In the past, I've experimented with turning a standard multiplayer game into a hotseat game, but it doesn't work. So unfortunately, there's no alternative way of starting a game.

However, you should be able to get through your initial turns fairly quickly if you go to your settings in the desktop app and turn off automatic Civ closing. That way, you can just hop back to the main menu after you take your turn and not have to restart Civ every time.

Thank you. That is actually large improvement. Good luck with all of your development!

I was thinking of using the Vacation Mode to speed up the early game.
1) every players take their turn 1 to settle and start research
2) every players except the Host turn Vacation Mode ON
3) In theory GMR should let the AI process the turn of all other players before returning the file to the Host.
4) The Host process his turn manually and save (slight advantage)
5) after 6 or 7 turns the players can revert to manual processing or let their Vacation Mode on longer if they trust the AI

This way the game should help have a more interesting play within a short time.
Any reason why it wouldn't work?

That sounds like a decent option. Wouldn't the AI change what you're building though?

Unfortunately, GMR may actually prevent that from happening. It's built in as a safeguard, because once all players but one are AI, Civilization will treat the save file like a single player game, rather than hot seat. This means that it'll never display the hot seat screen after you finish your turn. Instead, it just processes everyone else's turns then starts you on your next one. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be unintended behavior, so we have safeguards to try and prevent it from happening.

Could it be done with just two people?

Ok then.. I'll have a 12 player GMR game where:
- 10 players are on Vacation Mode
- the Host and one other player are live and online at the same time.
- process the turns alternating between these 2 players and the 10 AIs for 10 turns. Since we are both online we can download/upload the saves rather quickly.
- Then ask the rest of the players to cancel their vacations and proceed with an advanced game.

This sounds great. What would the AI end up making?