This map looked difficult from the very beginning, money, production, and happiness were all going to be very poor. I settled in the best food spot I could find, the 3 whale + 2 fish location. Scouting showed there was a really strong coastal production location, where I eventually settled Cumae, so naval domination was a strong possibility. I went for a standard 4 city, full tradition approach, mainly to avoid piling on additional complications, on top of what I could already see. Early runes were really good: culture, population, and two techs. Despite building early shrines, the lack of city states and nearby AIs also meant that it looked like I needed to pick on Lhasa for workers, and therefore I did not get a religion. I guess I could have hard built them.
Education did not hit until T116. I did manage to line up social policies and tech perfectly to go into rationalism during the first turn of Renaissance. No early wonders, not even the Oracle. My people were barely surviving with an economy based upon whale blubber and scrimshaw, and a diet of fish guts.
The entire mid-game was spent just trying to get my economy and tech rate out of the gutter, while struggling with happiness issues. The only thing that appeared to be going well was population, due to internal trade routes, but that was also just putting more pressure on happiness, so sort of a vicious cycle. The first wonder that I actually got was Porcelain Tower. My economic and happiness issues did not start to clear up until around T150-160, when I had finally trained up a spy and got a couple of successful coups. Suddenly, I had enough money freed up to actually do something in this game. Did I mention that most AIs went Patronage? City states bribes were a large drain on my economy, especially after it took so long to meet more than a handful of city states.
At this point, it was a choice, either go all in with a possible naval domination victory, or push for a science victory. I was never in contention for a culture victory. The choice became clear to me when Portugal went Rationalism, and I was still trying to gain the tech lead. For a player with limited naval domination experience, the possibility of naval domination was off the table, as I risked getting seriously out-teched by Maria if anything went wrong. The AI diplomacy was also really tight, so attacking anyone other than Mongolia or Ottomans looked iffy. Scientific theory came T167, which was not great, but not terrible, so I began to push for a Science Victory. Unfortunately, I had avoided a 5th city early on due to happiness issues, so it was going to be slow going.
The oddest part of the game came with Ideology, Maria got the first Ideology, and went Order, so I went Freedom and started building up happiness reserves for the eventual onslaught of Ideology pressure, which I suspected was coming. But, this ideology pressure never actually came, as 4 AIs followed me into Freedom, which was completely unexpected. If I had known this, I would have attempted a 5th city capture to raise science levels.
I barely won the World's Fair, and managed to get Big Ben to help with spaceship part purchases. Apparently, nobody went commerce on a small continents map. Okay. Also managed to get Statue of Liberty and Hubble.
The end-game was 100% science limited, so just a lot of hitting next turn.