I see that Mansa's workers have fled Timbuktu. And it looks like Mansa has another city south of Timbuktu (some borders visible). Too bad. I was hoping to keep those workers tied up.
I guess I'd be willing to risk the warrior near Carthage to see if we can pillage that horse. If he could do that and then park on the hill 2S of Carthage, his Woody promotion might be enough to keep Hannibal training archers until we can get to him.
After the worker finishes the London-York road, I'd recommend at least one mine (probably the one on the river SE of London) and then cottages on the dye and the other banana.
Countdown to an axe rush on Athens:
I've done a little turn counting. Let's say we want 10 axes to take on Athens. I'll assume that all the troops we have already produced will be on homeland security duty (or will have to be replaced). York will soon be able to make 12hpt and, if we mine a grass hill, London will be able to make 15hpt. That's about half an axe per turn between the two cities, so it will take us about 20T to build up 10 new axes.
Then its another 15T--total of 35T--to get the last axe down to strike position (1N of Alex's copper mine). For reference, I think that brings us to 600-somethingBC for the assault on Athens. Techwise, at our current rate, that corresponds to finishing Writing and Mathematics.
It sure would be nice of Alex to build us a stone-based wonder before then
.
Thoughts on bringing swords to Athens:
If we go for swords, we're going to add quite a bit to that time estimate. Probably a bare minimum of 10T (and that would require whipping) to get a settler. 5T to get to city location. 6T to mine the Iron, 3T to connect it. Total of 24T (or 15T if we settle directly on the iron). And that only gets us Iron in the Iron city itself, which at this point is still not connected to the core and would have no improved tiles (other than the iron, if we settle 1NE of iron) to work.
It's about 12 worker-turns to road to the new city location, and requires producing another worker...maybe 5T? Some of that would overlap the city generation and iron connection time, but we're also running a small London because we've whipped the settler.
I'm guessing that we won't have sword-building ability in the core for about 30T, and then it will take 4-5T per sword. So that's about 40T before a second sword is heading south from the core, and he'll take about 12T to get there. 240 hammers in settler+worker is 5 axes, so I'm going to guesstimate that we can bring 8 axes and 2 swords to Athens in about 55T.
So, an axe rush is about 35T away. A sword-supported axe assault is about 55T away. Given our net axe production rate of an axe per 2T, I think it's probably more efficient to just go with axes.
Comparison to "Construction turtling":
For reference, at our current tech rate, we would have Construction in about 85T. Even earlier--maybe 75T?--if we turtled a bit and worked a cottage or two in both London and York. After Construction, a city--built or captured depending on whether an AI prioritizes those elephants--would be bringing us an extra happy, elephants, and catapults.
While waiting for Construction, we'd be generating a few troops for homeland security and sending a couple "advanced" units (chariot/axe) to each AI to keep their strategic resources pillaged and their workers frightened and in their homes. I don't think we can spare this type of harassment while implementing an axe rush.
My opinion:
I actually think we might have a slightly easier time with the AIs if we attack with cataphants, primarily because we'd be willing to devote resources toward keeping the AI's strategic resources pillaged.
But I don't think it's going to be a major difference. Greek city-capture cash would probably fund much of the Construction research too.
