This game was a difficult one, thanks for the challenging map!!
After seeing no better space to settle, I moved my settler to the cotton surrounded by the river and founded Mecca there. It was a very nice place and I eventually got a great production... but during my game I constantly lacked gold although I had enough resources to trade.
Although there were a lot of ruins to discover, none of them gave me culture which was a bit of a setback. On the other hand I did find the 500 gold bonus before the aztecs. I decided to use it to make an ally out of florence. Then I could save some more gold for a library and build National College before the second city.
By turn 50 I was very happy with the game, having the NC, a second city (on the north coast) and some more things I wanted, but found I was on an island alone with the Aztecs, without iron and my military was 2 warriors and a scout. I wanted to go overseas, but my two warriors were eaten by barb boats and then Montezuma declared on me... about 5 turns before the first research agreement was finished!

To make matters worse, I missed on the Oracle by 4 turns!!

So I found that this was not going to be a fast finish and almost decided to start over.
But I just went along with it: made peace with Monty when he was getting close with 6 or 7 of his UU warriors (cost me a lot of gold, but that was still better then the capitol!). Meanwhile I had also bought a trireme which found the Greeks. But there was more to find... Unfortunately science was not going as fast as I wanted and it was very late that I could start sailing the oceans. By that time someone else circumvated the globe without even finding me! I found that I was luckily keeping up with science, but because I was limited to my 2 cities, I was lacking everything else. I sold resources, allied all culture city states, started with research agreements and was able to finish by turn 324.
In the meantime none of the three research agreements I made with the Aztecs matured: each time he declared on me! He even declared a fourth time when I didn't even botter anymore to sign a RA with him... The second time I allied a military city state and build some units but was not able to capture anything. The third war gave me 2 cities and the fourth gave me his capital. Peace was signed 10 turns before the end of the game because I didn't want to spend the time capturing his cities. He also game me the cities I could capture in that time.
Another challenge was allying the city states. France was definately going for a culture win keeping up with me until we each had about 15 policies, then he slowed down. Probably because of the wars on the big continent. They were the reason I was able to win: all money was invested in various wars. When not at war especially Egypt kept buying away city states. He was going for the diplomatic win and had some good cards!! Luckily he bought city states where he could and not just mine so I could keep the culture, eventually.
Oh, and strangely enough, no one was conquered. But Almaty was doing a good job in the end taking Roman cities. He was 'a bit' backwards, but other players didn't bother going for his lands. I believe they would all have been able to, but too busy with each other.
I liked the game because I had to change my plans to match the challenges in the map. Unfortunately I was unlucky in some places, but all in all it went well and I managed to win.
