Well, crap. I have to confess it looks like I may be losing this one
I usually play a tall civ with tradition/honor, going on offensive around middle ages after both those trees are about filled. So I thought I'd do something different outside my comfort zone this time, and since this is "only" King difficulty I can fool around a bit... Went liberty and still did a couple wonders, blew off some money at the citystates...
Things were going relatively well, and I was focusing on the topside technologies, figured I'd go astronomy soon to explore the map, which was looking fun. Certainly much more fractal than usual continents maps. Only after building my first caravel I noticed that unlike maps so far, this one actually had large, worthwhile islands within coastal reach.
Alexander had been doing quite well, he took a city from Arabia, and at least two from Ottomans, and not long ago made peace with both. He's clearly the score leader. I was just finished with education when I got backstabbed by Alexander. This wasn't that unexpected, I had just built Boston just west of Budabest, to claim the Ivory and Dye, and was relatively confident in its defense as Budapest, my ally, had the flank.
Here's the thing: Alexander bloody bought Budapest off of me just as he did his backstab! On the first turn of the war, Budapest slaughtered my catapult and archer, set there in anticipation for the attack, from the rear! Meanwhile Alexander did the anticipated frontal attack. Boston was promptly surrounded by pikes and the lone catapult couldn't keep it for long, even with the pioneer fort.
My forces are now securely holding New York just west of that little lake west of the start. But the situation seems stalemated. Taking Budapest is hard, due to two hills just so on the north side shielding it from bombards from my direction, and Alexander holds a very wide front from my northwest to southwest.
In retrospect, my biggest mistake was not exploring the islands, and settle to the free space, instead going towards the middle were everyone else was. Another was not playing either tall or wide, going liberty but still not able to avoid my old habit of wonder-building. Now I'm stuck with a tall empire with neither Tradition for all the perks nor Professional Army to pay for the war.
I guess I'm going to hold the line in the war, and only now, in the later middle ages, go settle islands. This should prove to be interesting...