Are you building at least 2 scouts first (not counting island maps of course)?
Scouts allow you to find more ruins while they are available. This results in faster policies, gold, bonus population, and perhaps even an early religion. On big Pangaea type maps it might even be good to build 3 scouts.
Are you building additional units?
Buddy teams of 1 archer and 1 warrior can hunt down barbarians and farm for gold from the camps. Having a strong army early also allows you to bully CS for gold and to extort gold from the AI in peace deals (more difficult on Deity level, but a viable strategy for early gold up to Immortal level). In general, higher difficulty level AI players have more gold for the player to extort. You can also throw a resource in on peace deals to get the AI to offer more gold (peace deals can be trades and not just one sided demands). Use this gold to buy that library in the newest city or even to rush a settler. I typically build 1 settler and buy 2 in a tradition game.
Scouts allow you to find more ruins while they are available. This results in faster policies, gold, bonus population, and perhaps even an early religion. On big Pangaea type maps it might even be good to build 3 scouts.
Are you building additional units?
Buddy teams of 1 archer and 1 warrior can hunt down barbarians and farm for gold from the camps. Having a strong army early also allows you to bully CS for gold and to extort gold from the AI in peace deals (more difficult on Deity level, but a viable strategy for early gold up to Immortal level). In general, higher difficulty level AI players have more gold for the player to extort. You can also throw a resource in on peace deals to get the AI to offer more gold (peace deals can be trades and not just one sided demands). Use this gold to buy that library in the newest city or even to rush a settler. I typically build 1 settler and buy 2 in a tradition game.
