Initial Settling Location
Granted that was a bad luck. I mean wth, it's just a wrong direction first warrior move.
Bah, no worries. My capital location will be good soon enough... I have picked up Iron Working so I am finally getting the Rice and Gem Resources online... having worked some Cottages and hired some Scientists there, it'll be a nice capital soon enough. It's low on production, but production can come from other Cities. The true power of Bureaucracy (which I hope that I will eventually get to) is the fact that it multiplies against the Academy's bonus (as well as the Library's bonus).
On the contrary, Bureaucracy's Hammer bonus is ADDITIVE with a Forge and Organized Religion, not multiplicative... so, given the choice, I'll take a Commerce-heavy capital... other Cities can pick up the production slack.
Maintenance Costs and REXing
Maintenance costs are insane on Deity, I wonder how you cope with how many 6-7 cities? Even 4 make me almost broke.
Connecting-up Road-based Trade Routes (until Sailing comes in) between Cities. Then, build a Road to an AI's border and hope that they connect-up a Road to it... if they take too long, then go and build Roads inside of their Cultural borders just to complete the link.
You also use the additional Resources to trade for more Resources... so, instead of having a Happiness cap at 4 or 5, you try to trade up for a higher one.
Meanwhile, you do whatever you can to work improved squares (I kind of out-expanded my Workers' ability to improve squares, but where possible, I worked improved squares). If I had too many citizens not working improved squares (more than 1 per City), I would whip away these extra citizens (sometimes even as soon as I had only 1 citizen working an unimproved square, assuming that the City was big enough for a whipping action.
Later, after Libraries, things really started to pick up, as citizens that were working unimproved squares would automagically turn into Scientist Specialists (okay, nothing auto about it--I looked at every City screen on every turn).
Getting to Pottery early enough to lay down Riverside Cottages helped a lot, too. That, and being willing to keep the Science Slider at 0% for 20+ turns at a time, in order to save up sufficient Gold to quickly research one tech... which was often getting near-maximum discounts from all of the AIs having already researched these techs.
Iron and Praetorians
Good luck with praets! Do you have iron btw?
I do have Iron and I recently whipped my first Praetorian, in order to help fend off Monte's assault. You see, Zara and Monte shared a common Religion so Monte eventually managed to get Open Borders.
However, he must have cancelled the deal 10 turns later, since they no longer have an Open Borders agreement. Monte is annoyed with Zara (which is enough for Monte to not want to Open Borders). Essentially, Monte allowed a "trickle" of his units to come across Zara's Culture before alienating himself by Closing Borders again!
Anyway, as you can see in the screenshot, after whipping a Praetorian, Monte's assault was easily repelled.
Further Minor Expansion
I expanded during this period to two more Cities, picking up a Fish for one and a Clam for the other... not amazing sites, but they'll do.
That puts me at #2 for the total number of Cities, all from self-built Cities. Now that's leveraging one's Imperialistic Trait!
Hiring Specialists and Wonders
Running specs and bulbing Philo looks like easiest way to get out of tech hole.
I would tend to agree that hiring Specialists will help a lot, as we REALLY need to get some early Great People going. Unfortunately, at least in my game, they won't be Representation-based Scientists... The Pyramids came and went in my game.
However, I did just complete The Hanging Gardens (as of Turn 107), my first Wonder--I don't even have any National Wonders yet.
Fortunately, it was a great Wonder to get for a large empire!
The good (or bad?) part is that Monte is the one who built The Pyramids... and The Great Lighthouse... and the Hindu Holy Shrine, in addition to The Temple of Artemis.
Being blocked in and limited to a few Cities really does cause some AIs to go into Wonderspam mode.
Techs
My first trade was me trading away Math to Churchill for Meditation and Polytheism.
Gandhi was also nice to earlier gift me Masonry.
As such, I had the chance to build The Hanging Gardens, so that's what I had done, as mentioned above.
I made a mistake earlier and mis-read the tech screen... a bunch of AIs do not have Code of Laws... a bunch of AIs actually had "Code of Laws" in their "Can Research" column... meaning that they had Priesthood.
So, maybe I can still catch up by going for Code of Laws and trading it around. I think that I'll try to finish Currency before going for Code of Laws, though, both for the additional Foreign Trade Routes and for the bonus to research on the Code of Laws tech.
All Religions except for Islam have been founded... I don't "know" who founded Taoism as per the F7 screen, but it must have been Darius, since he is the only one who does not have Code of Laws in the "Can Research" column of the F4 -> TECHS page.
Several AIs do not have Theology listed under the "Can Research" column, though, so the Apostolic Palace is going to be a random element that can still play havoc with my game.
What's Next?
Building up Praetorians! Monte has some nice juicy Wonders and has alienated himself... he does not have Open Borders with anyone so is not getting any Foreign Trade Routes... meaning that I might stand a chance of getting to him before he gets Longbowmen.
Of course, he has switched into Police State, so the going won't be easy... but I hope to be able to "surprise attack" him from out of Zara's or Churchill's borders... then even "hide" again to heal, if necessary.
But first, I'll need to build the troops... my "stack" right now consists of about 6 Axemen + Praetorians that aren't needed to defend my Cities... I'll need to grow this "stack" by quite a large amount before I attack.
, could not dream of copper on grassland. 
)
