What to do after early war?

[Solon70]

I'm still finding my way around Civ V. Playing as Carthage on Prince, I started on a small landmass with just me and China. I chose a military opening, built some units (and had a few gifted from city-states), and conquered Beijing before either of us even had a second city. I built all these units expecting there would be more civs to conquer on the starting continent but nope, it's just us. My remaining army consists of 2 archers, 2 chariot archers, a horseman, an elephant, and a GG. I did send out a boat which found a couple more civs on a continent not far to the west.

Now in Civ IV, which I know better, I probably would have just consolidated after winning that war, settling a bunch of cities across my newly-owned continent. But that doesn't seem like the right play here, because I've already bought a bunch of military policies, and I have all these units sitting around costing me maintenance. There's usable land on my continent, but no enticing resources to be grabbed or anything like that, and I'm trying to adjust to this new strategy where it's not necessarily good to have a whole bunch of cities.

What do I do with all these units? Should I embark them and just invade my closest overseas neighbor ASAP? (I'm kind of scared to do an overseas invasion in Civ V since I've never done one.) Or will I stretch myself too thin if I try that when I only have 2 cities back home? Should I maybe just keep the experienced units to be upgraded later and disband the rest to save on maintenance? That seems like a waste.

By the way, can I trust my military advisor when he tells me someone else has a weak army, or could there be a bunch of additional units in the fog of war that he doesn't know about?

 

[Crafty Bison]

Go kill some more people. At the very least you'll learn about CiV naval/amphibious war.

Never trust the miliatry advisor. If he says anything other than 'X has an army that could wipe us of the planet.......', it means they'll be easy to kill. Even if he does say that, they may still be fine to DoW. More important is tech. Use the demographics to find out where you are in tech, and try to find out how advanced they are. It's a much better weather guage.

 

[chazzycat]

you should probably at least settle a city for each unique lux, if there are any. Doesn't sound like your army is big enough to attempt an overseas invasion.

 

[Airey]

Prob took China out too early if there are only 2 of you on the same continent.
Delaying attack on China could mean getting some GPT from peace deals.
While leaving China noncompetitive for the rest of the game.

Pretty much isolated if you don't start expanding.
Via settler is probably faster, while moving the units oversea invasion simultaneously.
Because other civs' location are unknown and takes awhile for you to advance your troops, by the time they arrive, it is likely to be ineffective for an assault, at Prince and not needing Astro, should still be ok.
Depending on tactical war skill, with no immediate reinforcements, could be dicey.

But it would be faster and easier to build more cities and take AI cities with more advance units later on.