The three tiles to the NE look like plains, desert, desert, from right to left. Raging barbs doesn't sound too attractive, but i'm thinking of moving SE to have 5 possible barb attack directions semi-protected by the river, to give my warrior(i only plan on building one per city, and spearmen when i get bronze) a better defense chance vs. a large attack group. NW doesn't look like a nice area at all, I'm not buying the speculation that the mountain range is thin. (The bottom right of the tile that's two tiles W looks exactly like the bottom right of the tile directly west) I'll end up with the goats out of the original city radius, but for the first ten turns i'll be putting out a warrior and a scout to explore/protect, and then when the city expands I'll switch over to the goats to give a 15 turn growth to size two, which will give my worker a nice amount of time to road and irrigate the 5 tiles on the other side of the river.
There's also the possiblity that on the other side of the river is a desert, so a SW move might put me next to oodles of floodplains, perhaps with wheat(although i doubt it)
SSW looks like plains, everything north and west of that looks like mountains, and everything else out of the start position range is either desert or that one tile of plains to the NNE.
Given the "arid and warm" map type, i would be surprised if there was more than 3 non-desert, non-mountain tiles outside of the viewing range. The river there means that the desert would be floodplains, giving a nice early food boost, with mining the hill to the north an after-priority.
As far as exploring goes, I'm going to go S, then W onto the mountain. If there's just plains on the other side of the river, i'll go with the start position to settle, if it's floodplains, i'm moving SE.
I haven't seen much discussion about where the watermasses might be, however there's a remote possibility that on the other side of those mountains is a body of water(one of the tiles
kind of looks like it could be coast) but it's highly doubtful that we're within 10 tiles of anything other than a one-tile lake.
Exploring will determine the direction of settling, giving priority to floodplains with mountains/hills nearby, one/two tile lakes, and any grassland available(which is probably less than .1% of the whole map)
There is
most definitely plains to the N-N-NE square. Either that or
desert but if there's another river it's bound to be in that area.
So, build should go something like: Warrior, Scout, ???
Scout will go S then W.
Settler will choose based on Scout's revealings.
Worker will road goats if it's plains south of the river, or the start position if it's floodplains. If the settler moves SE, the worker will then irrigate the start tile and then go over to the floodplains to road & irrigate one or two tiles, then move up to road/mine the goats, by building a road on the other side of the river. Add'l warriors may need to be built depending on what the scout finds. If I remember correctly, when a scout pops a hut, it cant' be angry barbs. Or maybe that's just on lower levels. Perhaps building a warrior just to protect the worker. More workers won't come out until I need them, perhaps by the third or fourth city(if i find coast i'll settle on it immediately) or if I find a resource/luxury.
Not quite sure where my tech will take me, it doesn't look like a builder strategy will get high marks here, although finding a coast square early means i'll probably go for bronze working & the colossus, otherwise I'll probably go for Lit after I make a few contacts and start to build up a sizeable defense force. Note I said
defense force I'm not planning on much rolling out of the units even after the UU becomes available, at least until I can roll out a new gov't because gold will probably be rampantly abundant.
Large areas of deserts means probably lots of oil, I'll try to get some "border-blockers" up on the deserts and kick out opposing settlers if they try to come in. Although the deserts are probably too large to completely block off with cities, but i've always wanted to try a warrior wall
The start of college means less time to play this month(From the time i download until 9 pm on the 2nd, then weekends only until thanksgiving) so a fast victory would make me more likely to finish, but culture seems like it might work out too. A 20k seems unlikely, so I'm going to squeeze settlers out of every city whenever size 4 or above, and put temples in each(hopefully i can get monarchy soon so i can start gold-rushing) to fill in border gaps. If i come into contact with another civ early enough, and he/she looks weak, i might go for a quick destructo-civ and sack an early capital.
Looks to be one of the more interesting games. I forget which vanilla civ is religious/commercial(i
think they're commercial, i haven't heard it said anywhere though)..can someone remind me? But i'll load up a game with the same map settings and play a few dozen early games to get a feel for what kind of victory/minimal loss strategy to go for.
.
Scouts don't get barbs from huts, it's one of the benefits of Expansionist. Don't know what I was thinking... 
