I love faux-isolated starts.

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Have you guys ever had a start where you're on your own island, yet you can make contact with the other civs through coasts?

I love this kind of start so so much. You get the benefits of isolation, tons of room to expand, no rush to expand, plenty of time to build the early wonders, less chance of being attacked. Yet you get all the benefits of not being isolated. Tech trades, resouce trades, and probably best of all, early overseas trade routes.

Probably the most important wonder in this start is the great lighthouse. Those 2 extra trade routes pretty much ensure you'll have the tech lead. I usually pick up the colossus too, if i have copper. There's no rush to astronomy with coastal trade routes, and almost all your cities will be coastal.

 

[Airefuego]

best is when you can reach them because of your expanded cultural borders, but they can't reach you

 

[bhavv]

This is my favorite kind of start. Gives me plenty of time to get my culture farm set up

I have never actually built the great lighthouse before, but I dont normally get a lot of coastal cities.

 

[Daedal]

Depends how big your home island is. Big island gives lots of barbarians (unless you get GW or turn them off). An island full of raging barbarians can really put a crimp in your style.

 

[Sib]

I had one of these in my latest game. Because I was the Dutch I was really excited about all my perfect coastal cities, but it turned out that the only person whose borders I could see were Monty's.
'OK,' I thought, 'that's fine, he should pick on whoever he shares his continent with'. But no, he built a couple of galleys, settled part of my island and within a few turns had declared war and ruined my amazingly cultural rich, but surprisingly poorly defended cities...

Bah. I'm still amazed he bothered to settle my island and declare on me, his home island is shared with Mansa Musa. :/

 

[CivMcNut]

I had one such start where I had to wipe out Hammurabi to have a big island to myself, for the longest time I thought I was really isolated, but once my borders popped on the conquered Babylon it revealed I had neighbors right across the water. It was a strange map, there was no true ocean just a lot of land masses that got pretty close together in the middle. Made for some early global trading.

 

[LuckyAC]

Yeah, that's definitely the easiest start. My last game was like that and I got an easy immortal domination, my first at normal speed. The main problem for me is early game, since I get cut off by their quick expansion and I am not a big rusher. This allows leisurely expansion while not getting out-teched by a trading bloc like true isolation.

 

[Xurr]

Depends how big your home island is. Big island gives lots of barbarians (unless you get GW or turn them off). An island full of raging barbarians can really put a crimp in your style.

Meh, all you need is a few axemen and you have a nice exp farm for your units.

 

[Bleys]

Try the January Lonely Hearts, with Hannibal. Its an isolated start, but you can contact other civs with a coastal city in the right spot once you pop some borders.

But I have really found a new love for the GLH and Colossus. With FIN, its almost unstoppable, add a lighthouse and all water tiles become as good as Villages without having to wait a bunch of turns to mature. At the point in the game you get these wonders, they are truly huge.

When and if I decide to start playing Immortal level games, Hannibal or Willem on a smallish continent is going to be my "choice of map", and I am going to get the GLH if I have to chop every forest near me to do it, LOL.