This is definitely looking like quite a challenge for the second emperor level ALC game. The map generator has been most unkind, as not only is there no source of copper there also are a minimal number of health and luxury resources.
Without knowing the location of horses and iron it's a bit premature, but I've prepared a preliminary dotmap to discuss a couple of strategic issues:
Since an early rush of Ragnar seems out of the question because of the lack of copper, I think I should leave the dubious terrain to the south to the Viking and focus on moving north and west.
I disagree with this strategic decision for a couple of reasons.
One of the points of the ALC games is to try to leverage the leader's traits and one of the best ways to use the Creative trait is to use the early border expansion to try to block terrain off from a neighbor. This map does provide that opportunity. The cyan and orange/brown cities would successfully block Ragnar off from most of the continent. It probably won't be possible to get them both founded before Ragnar founds one, but if cyan could be founded that would force Ragnar toward orange. Even if Ragnar gets his settler done first I wouldn't be surprised if the AI preferred the rice/grassland site over the desert site. Cyan plus green would also effectively block Ragnar off from most of the mainland. His only option for expansion would be up the east coast which is resource limited south of the jungle.
The cyan city doesn't have great long term potential but it's not a bad early city with an oasis and 5 FPs. It will be low on hammers so it will need the whip to build things. It also would provide a source of stone which could come in handy if GW is a consideration. And given the possible lack of an early military resource GW might be rather appealing here.
The green city could be moved one S or one SW, but I'm really concerned with health on this map. A city 1 SW of green would have 10 FPs which causes 4 unhealth. That would mean the city would be health capped at pop 1 and would need health from food resources to support any additional population. The problem is there just isn't much early health available: 1 from rice, 1 from cow, 1 from a granary and maybe 1 from a northern clam city is all you'll get before calendar. The site I indicated for the green city wouldn't have any early health problem, and the FPs that it doesn't used can be picked up by other cities. It would be a very nice early production city.
The cyan and green cities are also better options for early cities than the cities to the N that will have a lot of early health problems because of jungles and will require IW before they can even start to be developed.
Of course there are some issues with blocking Ragnar in. The AI might try to fight out of the box which could be a problem if no strategic resource is available. Luckily none of the tiles around Nidaros that are visible are going to have strategic resources, so Ragnar might be limited to archers and warriors. Otherwise it would come down to depending on Protective archers.
Alternatively Ragnar could start loading up settlers on galleys and settle some islands. This could make is hard to kill him off, but on the other hand it would limit Ragnar's ability to offer much of a threat on the mainland.
So what next? One option is to doggedly pursue the UU by researching Iron Working next. That could take quite some time, though, and would leave me without a decent unit for defense. I could research Animal Husbandry, as I selected for now, and hope for horses somewhere nearby. Or I could pursue Hunting and Archery to get Protective Archers available for defense since the UU seems to be a bust for this game. I'm leaning towards AH, since that would also allow me to pasture the cows in Uruk's fat cross.
The question of whether to pursue IW or AH next is a tough one. AH is the obvious choice as it's cheaper and would allow the cows to be pasturized in addition to revealing horses. But IW is absolutely necessary before you can even think of expanding to the N. Not only would revealing iron allow you to place a city to claim it but it would let you know if Ragnar has any iron which would be critical in deciding how much of a threat the Viking poses.
The problem is that if you go AH then IW you'll be delaying the religious techs for quite some time. If you delay IW until after all the other early research priorities then you'll be delaying expansion into the very lucrative jungle for quite some time. While you're waiting for IW you'll either have to stick with 3 cities or found something quite a ways to the W south of the jungles.
One other point is that it seems that when they adjusted the map generator to reduce the amount of copper they also increased the amount of iron, so now iron is the most plentiful of the early military resources, therefore you'll have a better chance of finding it than horses.
It's a tough call but I would probably go for IW as it seems to have the most to offer in the short term.