Heliopolis has been my gambit for this game. Thebes provided the settler and the galley came from Memphis (hence Memphis' location, otherwise your spot is better). Tech path : Fishing, Mining, Sailing, BW, Pottery, Writing.
I hoped to block a luxurious peninsula with this settler but could only get the single city. Another benefit of this grab is that it opens different neighbours than Joao for a first war. So it adds flexibility in the diplo.
Still, stealing Corn+Bananas make it, imho, a strong move. City provided the GS for Thebes' Academy and will raise the 2nd GS as well (to bulb into Education).
This can make it clearer as to how this map is a hard one.
It's got to do with the lack of good city spots. Especially for cities n° 2 & 3.
Your Memphis blocks some land from Joao but that land is all brown and resource poor. There's not even a river for free commerce.
I think that's worth noting.
A poor city 2 sets one back by a lot.
I think your city 2 has been a drain, rather than a help. If I had settled in this area, I'd have tried to at least steal a food source from Joao (the dry Rice ? I'm quite sure the pigs are out of the equation). But even that isn't very good and would make it hard to raise the commerce output.
Otoh, the trouble with settling city 2 north, in a corner, is that it forgoes a lot of land. One is accepting from very early on to let Joao set up his block. But the tiles in the north are better and can actually help with commerce.
Hence the galley, I guess. Galley reduces the risk of getting stuck to 3 cities after not expanding west.
The early galley, I'll mention it again, also finds its use on the way back, since it allows to prioritize settling multiple food island cities, rather than single food brown land cities.
Settling any double food city 10 or 15 turns earlier is something to try for.
So, if at t100 my cities look better developed, it's not necessarily due to better city management.
It may rather be due to settling stronger cities and going sideways, finding back alleys to do so.
A game played and constricted to our starting peninsula would be very hard to win.
Whatever the point of the game one would choose to try and break out, it would require full commitment (War Elephants, Maces or draft Rifles could be options ; I'd probably try for the Globe Theatre + Draft rifles and run the risk of getting irremediably out-teched).
State of my game at 1 AD :
Land looks fine, although there aren't many land tiles and some AIs are huge :
Tech race is close :
0 wonders, there. I don't have a very elaborate opinion on the GLH. Wonder is good but costs a lot. It's hard to tell whether the wonder or the earlier cities or are better.
You ask about a War Elephants breakout and I have an opinion on that, however.
In short : I'd much rather use Swordsmen (trading for IW) or Macemen (trading for MC or Machinery) than War Elephants (researching HBR and Construction).
The beaker investment to go for WEs is huge, at a time one could aim for Currency and Civil Service. Researching Machinery after CS looks a lot more reasonable to me.
Many players don't have the same opinion on the subject and swear WEs are the best unit before Cuirassiers.
I think that they die too much (accessing Combat promo only) and delay research too much (self tech Construction, can you then trade it ?). I'm fine with researching HBR but Construction is a tech I'd much rather trade for.
Trouble with Elephult is that Construction unlocks both units you want to spam.
On the other hand, Swordsmen require 0 tech investment. Macemen likely require Machinery.
Machinery is an expensive tech but it comes at a time when your Empire is much better developed, compared with Construction. What you're delaying with Machinery isn't Currency + Civil Service but Education only.
Say you're going to bulb into Education and your GPs are not ready, is it a big loss to sidetrack for Machinery ? Not necessarily so.
Finally, Macemen and Swords don't die as much as WEs, because they can get huge bonuses off the City Raider promo.
So WEs... run the risk to tank your tech rate and have you fall behind in the tech race, or even disappear from the tech trading game.
Also, they're not good enough units to justify the commitment and come at an unfavourable stage of the game.
If you want them early enough, you're limiting yourself to 5 or less cities (with this land ??? can one actually get them "early enough" ???) and then you're whipping your few cities for super expensive 60 hammers items... and you need Catapults on top... and melee against Spearmen ?? And maybe you've built Stables, and Barracks ??
WEs can run into tough counter units, too : Spears, of course, but also Longbows, which can be active from very early on.
Take Maces for a comparison. They're available shortly after WEs but the only hard counter unit is the Crossbow. It's a lot easier to play around that, be it by choosing the war target or by mixing units in one's own stack (a couple of Longbows are fine).
With Maces and siege, you can actually control your losses and, therefore, your tech pace, and remain in the race.
Taking down a single neighbour is no good if the cost is too high and other AIs runaway.
Again, other players would have different opinions on this matter.
Just take this post for what it is, my opinion.
I put the second city (Memphis) to 1E to Lagos, to block Joao and to get that stone. Then I got the Great Lighthouse and settled the same Island cities (and even went further settling city on 1 tile island which cost me 10 gpt 
). Another city was on the right stone.
