A fun setup to try

Polynesia, Terra, your choice of speed, difficulty and size. All other options standard.

Special rule: you are not allowed to settle anywhere in the Old World. Conquest, well, that's another matter... perfectly fine for an army of veteran assault troops to Haka their way through Europe

Do you take your starting unit with you for scouting and security, or do you leave them behind to grab a bunch of ruins so you can sell some embassies, buy a Maori, and open a Policy tree as soon as you settle? The Americas will be crawling with Barbarians (wait, where did they come from?) by the time you arrive...

Note: founding a Pantheon will crash the game if you do not have any cities. Saving & reloading before opening a ruin or making contact with a CS is not considered cheating for this game

This reminds me of the deity DCL for Polynesia, the starting continent was full of warmongers, and if you did settle there, you're likely to get wiped out anyway unless you play smart. So what some people did was to sail the settler onto either islands or the other landmass.

yeah definitely Polynesia DCL

Hey lindsay40k - that was a fun setup. It made me go Liberty (which I never do) so that I could spam the new continent and grow. It was a surprisingly sloooooow game though. I planted six expos (for a total of seven cities of gold . I never run with that many cities and it put my already delayed science in a pinch.

However, the huge advantage came when I teched archaeology early. I dug up an entire continents' worth of antiquity sites. I didn't have any good wonders for culture except the louvre. However, with seven museums and a late game bulb to Internet, I managed a turn 323 cultural victory. By my standards, that is not bad at all. It was easy to keep the other continent at each other's throats, and the runaway went autocracy, which basically meant that they were at war with all the smaller neighbors.

Oh, I left my starting warrior. It was a good idea: I met every other civ with him and got AH and a pantheon because of it. I didn't found, but I held on to that pantheon for like 150 turns.

I did this recentlly (with Community Patch Project Mod).
Before I finally won (Immortal), there were countless failled attempts. The biggest problem I found is that in Civ V you are very dependent on your capitol. You are guaranteed a good spot where you start, but not if you land somewhere overseas. So I would play with the additional rule that mapknowledge is permitted - playing the first 100 turns over and over and over again until you hit a sweet spot by accident gets boring very soon.