We gotta get off this rock. Soon. Ideally, we'd find out what was beyond Bizzy, too, over past what we can see.
As I recall (this is from memory and I'm doing a few games, so it could be wrong), he has a spice source, which we definitely want as a second luxury. But no hurry on that at all, I'm thinking. Use him to decrease research costs/trade techs for a bit. Maybe even introduce him at some point to get a bit more $$$????
Granaries? Definitely! With our food shortage, they're pretty critical. I'd get one in Osaka ASAP and try to get a settler out of there to be timed with the construction of our first ship, so we can cross the water near us and start settling more islands.
I would be willing to go pretty close to completely broke to hurry map-making as much as possible. Settling islands is almost always easier than capturing them.
Arathorn
As I recall (this is from memory and I'm doing a few games, so it could be wrong), he has a spice source, which we definitely want as a second luxury. But no hurry on that at all, I'm thinking. Use him to decrease research costs/trade techs for a bit. Maybe even introduce him at some point to get a bit more $$$????
Granaries? Definitely! With our food shortage, they're pretty critical. I'd get one in Osaka ASAP and try to get a settler out of there to be timed with the construction of our first ship, so we can cross the water near us and start settling more islands.
I would be willing to go pretty close to completely broke to hurry map-making as much as possible. Settling islands is almost always easier than capturing them.
Arathorn
We'll see though.
2 turns later, we have captured a worker, taken Leipzig, and killed a German horsie before it can counter-attack. Our forces continue north into the hinterlands of Germany, and eventually auto-raze Hamburg. All told we've killed several German archers and spears in exchange 3 of our own, but most of our remaining ones are now elite; 
unfortunately, no leader emerged. 
Germany's left with 1 pitiful city, Konigsberg, which is at size 1 and has just built an archer so won't be building anything else anytime soon. We have an elite spear next to Konigsberg keeping an eye on it; the rest of our forces are either resting up outside German territory or are moving north to investigate a barb camp which has been sending out horsies recently.
They each are the same size as us, with better lands and better cities, and they haven't had to go to war to get it! They even have a little expansion room left; if we hurry we might grab some but any cities we build on their islands will probably be hopelessly corrupted. We trade our world map and contact with the soon-to-be-extinct Germans (won't help them anyway since Germany doesn't have any tech) for their world maps. I spot Persia's boundaries way in the west, so I start our Galley south around the edge of the Zulu continent to get over there and grab contact. 
I started on Republic, but it was going to take 32 turns at 70% science, so I dropped research to 10%. Republic in 39, and our treasury is growing by 13 a turn.
Should we still be going for conquest win? I don't think it will happen quickly at all considering what we've got to work with; it is entirely possible that we might be able to get a better score by drawing the game out. From a game enjoyment perspective, however, I would still prefer a (relatively) early conquest win; it would probably be a lot more challenging, for one thing. I just don't think it's likely to really be all that early, unless we take a second gamble on war and win again. And, the odds are riskier this time that we can pull it off without stunting our own development too much. There are several vital city improvements that will be researched over the next little while, and we can ill afford to delay building them for very long. A limited war to get us a secure FP site might be possible, but still has all the risks of potentially starting something we can't stop; factor in war weariness and soured relations with the target civ to boot, and our course becomes real murky. 
