I spent a few minutes with the save - a few constructive comments. This is on warlord level, so you definitely can still win it.
1. You have 10 cities and 7 workers. That's not enough - I'd double that. I often end up with 1.5-2 workers per city, especially if I'm expanding through military and stealing workers.
2. I counted I think a total of about 4-5 cottages in your entire empire - that's not enough, unless you're running specialists/caste in all cities. I'd suggest at warlord level you focus on cottages very early in the game. After hitting the worker techs, tech pottery and lay down nothing but cottages in one of your early cities.
3. As a corollary to #2, Karakorum, your capital, is working 3 unimproved tiles at size 11. You want to be working no unimproved tiles at all if possible. I'd suggest for that city to be a production powerhouse. You could chop the forests on the 2 food 1 hammer sites, and lay down farms, and build some mines on the hills. Fantastic production potential (although teching metal casting and building forges would be useful too).
4. You'll want to consider what civics you should run from early in the game. You're in tribalism and barbarism when you could be in bureaucracy and slavery or caste. You'll likely want to be in slavery early in the game (right after teching bronze working) and perhaps switch to caste once you hit code of laws (although sometimes slavery can work well all the way to emancipation too).
5. You have several cities needing border pops - a size 4 city without having the border popped is troubling. Early game - monuments are useful for this. Mid game, I'll chop/whip a theater/library in a new city or bring along a missionary so religion can pop the borders. Also, in caste system, you can run an artist for 4 turns to pop borders.
6. City placement seems ok, although you do have 2 cities one tile from the coast, which I generally try to avoid, as you can miss out on the sea tiles benefits and can't build a lighthouse or naval units in that city. You also have a couple cities that if you had settled them 1 tile differently, would have had less tundra and more workable tiles. You generally want as little tundra and desert in the BFC of a city as possible. Hittite is a well placed city, and Ning-Hsia would have been very well placed 1 tile south (on the coast). There are also a number of unclaimed resources outside your borders that would probably be useful for cities.
7. You're building a market in Aksum, but it has little commerce. Cottage that baby up to really make that market pay off. Or you could run merchants there as well. In general, the city specialization concept. Next game you try, think about trying to settle one city with almost all cottages, one city with mined hills and farms for production, and one city loaded with food that runs as many specialists as possible. Then build the multiplier buildings in each (markets, libraries, grocers, banks in the cottage city, forges in the prod city, and national epic, library, university in the specialist city while running scientists). With each city I settle, I always try to think of what specialization might be useful for it.
8. Courthouses! By 1060 AD, every one of my cities will have a courthouse, except perhaps the capital and any newly founded cities. Looks like you have a number without and some cities are now building them. That will help you immensely with the maintenance costs (as will cottages).
9. Military. You have 10 cities and 19 military units. That's not enough. Again, city specialization will allow for much more powerful production. You also have barb problems in 1060 AD - by that point, many players will have settled most, if not all of the land. In fact, it will be useful to whip some military units to deal with the barbs.
Here's what I would suggest as a start: switch to slavery and bureaucracy, use slavery to whip out workers in each of your cities over size 7 except your capital (Karakorum). Chop trees to finish those courthouses that are being built, and improve Karakorum so it's filled with farms and mines. With bureaucracy, it'll be a production powerhouse. Normally an ideal bureaucracy capital is heavily cottaged, but at this level, you can farm it and mine the hills and make for a production power. You can get Heroic Epic there and use it to churn out military at a lightning pace.
I'm not great at picking someone else's game up and messing with it, but I thought it might be helpful to pick it up for a few turns - I played about 20 turns and here's the play by play:
1060: Switch to slavery and bureaucracy
1070: Anarchy and traded lit for 40 gold to Boudica since she requested it and great library is almost done.
1080: It appears your diplo with Gilgy, Washington and HC is good, so I chose them to be primary trading partners. Again, diplo is tough to really manage when picking up a game cold, but I try to find a few people to cozy up to and make them friendly for tech trading and war allies. Diplo is probably something to worry about more once you're at noble, but I used them as your partners. Lit to Gilgy and HC for 170 gold total, and HBR to Washington for 100 gold. Raised tech slider to 100%. Whipped the great library, since you're working unimproved tiles there anyway. Whipped in every city except Karakorum, some I switched to workers and whipped those, others I just whipped whatever you were producing and then followed it with a worker.
1090: Started metal casting, built more workers, and the whipped workers started on cottages in Aksum, which I thought could be a decent commerce city.
1100: Started Heroic Epic in Karakorum - 8 turns. After that, it should produce military only. A great prophet pops in Yasodphura - I settled him there and started national epic in that city. It'll make for a decent great person farm. NOTE: Settling him was a mistake I later realized - I didn't know you had the confucian holy city. I would have sent him to that city and made a shrine, as it'll get more gold long run. If you play from your save and get the prophet, send him to Aksum to create the confucian holy city.
1110: A barb spear almost took hittite, as all you had there was a keshik and the borders aren't popped. I brought a second keshik up and started an archer. Barb beat the first keshik, but the second saved the city. This is why Karakorum will produce nothing but military after heroic epic.
1120: You're ahead in tech, so I traded code of laws to a few civs for gold. They're all still way behind, and I wanted to keep up the deficit research for awhile until cottages come online. Resource trades too: Gold to Washington for 5 gold per turn, deer to Joao for 8 gold per turn (you don't need the health, and have other places to settle to claim more deer). Resource trades for gold can be huge in helping the economy, just don't trade military resources generally. Started teching paper.
1140, 1150, 1160 - Nothing notable. 1170 - started education. 1180 - Heroic Epic done, and Karakorum starts producing nothing but keshiks. I would prefer to produce war elephants, but you'll need to settle a city near the ivory to claim it.
1200 - Lit to Washington for 200 gold. Trade maps with him at his request - he shows a lot more of the world to us.
1220: Joao declares war - you don't have enough military yet, but he only sends a horse archer and chariot. 2 keshiks deal with that. Just shows you need more military though.
1240: National epic done in yasodphura, some major whipping wherever needed, and then switch to caste system. Yasodphura should run as many scientists as it can from now on (for awhile, I then often prefer merchants later on in the game).
After the anarchy, I stopped in 1250 AD - beat a few more of Joao's units down with keshiks.
From here, you could tech the rest of education, near certain to pull a great scientist in 4-5 turns to bulb philosophy in yasodphura, then tech liberalism. Choose nationalism, build taj mahal while teching gunpowder, military tradition and up to rifles, and build tons of whatever horse unit you decide to use to mow down the AI civs. I posted the save from here so you can see the difference in the economy. I have it at 189 beakers, breaking even at 70%, and yasodphura is generating 50 great person points per turn. I made it your great person farm, Aksum your cottage city, and Karakorum your production city - check those cities out and you'll see the difference. 13 workers now as well. I labeled a few city sites on the save for you to think about. The city just south of aksum is especially appealing because once it's grown a bit, it can easily run 5-6 specialists.
Hope this is helpful in showing you some ways to improve. I'm by no means a great player, but I can compete at emperor level, so hopefully some of these tips will work.
), but you want to get cities up early, working as many improved special tiles as possible. Most of what you'll build before/after rushing (or just skipping rushing) will be workers, settlers, and units to garrison/escort them.
