4000 BC (0): We're on the river, and we're on the coast; anywhere I move our settler will give up one or the other of those. Peering under the fog I don't see a lot of potential for us to improve our starting food situation unless there's more grassland to our north. Should I sacrifice one worker-turn to move him on to the mountain so I can be certain I want to found where our settler stands? I figure the intel is worth it, if we can get a bonus food tile into play. The result -- more grass and some incense, but nothing worth losing coastal access for. Good to know; we found Rome right where we stand. Our city vision radius reveals a goody hut nearby! We set science to 100%, start researching Ceremonial Burial, and start building a warrior-scout. Ceremonial Burial is due in just 8 turns -- we have 4 trade already due to river access and being Commercial. Unfortunately, we are getting just 1 shield per turn.
3900 BC (2): Our worker starts irrigating an Ivory tile.
3700 BC (6): Our worker is done irrigating and starts a road. We swap our citizen from the closest grasslands tile to the Ivory tile to keep our 2 food per turn but get some extra production and trade.
3650 BC (7): Micro our research to save 2 gold. Next up is Pottery -- we need a Granary fast!
3600 BC (8): Our warrior is done & starts for the goody hut. We start a second warrior-scout, but might change depending on the goody hut contents. Science boosted back to 100%, Pottery in 7.
3550 BC (9): Next Good Tile in range is the other Ivory tile. Unfortunately, I have to irrigate (and road) a regular plains to get there, while if I stay by the river I can get 2 plains with one extra commerce each done sooner; moreover, I can only get 2 commerce out of the Ivory tile while in despotism anyway. Hmm, decisions. I decide to pop the goody hut first -- guess what, barbarians! How lucky for us, and there's absolutely NOTHING we can spend our gold on. Hmm, maybe our worker had better just stay where he is for the moment...
3500 BC (10): Our warrior fights off 2 barbs, losing 1 HP and promoting to veteran. We lose 12 gold as the last barb ransacks our capital. The people are so happy to be rid of their filthy lucre that we subsequently grow to size 2 and our culture radius expands.
I consider swapping to settler immediately, as we'll grow in 10 turns and a settler will be done in 13; with more irrigated plains online we'll actually be done the settler sooner than that, but probably not before we grow, so I go ahead with the settler build. Our worker moves via road to the other side of Rome in order to irrigate there next turn.
3400 BC (12): Oh look, another goody hut! Lets see what happens this time.
3350 BC (13): Great, a deserted village. How useful. Looking at F11, we're up against Egypt, English, Zulus, Iroquois, and Chinese, among others -- lots of expansionist civs getting good pops from huts -- and we're 9th in terms of population. A rocking start to be sure
but not much I can do about goody hut luck and not having any bonus food sources. Our river doesn't even go through the nearby desert, so there's no flood plains. I micro research on Pottery so we have 2 coins to rub together.
3300 BC (14): We finish Pottery and start Bronze Working (cheapest available tech, on the road to Iron Working = Legions) at max rate, due in 8. Our warrior has finished exploring the course of our short river (directly away from the closest coastline to its source, and through mountains to get to the other coast, go figure
) and starts heading north to try and find a decent spot to build a city...
3200 BC (16): Our scouting warrior spots a gold mountain and a grasslands cattle off to the west. Looks like a pretty good spot for a city!
3000 BC (20): We grow to size 3. An Egyptian warrior shows up across the strait from Rome. We make contact! Cleo's polite with us, but she won't trade us Masonry for anything but Alphabet, which is a bit of a deal for her (80 beakers for Alphabet to 64 for Masonry) so I pass for now; maybe we can make contact with someone else and lower the cost on Masonry a bit. Bronze Working is reduced by a turn to 1 turn, but not 1 gold cost, so we will need to finish it off ourselves.
2950 BC (21): Looks like encountering 1 opponent civ of 8 does not lower the research cost of a tech by very much; we can research Masonry in 12 turns or the Wheel in 13. Iron Working is at 20 turns, but if this map is anything like the previous RBD12 incarnation we won't be fighting anything other than barbs for quite a while yet, and spears should do for them. So instead, I pursue Writing to get us to Mapmaking at our earliest possible opportunity. We NEED harbours, and getting some exploring going to contact other civs and bust fog will be a great boost as well. We probably won't need more than 12 tiles to work for any city, since the game will be over before the Industrial age, but most of our food is going to come from the coast. I consider sending our settler over to the cattle/mountain, but further exploration has revealed that there's not much arable land over there either. Instead I send our settler along the coast to the NW, as there's a strip of grassland we can use for modest growth and a couple bonus grasslands to help production.
2550 BC (30): Not much happens; we found Veii on the coast and start building a warrior for barb defense; we could swap that to a worker or a granary as both are urgently needed, but right now we just have one warrior, and he's exploring, so we probably ought to have at least ONE more...
Rome is halfway through its granary, and I wouldn't even consider whipping since we can only get 20 shields now, plus we need the pop far more as a settler/worker. Writing is in 10 turns. Our worker has yet to move; it could move S to improve another tile for Rome, which it will be able to use shortly after the granary is done, or it could move N and start building a road toward Veii to improve some of the bonus grasslands there.
As far as defensive troops go, I'm perfectly happy to stick with warriors and concentrate on food-enhancing infrastructure. We will eventually be able to upgrade those warriors to Legions...
save file
I've put together a dot map in a sort of RBD13-esque fashion in order to try and get as much grassland as possible within our borders without having to build temples. Until we get a fair chunk of workers out there irrigating all those plains we are going to be really stuck for even break-even food, never mind rapid growth. Blue dot is our only city capable of more than 2 food surplus, and then only if it stays quite small. It should probably be designated as a worker factory as soon as it gets founded, which right now looks to be as soon as Rome can pump out a settler after the Granary is done. Pink dot is more of a long-term project; it's on a river for long-term growth past 6 but there's no arable land around at all without irrigation. It could move to the other side of the river but then it would have even fewer plains available.
In some ways this situation is even worse than RBD23 for food because, although we do have fresh water available, we have fewer grassland overall, we don't have cheap temples, and we can't whip anything for 39 shields, so we're going to take a lot longer to get quality tiles in our city radius and to get food-enhancing structures built. Of course, in the long run, the fact that we actually have available fresh water is a big improvement, but it will take us quite a while to realize that across our territory.
We'll pass. 
but I place a high priority on information, and frankly we can't do all that much with gold under despotism anyway. Egypt has 5 small cities, a lot of jungle (making their expansion pretty impressive; almost no good land), 3 sources of incence, and a mind-boggling 7 gems (!). Looks like they've got the world supply there... the whole thing is close enough to be pretty productive if conquered, or a good FP site. Egypt is probably the first target for conquest down the road. 
