough to boost culture. I didnt get all my temples and cathedrals until really late like 1900s because I didnt prioritse building all 9 cities.

It all sort of just degenerated into a giant build fest with me ignoring trading and diplomacy and trying to ride it out while my cities built culture at 200-300 a turn and I really didnt have enough time.

I realize I'm too late to help you with this game, but here goes:

Some of the lessons from the Lonely Hearts series: expand as fast as you can without crashing your economy. The cities help with fog busting, and you need as much quick growth as possible on an isolated start. Since you don't need to worry about defense, it should be possible to expand while snagging a few early wonders, but the time between alphabet and contact with others is usually hard for wonder building--the AIs are all much more advanced due to tech trading with each other.

I'm not sure that beelining to optics is such a great strategy. It seems to be just as effective to focus your techs on building your economy (especially civil service for the bureacracy bonus on an island where your capital is by far the best spot), and work toward optics around the time of your liberalism push. The other AIs can find you.

Even though I had those early chariots, I nearly was killed by barbs. It was a close call. But after that they quited down for a long time and I had no trouble building wonders because I was industriuos, with stone and marble.

I agree about not doing optics. I have played enough isolated starts on monarch to realize that they will find you by around 1100 AD. Funny thing is its usually monty that finds me.

I failed the liberalism race, but that is because I took a few detours. It was about that time that I really stopped trying and just tried to ride it out.