Hi Seraiel,
Interesting setup you have, there.
Thanks for providing so much info with screenshots and describing your thought process.
I'm not familiar with Marathon speed so I may be particularly off in some regards because of that.
Otherwise, the following is just my take on your situation.
INCOMING !
a) Coulda, woulda
Was it worth it growing the capital to size 5 ?
If you could improve corn, pigs, gold and ivory, then wouldn't the natural way to go rather be :
Grow to 4, then go settler, settler ?
That way, you grow before improving food negative tiles.
And, while you get a slightly later city 2, this is compensated by a faster city 3 (higher overall yield in capital).
Growing to 5 with food negative tiles improved doesn't seem like the best option.
I don't have much of opinion on training 2 workers vs 3, especially since I haven't considered the timings much. What I can tell, however, is that strengthening your workforce before access to Alpha / BW sounds good, as you did.
b) First city spots
It's interesting to see the different phazes in your thinking.
Settling city 2 towards Lincoln is a can be stuff. Although, in that case, I'd definitely try to settle with the cows in the first ring. It would be too hard to control the tile overwise (3rd ring of Lincoln's capital).
For city 2, I agree that going for the Stone makes the most sense.
Maybe the spot you chose is best, because it has access to the Wheat.
However, maybe it's actually better to settle on the stone : that lets city 2 share the gold from the capital. Gold is already improved and cap gets +2 food. When the capital pops borders, the second gold can be improved and the capital gets back its -2F tile.
The difficulty with such a location is that the Wheat would be in the second ring. So the city would need to work immediately on a culture building.
Monument with 5H/turn is 18 turns... Then you need 30 to pop borders ? Ok... maybe that isn't good enough and settling the way you did is best.
For city 3, I think the natural location is straight north from the capital.
Cow/rice gets you a double food city.
Considering that the rice will be claimed by the capital's culture, why not settle with the cows in the first ring ?
Settling 1SW of the cows would allow for a very fast development. Faster development is probably better than slightly better placement.
For this reason, it might even be worth it to consider this spot for city 2. The advantage of growing the wheat first is that it will require 3 pop to work gold and stone. Cow city, however, can work a 3F tile from the get go, which soon becomes a 6 yield tile.
Worker management may factor in this choice. Maybe it's easier to send it south, first.
c) On RExing vs warring
Both approaches are very strong. An efficient REx can catapult one ahead of the AIs.
However, as in early, most of it happens before 2000 BC.
In principle, the more excellent city spots are available, the more appealing RExing is.
Conversely, the more cramped/poor the map is, the more appealing warring becomes.
Sure, calculating hammers for military vs settlers has its use but it doesn't make up for assessing the land's quality. In the end, what matters isn't so much how you acquire the city spots but rather what city spots you acquire and when.
So, the map you've generated, with a minimal number of opponents, is bound to favour RExing.
You can war early but then you should try to do your best to multitask and expand eastwards at the same time.
In principle, again, the more spots you have to settle,
(Counting 13 dots in this pic :
http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/q521/Seraiel/CIV general/Civ4ScreenShot0052_zps0dmwd3it.jpg
The more you should try to make each settler count. That is say aim to settle the absolute best spots first, rather than try to get fancy with late game overlap.
It will take a while to settle all of these cities and maybe you can settle some less cities by grabbing more resources with your settlers.
To clarify, the more cities you can settle, the more appealing it becomes to settle a single 3-food city, rather than spreading the 3 food specials between 2 cities. That way, you'll save the cost of a settler and gain turns towards the end of your initial expansion.
The earlier you end the initial expansion, the earlier you can start focusing on city growth.
Also, better cities may make it easier to produce the GPs you'll need.
You'll always have time, later, to backfill the land with some helper cities, if you wish.
d) Shaving on the settler count
To me, an interesting tile is the fur. You're planning a city with the fur in the 1st ring.
Do you really need it ? Or can't you rather do with the early luxury trades ?
You're right that the fish + sheep spot west of the furs is about the strongest site available, even though it doesn't secure land.
Why not settle that city in a stronger position, 1E, so that it can grab the deer in the 2nd ring ?
The furs could be in the 3rd ring of the crabs city, if you settled it 1W. Or in the 3rd ring of any city to the north.
As it is, one spot I don't like much is the red do 3N1W of the central gold. That city doesn't grab anything, I wouldn't let it interfere with any other city placement.
Another weak spot is the incense city. One thing to note, here, is that with a border pop, a city 1SE could grab fish + cows + incense. In this case, you wouldn't need to rely on fish city to grab the wheat.
City below the central gold, imho, can be placed about anywhere in the area. Mostly, it depends whether you want a helper city for your capital. It seems to me like this is the easiest spot for a helper city. Another possible helper spot would be 1SE of the cows that Lincoln stole you (only shares two tiles). So, a helper 1W of your red dot would be conceivable and would leave room for a city somewhere 3N of the furs. Otherwise, you could move the city away 1E so as to grab the most tiles. The way you have it, it grabs the most riverside, which is quite neat.
Finally, there is the banana, sugars area in the north, that you may or may not want to settle.
Yet again, I'd try to focus on multiple food cities rather than a perfect overall dotmap.
As a trend, here, it seems that many cities would really want some early border pops.
With that in mind, you may want to consider some Caste System action, hiring Artists and such.
e) On warring
What AIs are you willing to kill ?
I guess it only makes sense to kill Lincoln, as the bugger is in the centre of the map, loves himself some Emancipation and actually grows cottages into towns.
Are Elizabeth and Mansa really war targets ? I wouldn't think they are.
So... are we looking at a single war target ?
If yes, this should have influences over your general play.
You certainly don't want to invest in a 50 units army and have your veterans stand idle for the rest of the game, right ?
I think your considerations should be two-fold :
- reducing the tech investment to go to war ;
- minimizing the army / leftovers.
In this light, I wouldn't try to go for WEs + Cats. Well, maybe, but would you research the such as Maths, Construction, HBR ? Wouldn't that be a huge waste when you could get (almost) Civil Service for the same price ? (Also, earlier Caste for border pops.)
I think I'd be more attracted to a standard CS beeline and see from there (Macemen war is very efficient).
I don't think there's any real hurry to take down Lincoln. It may even be better to kill him after Calendar is known.
It would also be best, of course, if he did settle the jungle to the north.
If Mansa was the one grabbing jungle in the north, I'd do my best to try and secure a spot along the sugars/lake/rice area. Maybe that's too ambitious, then the banana would be the last line of defence.
Woot ! Deadline is coming up. My essay is due for 3pm today.
I wanted to write something else but I've forgotten what it was, in panic !
I hope you enjoy the read
This is the conclusion.
Don't feel forced to agree with the tiniest bit. I don't think it's necessary to take my piece of advice as long as you consider the questions raised.
Considering the options is the important thing. Choosing, meh, can go one way or another.
because of working the Camp again. And when I decided for the 3rd Worker I just saw how much work there'd be for Workers but I didn't realize, that it'd also keep the 2nd city from growing, and that it'd be good if it were size 3 with the borderpop to directly work the Gold. Growing to size 5, definitely an error, 3rd Worker maybe not, because once the borders of the 2nd city pop, I can work the Wheat and the Sheep and then, the city should grow fast, while I improve the Gold. It loses the Stone as a tile then for some time, but I think building the Worker was still ok, because the alternative would have been building a Library for 4 
/ turn while the Worker can chop, and with 3 
. 
.
" -> beocuse simply noone is running Emancipation.
for techs but well...
in that city. Scientific Method is still in the BCs in a Marathon Spacerace.
.
