Hi there. It looks you might be struggling a bit in this game especially because Portugal was able to found the city of Braga in that spot. It would have been important to keep watch over the spot to ensure no settler comes there.
If you could arrange a joint war together with Ethiopia against Portugal, and raze that city to replace with your own, it would be good, I bet that is your thought too. Try to arrange a war between them, one way or another. Hopefully Denmark will keep Polynesia and Venice in check so that they don't cause you too much trouble before you are ready to handle wars from more fronts.
Putting some ideas here...
An idea is to found a city to the left tile of the bison above Braga, and then use that city to launch the attack against Portugal, and after you raze/puppet Braga, to continue the attack against Ethiopia. It would be of great help to take 2 policies in Honor for the free great general, to spawn one more naturally and then to (maybe) get another one from Liberty finisher (this one increases cost). With no general you will be in danger so ideally you settle the city when you're close to having one. Did you attack any CS? If not you can consider attacking Kathmandu and staying at war, and try to farm xp for both land and sea units. Later if you have a privateer you can try to get some free ships too.
If you are friends with Maria you could get as many loans from her as possible, then ask her not to settle cities near you, and make a trade demand from her, make her upset so that she backstabs you first. Then, you can denounce her back before you declare war, I think this way you'll get less hate for going at war. It's vital to not let your sea improvements get pillaged so you'll need at least one trireme for each side to block the way, until astronomy you'll be safe.
If you wanna try to dominate the world by sea, you could maybe also use Oxford university for Navigation. The problem is that I feel it will take too long with only 2 cities anyway so it might not be that strong unless you can buy 2-3 SOTL and 1 privateer quickly and maybe snipe Venice's capital with them, hopefully converting a few ships from them too. Venice usually has a few wonders built that might help. Colossus/Great Lighthouse would be nice. You might combine this approach with the foundation of 1 extra city somewhere close to Venice before the attack so that you take them out quicker (maybe the ships will require healing.)
If you want to backstab try to get the maximum effect by stealing as much gold as you can from them, for example if you have 300 gold and 10 gpt and your first target has 500 gold, you can get 255 from it, but if you buy GPT from another friend, you will be able to get more gold from your first target, and then take back your GPT and get your cash back from the other guy. when you have 4-5 friends it's usefull to get all their cash this way.
Over the course of the game try to get ally with Mbanza-Kongo as it gives Camel Archers. If you can get to chivalry fast and pay them 1000 gold, and then keep one of the spies there for each election, it could supply you with 4-5 Camel Archers until ~T200. I've had a few games where the Camel Archers received from a CS packed quite a punch just at the right moment. More importantly, this would provide a useful buffer zone for you in case Denmark or Polynesia will want to attack you, and also help vs Kathmandu if you decide to make them a permanent war CS. However there is some vulnerability inherent in this, in that if a civ decides to try a coup there and is successful, you lose your investment for nothing.
I hope you continue and keep us updated. Good luck
so it will be an awesome city for sure (possibly with even more WWs once I get there), either to turtle it out with crazy growth or keep going for the domination.
