Looking for advice, Vanilla

[ecuwins]

I am playing in a game as France and pretty much bee-lined to Republic. After switching I found myself to be running a deficit in order to tech at a reasonable rate. I needed markets and aqueducts in a serious way. I was able to manage getting the markets and aqueducts before bankruptcy and I should be ok now. Did I get into Republic too early? Should have I attacked a neighbor sooner? Any other suggestions are welcome as well. BTW the only thing I could get my hands on early was Incense, no horses or Iron, but a quick war solved that. It just took me forever to build up a good enough army, consisting of Archers and a few Cats, to take on the Germans who has Swordsman.

Here are a few saves:

Before the switch to Republic.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/98574/PreRepublic.SAV

Just before I start to pre-build markets in my core.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/98574/Germans_Polite.SAV

After markets and a war to get Iron. I may have got the iron by cultural means but I could not wait, all those units needed to be put to work.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/98574/War.SAV

 

[civverguy]

What is the difficulty?

 

[ecuwins]

Monarch is the difficulty.

 

[civverguy]

I think you should take the city with iron and take as many cities as possible against Germany and make peace. Then you can attack Germany once you have a sufficient force.