Round 2: 2360BC - 0875BC
Alright, the die is cast. I decided to settle on Red A:
It built a monument first so that its borders could expand and it could work the corn asap.
Meanwhile, our capital was set to build a chariot as quickly as possible:
We needed to do some urgent exploration to the southwest to find another route to France if we're to know if we should attack. Besides, barbs were beginning to encroach on our borders. After the chariot we could build our second worker to help improve and hook all those resources up.
Our south-bound explorer stumbled on Roman lands:
It looks like we're on a very tall continent again, my friends. Anyway, our warrior soon found himself stuck in the south as French borders expanded and closed the gaps that he had used to get this far. He had to wait until we could research Writing and get open borders before he could get out.
We discovered Bronze Working soon after. Look where copper turned up:
Well, we could have gotten corn-copper-cold city in the south if Teotihuacan isn't where it is

Ah, well. And I guess there's no hurry to hook copper up, since we have horses and we can build JAGUARS!
Anyway, you can see the barbs coming in. Yes, they came quickly and furiously. We actually lost one chariot to them (it took down 1 archer and 1 warrior before falling to another archer), but we managed to prevent any improvement from getting pillaged.
And, as you might have noticed, we researched Priesthood after BW. I think you should know the reason

Early CoL is just difficult to resist. Not only would it unlock our UB early, it would also allow us to expand through conquest without crashing our economy. Looking at the distance between our lands and France, we might need it.
So we chopped and we built, and we got ready to get some overflow from whipping:
I love rushing temples. It gives you 1 happiness after being built so you can start growing back immediately.
And, yes, it's Writing after Priesthood so that we could get CoL from the Oracle (working the gold mine in Teotihuacan really sped up our research; at the cost of quick growth in that city, but it's worth it). After Writing, I had to choose between Alphabet for tech trading or Iron Working for our UU. Given the fact that chariots wouldn't get us that far when we invade France, we would probably need some Jaguar reinforcements, so I decided on Iron Working first. Why not just hook up copper and build axemen? Well, we didn't have copper in our borders yet. Besides, with all those jungle, Woodsman II Jaguars would be able even faster than the chariots. Nothing like a lightning war in the BC era.
Anyway, I sent a chariot to explore the northern shores, and it stumbled on a hut:
Wow. Let's see if it would give us a tech... Nope, it gave us experience

Well, better than barbs, I guess.
And then we completed our wonder:
Of course, we took CoL as the free tech.
As you might have guessed, Confucianism was founded in Teotihuacan:
I didn't really care about founding a second religion, but since it came with early CoL, oh well. It did give us a free Confucian missionary, with which we can spy on France. You'll see
Well, I'm afraid I've run out of time for today. I'll post the second half of the update tomorrow.
[to be continued in the next post...]