I have soloed as every nation, and there are many different tactics. My Roman solo came from attacking Greece immediately, My game as Carthage ran through Egypt, As Persia I made a great alliance with Greece to destroy Egypt (and then betrayed him...)

your first post I've ultimately denied.

I think map-wise it's not that dissimilar to standard, with some tweaks. What is different is that you only have five players with a similar amount of territory. That makes it significantly less diplomatically complicated even in gunboat games, let alone press enabled games.

It takes a poor player to do poorly as Persia. Carthage is the most fun to play, and my favorite solo came when I was Carthage and convinced Rome (JamesYanik, actually) to let me have 3 of the Centers between us, so I had a fleet floating around in the west until Persia and I killed off Egypt, then I unilaterally invaded Rome and eventually stabbed Persia by convoying to Crete with double support. Then my win was inevitable. Persia is by far the strongest and easiest country to play. It's kind of a corner and is near enough Centers to grow fast. Working with Egypt gets you very far. Greece is the worst. The actual worst. Egypt does well when he gets pretty good focus on Africa, which is why an alliance with Persia is a good idea for Egypt. Rome is eh. Not as horrible as Greece, but not quite as good as Carthage or Egypt (and by default not as good as Persia).
Why should Greece fight Egypt? Shouldn't. No. The trick to this map is not to go to war with a country that isn't adjacent to you. Greece needs to choose between Rome or Persia. If they agree to kill you (which is actually favorable for both of them), you're screwed.
Why should Carthage fight Egypt? Because it makes growth a LOT easier and faster. A fight between the two of them is a great idea for both of them. Africa is easy to control and defend, and if they can convince either of them to turn their head, that's practically a win. That includes if the country is caught by surprise and then turns back to fight you. They're still super easy to root out.
Why should Rome fight Greece? Because getting units to Carthage takes much longer and expends yourself too far. And fighting Greece will eventually put Rome in a position to defend against the inevitable Persian solo attempt. (But then Persia stabs Egypt and solos easy since he has a grip on Anatolia and possibly quite a few parts of Greece.)

It has a slight advantage in most of the game you only have 2 opponents compared to the regular map where you can face 3 in the first year. It's harder to get wiped out quickly.

That's still 50% of the other players uniting against you though, so not *that* different. :-)

It has some neat tactical applications, but the time it takes for Carthage to build fleets to attack Rome basically forces Carthage to attack Egypt first. The same is true of Rome, which sends it toward Greece. Persia gets to pick its first meal, confident in the knowledge that its partner-in-crime will promptly turn on the other Western Mediterranean power, now that it has the resources for fleets, and then gets to cannibalize whichever one it didn't eat first.

The geography is just too determinate. Rome and Carthage need to be able to fight one another more easily.

^ But Archer says Rome *always* fights Carthage.

I don't think the geography is anywhere as determinate as all that. I agree with TrPrado though, it is a five country ring - attacking non neighbours *is* hard, at least until you've eliminated one neighbour.

Oh. Well, that's just not true, in my experience at least. Shrug.