@ aelf:
When you don´t want to go to an early war and still want to be able to grab enough land (min. 6 cities so you can build globe theatre to draft) always expand towards the AI´s. Don´t open borders and reserve your back-lands until you have codes of law and currency (lightbulb philosopyh ASAP when you have codes of law and trade it for currency + X). Prebuild the settlers, then you can fill up the back-lands even faster. Once you have CoL and currency, you can support 6-8 cities with all civs.
Another trick for costal starts is to move your initial settler inlands, to reserve the cost for later settlement
When you don´t want to go to an early war and still want to be able to grab enough land (min. 6 cities so you can build globe theatre to draft) always expand towards the AI´s. Don´t open borders and reserve your back-lands until you have codes of law and currency (lightbulb philosopyh ASAP when you have codes of law and trade it for currency + X). Prebuild the settlers, then you can fill up the back-lands even faster. Once you have CoL and currency, you can support 6-8 cities with all civs.
Another trick for costal starts is to move your initial settler inlands, to reserve the cost for later settlement
