It's been a while since I updated. The game slowed down a little due to real life intervening, we only played 6 turns since the last update. The current situation is that Ilios is leveraging his imperialistic nature, and pulling away from everyone. I'm keeping up somewhat, everyone else is far behind
My empire currently looks like this
The NW
The south
The east, including my first island city
With the founding of Sheffield and St. Albans, I'm only 1 city behind Ilios - but his cities are founded earlier, so I'm not actually very close to him
My access to islands is what gives me a chance in this game. Ilios is in the middle of the map, with Whosit and Dhalpir; Gazglum and I are on a peninsula, with a narrow(ish) landbridge connecting it to the rest of the continent. I believe I have a reasonably safe border with Ilios
Thanks to peaks and lakes, ways to approach my border from the west are limited. I have only 2 cities on this border, both on hills, with borders expanded at least once (Ely's borders expanded this turn), so I have sufficient visibility on any possible attack from that side. Ilios's empire is spread across the whole continent, so he's the only one who can actually approach me. Because of geography, he's much more likely to fight Whosit or Dhalpir than me
All this means that the way this game is playing out, the most likely outcome is that I will fight Gazglum, hopefully eliminate him, and settle our peninsula and eastern islands. Ilios will fight Whosit and Dhalpir, possibly eliminate them, and claim the rest of the continent. Then it will be a grand showdown between us at a later point. Of course, assuming I can keep up in expansion to be sufficiently competitive with him
The plan for Gazglum currently is to attack him with Elephants and Catapults. I will finish Monarchy research shortly, and will start on Construction. Maybe Currency first - my economy is still in a reasonable shape, and could be improved if I start working Merchants, but if I continue expanding far off to the islands, Currency will become necessary. Also, doubling up intercontinental trade routes would be helpful. Not sure yet, will decide once I get there. But the current inclination is to go Construction first - I would prefer to get rid of the threat in the south sooner rather than later