I'm fine with Ichabod onboard.
Good thinking of switching to Religion Mardoc, I hadn't thought of that.
Throwing non-Bronze Warriors at the enemy is indeed probably not going to work.
It has been shown that EiB Bronze Axemen are a force to be reckoned with, but I see a couple of problems with it.
1) We don't have Enchantment Mana for Enchant Blade
2) We don't have Collateral (do we really want to build Catapults, really?)
3) It's boring
I suggest we get the bare minimum essential techs, then go Archery -> Bowyers (1200 beakers).
We can easily pump out a dozen 5 xp Archers, which we'll upgrade cheaply to Firebows once Bowyers is in. Remember, Firebows come with Fireballs.
Let's keep our fingers crossed Beery goes for Runes and Arete, builds the Mines of Gal-Dur, and trades us his surplus Iron.
As for the second city, how about we move it one tile south, so it can borrow a floodplains of the capital? It will be horrible to defend, but will turn into our main Archer pump methinks.
Arete is looking good on this map, with all the hills.