Need help salvaging this game

Playing with 2 friends, we are unofficially on a team but not technically on one so we don't go through tech so fast. The three of us started with Germany and the Iroquois on the same continent, and my buddy already gave Hiawatha a bloody nose.

I however, am falling way behind in tech because I only have 1 gems and 50 pearls, no grassland, and was having fairly serious trouble with money due to no city states to trade with. However, I took the religion bonus of +1 gold for every four followers, and fortunately neither my buddies nor the 2 computers on my continent have started a religion, so Bourbonism is now the religion of the continent.

Addis Ababa is pretty good now, but it took a LONG time for me to build all the fishing boats and the other continent is definitely way ahead in tech now. It's only monarch though so it's probably salvageable.

In retrospect going with Tradition was probably the way to go, but I'm all but finished with piety now so too late for that.

A guide to the pictures: Krakow is my buddy playing Poland, so I can maybe settle by him if needed, he has a fair amount of space. The next photo with Coimbra is my buddy playing Portugal, he's probably going to settle the decent spot to Coimbra's south. The area to the southeast of Addis Ababa is tundra/snow.

If you have 5 gems can you not simply trade them if you need happiness or sell them if they don't have duplicates you need gold? That's what I always do, and appears to be what you did to get ivory. Are there more deals?

I did not open the actual save as I don't have the time mid-day from work, however, I agree that your science is abysmal. Your main problem appears to be that your population has hit problems and you are struggling to grow in all those hills.

Also unhappiness is your first and foremost problem now. For unhappiness there are a lot of ways. You can trade pearls to other players for luxuries for starters. You can build colosseums for local happiness. You have great faith and have started a religion so that's fun. If you haven't already, definitely pick a happiness belief like a religious building or +2 happiness on temples? Lots of early options, but they'll require some investment. This seems to be your best bet as you already went piety and have the potential for religion to do a lot for you. For religious buildings, you already have the faith for a building purchase which might help short-term. Buildings will only be 200 faith up to (or through?) the medieval so you have a large window to build them in all your cities and I'd guess could do it pretty easily. You might wanna alternate this with missionaries if you start getting short on gold, but unfortunately this can't be your priority, though if you can get into theology and GE rush borobadur or mosque of jenne (probably easier) that'll help you need less missionaries to expand outward.

Hill+Tundra starts are hard, Luckily you started near loads of sea resources and have some sheep and other helpful tiles which should let you start growing again once they are all worked and you've built the right buildings (after happiness of course). I'm guessing you stopped at lighthouse in the capital and don't have one yet in the others, finish lighthouses in all those and shoot for seaports next as they'll add more food and production to all of your sea resources. You have 4 cities totalling 9, 3, 3, and 1 population so it is really surprising to me that you only have 26 science? I'm guessing 2 libraries have been built. Finish the rest and built the National College in your cap for starters, but the long-term problem appears to be population growth as you're stalling pretty severely. I only see one worker--I would crank out 2 more asap and farm everything I can, also building granaries and aqueducts, basically your priority should be to make those cities grow better. Divert a trade ship to carry food back to your capital at least as this will make the investment in National College pretty good. You have 2 mountain cities so those should be your priority for growth. This early in the game hitting observatories later and stealing might catch you up fine through the renaissance. In fact, due to the fact that you have SO many sea resources AND mountains teching on the top of the tree after theology seems like a great idea. Open harbor, seaport, and observatory techs as soon as possible. Obviously divert to education when you can too, but you have a lot of other things to build right now.

The end story though is your area is just super hilly which is challenging. It's a shame you didn't roll Inca as they would've been OP, actually, in this situation with all those mountain/hills. I probably wouldn't have crammed those first 4 cities so close, and would have sent my fourth farther north to get some of the grassland and better-growing areas. It's not too late if you want to turtle to open tradition now. You could also go liberty next if you wanna keep expanding. You may go through it quick anyway seeing as how you will probably have extra sources of culture from religion and the opener provides more. Your culture is awful so those free monuments in tradition AND growth options look good. You won't have to tech aqueducts either if you take that path and will just get them.

It's bad.

You need population and libraries / National College ASAP. Send cargo ships from your satellites to the capital for food.

Happiness is also a problem. Try to settle your first cities on new luxuries next time. You should probably have settled your second or third city near the incense where Krakow is, and later extend to the crab and sugar further north. It would have given you a very stretched out empire but given the terrain you don't really have a choice. The starting location is pretty tough. You do have lots of pearls however so trade them with the AI for other luxuries or gold. Use the gold to rush buy the granaries / libraries / cargo ships.

Check the forum for good opening strategies (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=523371) and see what kind of timeframe you should expect to build stuff.

I curious do you have the Initial Auto-Save from this game?