What other ideas/approaches do people have for this deity game, beyond the settling location?
On Deity, there are a number of important factors to keep in mind:
A] AIs can be fast to connect Strategic Resources. If an AI starts to get multiple types of Military Units, it will be more inclined to pick a fight. Playing to survive with just Warriors until 1 AD is generally a great way to get declared upon by an AI who will crush you before 1000 BC.
B] The economy can kill you, often worse than the chance of being declared upon. Thus, you need to use every trick that you can come up with to try to keep the economy afloat. Examples include:
1. The Great Lighthouse can be one way, although it doesn't feel like the right play on this map. Don't half-attempt it. If you're going to go for it, go all-in. For most of the players, I'd recommend against it.
2. Settling Cities to share Resource squares and to be relatively close to each other, with some overlap. Of course, you need to balance this approach with settling further to earn more Resources within big, fat crosses. Cities being closer to each other reduce Maintenance. But, you can also risk an AI "Dagger" attack, where an AI sees that your Cities are close to each other and decides to backstab you with an early, unexpected attack, due to a bug where an AI was supposed to consider going to war when ITS Cities were too close to each other (presumably due to being too pressed for land into a cramped area), but the code actually checks whether OUR Cities are close to each other. Generally, you just ignore the risk of a "Dagger" attack, but know that it's there and thus do not get completely surprised if an early AI stack shows up your borders. Instead, you feel happy that settling relatively close to your capital reduces Maintenance Costs and helps you to get the first Trade Route connection up quickly, and you just live with this small risk that when playing on Deity, you can lose even if you "do everything correctly."
3. Prioritise building a Road to a neighbour who isn't Toku. Any other AI will generally be willing to Open Borders with you unless you have managed to anger them early (say, by adopting an opposing Religion), and you'll want to be able to get Foreign Trade Routes the moment that you can get Open Borders with an AI. The extra Commerce is going to be precious.
4. Choose a tech path with goals in mind, knowing that you cannot do it all. Forget Oracling ANYTHING--it is not about crying over "Ohhh, poor me, I could not Oracle Civil Service." It's more like "Oh, wow, I was halfway through Priesthood and the Oracle got completed." Get at least one Worker tech first (we have Hunting, but would need Fishing if settling by the Fish). Very strongly consider getting a second Worker tech (Agriculture, Animal Husbandry) if you settle by another Food Resource with your capital. After 1 or 2 Worker techs are in place: You can beeline The Wheel and Writing if you think that you can get Foreign Trade Routes up (you DID build Warriors to spawn-bust for your MULTIPLE Workers, right?). You can beeline Bronze Working if you plan to perform heavy Chopping, including Chopping a Worker as your first Chopping target. In this game, going for early Iron Working will stunt the economy, but as long as Copper or Iron are available and you are willing to Chop and Whip an early army, it can be a pretty decent play, since our Unique Unit is pretty solid. Another play could be to go for The Great Lighthouse and settle 3 Coastal Cities. A bit more risky play would be to beeline Alphabet, possibly even without going for Bronze Working, but if you spawn-bust well with Warriors and can survive until that time, it can pay off by allowing you to back-fill the techs that you missed.
C] Don't ignore the Barbs. Build more early Warriors than you would otherwise before starting on a Settler. Play like the AIs do: secure an area with your Warriors BEFORE sending a Settler there. Learn the spawn-busting rules: 2.5 squares of radius from the centre of any Unit's square cannot spawn a Barb. Putting it another way, 2 squares in any direction, including diagonally, away from the square where a Unit is located, cannot spawn a Barb. It's the same math; it's just how your brain wants to think about it. This fact includes AI Units and Barb Units acting as spawn-busters for new Barb Units (thus, keeping an AI Wolf alive will mean that no Barb Archer can spawn close to that Wolf). It does NOT include Cultural Borders. Cultural Borders only spawn-bust any area that is made VISIBLE, and any area that an AI's Cultural Borders exposes also cannot spawn a Barb. Thus, for example, if we are in the south-west and we put our capital a bit to the north-east, we'll want a Warrior in the south-west to prevent Barbs from spawning there. I would even very, very strongly consider ensuring that our Warrior stays in the south-west such that on Turn 5, it will be in an ideal spawn-busting location to keep that area spawn-busted. Assuming that we are in the south-west, the AIs will come to meet us and will help to spawn-bust the area to the north-east of wherever we place our capital, but we won't get much help spawn-busting land which we have mostly blocked off using our Cultural Borders.
D] Meet AIs slowly. If Hatshepsut is Hindu but you haven't met her, she can't ask you to Close Borders with Buddhist Isabella, and you won't incur a negative diplomatic penalty with one of the two of them. Once you or an AI gets Alphabet and you can hopefully make a trade or two, every AI whom you have met will pull out their bean-counters and will tabulate every tech that you received in trade. Your primary defence against this practice is to trade techs before meeting an AI, and thus that AI won't have started to use their abacus against you. If you have Gallic Warriors, and do not plan to build Horse Archers, seriously consider NOT taking Archery in trade. Seriously consider NOT taking Priesthood in trade. Don't get greedy! When later, some of the AIs will not trade Calendar or Civil Service to you because "You are becoming too advanced" because you thought that taking Archery in trade was a good idea, you'll regret having to self-tech a tech like Calendar instead of simply later self-teching Archery and getting Calendar in trade.
E] Reveal a path of Coast squares to an AI's City as a mid-term, early-game goal, after you've spawn-busted. Once you learn Sailing and either you or an AI knows Writing for Open Borders, you can open up Trade Routes via the coast. Doing so does require learning Sailing or else getting it in trade, but it can also be an alternative to building a Road, and can keep your Trade Routes open when unexpected things happen, such as a Barb City spawning on your Trade-Route Road or an AI whose City is on your Trade-Route Road declares war on you.
F] You don't have much Happiness. Try really hard to get at least 1 Happiness Resource. Being Charismatic helps; otherwise, I'd say to try really hard to get 2 Happiness Resources. If you can grow your Cities sufficiently, it can help to have a few G Riv Cottage squares. Food first, but if you can approach the Happiness cap, having riverside Cottages in place can help you to limp forward in the tech path. If you think that you might do so, getting Pottery might be an early goal to put on your tech path.
G] Do not build any Wonders. Seriously. Unless you are going to completely beeline the techs for your chosen Wonder, then beeline Bronze Working, and delay settling in favour of building more Chopping Workers (but, also remember to build spawn-busting Warriors), you're going to miss building it. That's on a regular Deity map. Even more so here, as there are 8 AIs. My advice is simply plan to build ZERO Wonders by 1 AD. Then, you won't miss out, and you can focus your tech path on achievable goals.
H] Once you have 3 Cities, and if you have not chosen to beeline Gallic Warriors and/or a Chariot rush, pick a City with some excess Food and complete a Library there. Hire 2 Scientists. It will be a painful wait, but an Academy in the capital can make a significant difference.
I] If you research Bronze Working, use Whipping and Chopping. Use both of them heavily. The only exception is a pure Alphabet beeline, and thus use those things heavily after you get Bronze Working in trade.
J] Keep your Traits in mind. We have two militaristic Traits. If we don't go to war with Gallic Warriors, we'd at least want to build some to deter an AI from attacking until we can upgrade our Gallic Warriors to Macemen and then attack with Guerilla III Macemen and Catapults. Other than some extra Happiness, our Traits really only help out in combat.
K] When attacking a City, a good rule of thumb is to have 3 Units for every defender plus 1. 3 defending Units? We'd better have at least 10 attacking Units. But, the AIs Whip a ton of defenders. Thus, it is NOT how many Units you see, but how many Units that you predict the AI being able to stuff into that City by the time that you can arrive at the City's gates. If you already see 3 defenders, you'll need even more than 10 attacking Units by the time that you can arrive at the City's gates. Here, we have one very strong advantage: a large stack of Gallic Warriors can pretend to go for one City, waiting for the AI to send defenders from other Cities to this City. We can pick off the Units in the fields that walk from other Cities to this City. Then, we can use Hills squares to quickly move across of the map to attack another City which the AI has left less-well-defended. The AI has a weakness here, as it does not calculate Guerilla II movement through Hills when figuring out where to defend its Cities. Exploit that weakness liberally.
. In the spirit of Christmas, I would say that we forgive your lateness 
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