If I recall correctly you start with an infantry instead of a warrior.
I played the beginning turns last night on Monarch and somehow my war elephant defeated an attacking guerilla. It's a guerilla (comes with replaceable parts). I used an explorer to scout their territory. I think I saw radar towers, which if I recall correctly, consumes a worker? If so, I don't like that.
I looked at the tech tree. It seems that the main techs for the modern era start, if you don't play scientific and have diplomatic and space race disabled, are only 4. The one for ToW infantry. The one for mechanized infantry. And the two for modern armor.
The industrial era start has 4 techs also it seems (unless you want communism). Nationalism, steam power, electricity, and replaceable parts.
I have to wonder, when do you ideally mobilize? As soon as you can? Or try to get some granaries or markets up?
I picked India for religious and revolted right away to democracy for the quicker worker speed using a scientist right away.
I imagine it would be quite a struggle on the higher levels of difficulty, since the AI will have so much more mobility than is typical with a normal start. Especially if they start with resources to make the tank line.
The modern era start is probably the most difficult the higher the level. The issue is that they will start with offensive units (the number is in the editor). The industrial start I saw a longbow early. So, I think those will be longbow for the industrial era start and a guerilla for a modern era start without the AI building barracks. For the industrial era start if you didn't draw nationalism as a scientific tribe, you can still make a spearman or a longbow. Attacking the free early longbows from AIs with a longbow of your own, probably can work. On the other hand, for the modern era start you either have your unique unit or you have a guerilla as the cheapest unit you can get out. But that costs a lot and you have so little production initially, though with accelerated production it sounds easier.