I havent played very many games but from my experience
whatever the Civ that is BOTH schientific and religios is very good since it makes temples and cathedrals for happy ppl and culutre are cheap,
universitys are cheap for easyer tech advances(and culture)
The Iroqui and japs have good UU pretty early they could
give you an edge in the fairly early game.
almost no civs will attack you very early.
at the begining just pump out settlers and spearmen, and a few workers.
build citys like mad till you take up a decent amount of land or all the land
of good quality in the area.
build your first few citys close to your capitol
(its ok if they share some squares it will be a LONG time before
and of your citys could use all its squares anyway and in the meentime
they extra gold and shields from such low corruption in those citys will
help a lot.
Often things that you are building can be rushed for less than 100 gold
if they have about 3 turns to go.
dont rush projects on the turn you start them.
build a few barecks in your developed citys in the center of your
empire build lots of defence units there and ship them out to new citys
that will save time building def troops (and untrained troops at that)
at yer new citys so you can start right away with improvments.
Be nice to your neibors and trade with them often even if its just territory maps.
They will be less likely to attack if they have frequent contact and economic trade with you.
Play with barbariens set to a low ferocity till ya get the hang of things.
I could go on but there are some tips that might help with the things you
are having trouble with.
PS i basicaly didnt edit this at all im sure it has many typos
