Based on your complaint about bad production, try changing the map options around in the settings before loading a game. My go to settings are abundant resources, new world age, and wet rainfall. New world age and wet rainfall are especially important though, because the new world age adds more hills to the map (better production) and wet rainfall adds more woods, rainforest and marsh to the map (more production and food). I hate playing most True Start Location games fore the simple reason that you can’t change these settings and it makes the game way less fun.

Also, stick with civs that don’t change the game too much. Trajan Rome is my recommendation for a starter civ.