First thing of note is that the starting warrior in the regular immortal save is in the location shown in the picture in the OP, but in the other save it is not in the same location which could potentially influence the opening. I remember reading about how to edit WB saves to avoid the teleporting starting units, but that's been so long now that i can't remember.
The only move i was considering at all was 1S onto the suspicious unforested tile. I suspected this was a resource so i didn't really want to do that unless the warrior revealed something really nice to the south. I moved him 1S onto the PH which revealed corn to the south and pigs to the SE, but not close enough to get with the capitol. Later cities perhaps. I SIP, started a worker, and picked Hunting as the first tech since the Corn and the Ivory are the only tiles that can be improved without BW here. Techs after Hunting were Mining > BW.
It was evident really early that the map would be cramped as i made contact with 3 other civs by T5, and all 6 by T12. This typically means two things. 1) Barbs likely won't be much of an issue, and 2) need to grab the good city spots as quickly as possible.
I finished BW on T28 and had a nice 2nd city spot picked out with pigs, copper, a FP, and shared ivory with capitol. Next tech will be AH for the pigs and there are also a couple of potential grass cow city sites available. Since i have Ag and Hunting i get a 20% research bonus on AH which is nice too.
Turn 39 i have my 2nd settler due in 1T and I'm eyeing a grass cow gems site to the NW that will help block Hannibal a little bit. There are horses there too, but in a bit of an awkward spot. I'd have to settle them 2nd ring and i would be settling slightly further away than i really want to. Also no guarantee that Hannibal wouldn't steal them. I don't think horses are really necessary with copper and ivory so i pass. Planned city location is 1NW of the cows. Also started a warrior in Bursa which will become a spear as soon as copper is connected. Emergency barb defense or something...
I very narrowly beat Hannibal to the spot. Even if i had wanted to go for the horses it would've been too risky at this point. Also teching Pottery with Writing likely to follow.
T47 I'm trying to consolidate a little bit before settling another city or two. Konya started a worker at S1 since it only has the cow tile for now and growing wouldn't be as beneficial as getting a 3rd worker. Axe and spear are almost ready in case i need them. Teching towards Writing which is always an important tech for Philo civs.
T63 I've settled the corn + fish site to the south although i may not have Fishing for quite awhile if i pursue the Engineering bulb strategy. For anyone not particularly familiar with this strat, you need a leader that doesn't start with Fishing (and then avoid tech or trading for it obviously) as this will prevent your great scientists from bulbing the entire Sailing > Calendar > Compass > Optics line. You still need to tech or trade for Alpha, Math, and Aesthetics, but once you have those the MC > Machinery > Engineering line is open to GS bulbs. A GS will fully bulb Machinery and will likely get you around 1T from Engineering depending on the pop of your empire, difficulty level and such. It's possible it might bulb it outright on lower levels.
Anyway, I'm working on a couple of libraries and planning to use Gazianterp to help grow some cottages for the time being. I've settled my 5th city to the east to grab corn + gems. Also kind of unfortunate that the potential pigs + horses + gold site to the NE got a barb city. I had a spear in the area for quite some time, but i was guarding my 5th city site and didn't get quite far enough out to prevent the barb city up there. If one really wanted that city site it would've absolutely been possible to prevent the barb city there and grab it.
At this point in the game i was also having a hard time deciding what to tech. Do i go for Math > Construction for elepult or do i go for the Engineering bulb strat? If i do go for that strat should i try to trade for Alpha or just tech it myself since i kinda need to know where the iron is as soon as possible and i also have 2 nice gems with jungle on them I'd like to get online. Trebs are great and all, but I'd much rather have xbows + trebs than axes + trebs.
T76 and Genghis is plotting war. I haven't done a ton of exploration yet so I'm operating under the assumption that he's on a bit of a peninsula over there and I'm his only land target. I have to assume he's plotting on me. I open and close the dialogue with him a few times until i see "Fear my Swordsman!" I may be mistaken, but my interpretation of this was that he didn't have Keshiks and i also hadn't seen a Keshik yet, so i started building some axes to prepare for the impending DOW.
It came shortly after that, but his stack wasn't very impressive with just 2 swords, 2 axes, and 2 spears. I had 5 axes and a warrior in my hilled capitol and he was actually afraid to attack it and kept moving back and forth. I finally moved 1 axe out and he suicided everything. The hammers i have in the spear in the capitol were basically a mistake. I put a turn into the spear when i first saw him plotting assuming he would have keshiks and it wasn't until the next turn i thought to check dialogue with him to see what he really had.
Also you could see in the previous screenie that i was teching Math. I decided to kind of hedge my bets and go for Math as that would allow the Elepult rush or maybe a trade for Alpha if i got lucky which would put me on a pretty good path for the Engineering bulb. Eventually i did get the Alpha trade with Cathy and that also allowed me to pick up IW shortly thereafter. Iron turned out to be accessible to the north, but very close to Hannibal.
I got Machinery in 375 BC and settled the iron city in 250 BC 1N of the iron. I made at least 1 mistake here, probably two. I should've had the iron settled earlier so i could start on xbows immediately, and i probably should've just settled directly on the iron to provide the resource faster and also remove the chance of revolt in that city. Grass iron is a nice tile, but the benefits of working it would've been outweighed by the benefits settling directly on the iron would've provided in the meta game.
I don't remember if i actually teched HBR next. I was thinking about doing it to get some phants going. Pretty sure i only had 1 scientist in Bursa there briefly too which is why it looked like 12T for Engineering when it was actually about 6T.
Edit: Had to go back and find a save game to see what was going on as it's been too long since i played the game to remember. I already had 2 GS from Istanbul and the one in Bursa was the 3rd that i would use later. HBR was just a placeholder, i didn't actually get it until later. I was waiting to finish Construction before i could bulb Engineering. I think i delayed to see if i might be able to pick it up in a trade at some point, but i was not. I ended up self-teching just about everything in this game.
Anyway, part 2 when i have some more time.
I'm not going to go into the details; but here's a spoiler:
Imperialistic makes these gifts so much cheaper.
