I thought I'd try out Greece after reading this thread, starting right off on immortal difficulty, and I get a map like this:
What do you in such a case? I have lots of city states, and space for 4 more decent coastal cities with lots of seafood, but there arent any nearby AI. Its also a pangaea map, and a very strange one at that.
Rather than focusing on early conquest, just turtle up with such a strong easily defensible location? Its a very good map for taking Liberty, Patronage, and Commerce. I want to start it again though because I opened honour first, and I dont need that at all on this map.
Heres my progress up to 160 AD with a save file attached:
The mountainous isolation gave me no need for any military at all, I focused on settling my coastal patch of land with 5 cities, and focused on building monuments, granary, lighthouse, library, colosseums and currently markets.
I also managed to build TGL and Colossus in my capital very late after training 4 settlers and several work boats, but Machu Pichu was taken the turn after I finished of the Liberty branch so I couldnt rush it in one of my mountainside cities. Instead I used up the liberty GE on Hagia Sophia, and have a second GE waiting to rush Notre Dame.
Im going to focus Athens on producing Great Merchants, conduct trade missions and dump the gold into City States, being a small map theres only 12 of them anyway.
So far I spent 2000 gold into both cultural states I had found, I would hopefully like to be able to fill Patronage and most of Commerce on this map at least.