Grassland start with no hills and 1 resource

[Leveler]

How do you play on starts like that? That's WB screenshot, so there is no hidden resources. I once tried to play a map like that, but I was falling back in techs and size really fast. Is start like that even possible to win on monarch?

Should I farm for whipping or spam cottages? Should I chop forests for the first settler?

 

[Elandal]

First of all, there are five resources, not one: corn (irrigated automatically with CS), banana (calendar), two sugars (calendar), spice (calendar). I can't recall a single start with just one resource, up to Monarch (haven't played above that).

The hardest starts for me are those that are food-limited. That is, my best food is eg. plains cow, and farmed riverside grassland (without resource). In those cases getting the city to grow is a real pain.

Second hardest is the one without production, which is what you have here.
If the banana or sugar would be riverside, it could be farmed pre-calendar (plantated with calendar) and would be a strong food tile. Unfortunatelly that's not the case
I guess the best you can do is farm the corn and start whipping. Try to find a city site with good production ASAP, and whip until your hands bleed in Istanbul. When you have two other cities, start turning Istanbul into a commerce monster - it can become strong in that - and delegate further expansion to the two new cities. With just four forests, I would be wary of chopping them early. They could go a long way towards Great Library, although trying to build GL with that little production would still be hard. I guess whip-overflow is almost the only way to get it done.

 

[Galileo44]

Great start. Whip out settlers+ worker +escorts and cottage spam. Your capital will be a science beast with an academy + Bureaucracy.

 

[JoeBlade]

That's one fantastic GP farm if you ask me. My advice would be: farm every single tile (except for those calendar resources, of course) and alternate between whipping buildings and churning out workers/settlers. Heck, I doubt you'll have to build the latter anywhere else with such a monster in place.
Building (or rather, whip) anything that allows production of specialists: library, temples, forge, etc. Assign as many of those specialists as you can. Don't forget to throw in a granery to quickly grow back your whipped pops.

Oh, and DON'T touch those trees. There's a fair chance you'll have to rely on them for hammers for the time to come, plus that city will run into health problems at some point and they'll definitely help then.

You'll have to look for a city with some hills next though, no doubt there. And I wouldn't persue early wonders unless you can found a substantial production centre soon (preferrably with an abundance of trees about)

But otherwise I think it's a very good start TBH.

 

[shadow2k]

I got tired every start looking very similar to that. That's why I tend to play Rocky maps now. Plenty of hills everywhere.

 

[harusame]

i'd say it's perfect for GP farm
lots food and 2 happiness

 

[notagoodname]

Normally 5 bonus resources makes for a nice capital but in this case, I'd actually start again.
Your only option to build any big buildings is to grow past the unhappy stage and then slave. It isn't much fun and getting wonders of any kind there is out of the question until much later in the game (no oxford or national epic until you can hit ~20 pop and slave ~10).