MAJOR RELEASE 22APR12

Ehem, but you're ranked 37.  Which is really quite awesome but represents the top 0.02%.  To me (someone over 10x further down the ladder) I'd say you are an extreme example from the outside margin (the good side though).  I'm pretty confident that it would take someone way smarter than me more than 5 min to come up with a plan of attack even if I could match your resources.

I would never say anyone in the top 0.02% was wrong but if you were smaller and you were using all your resources and you were human then you would not be cranking out knights after your initial assault on the orc and we come back full circle to initial advantage orc if he can get you to attack (assuming you are human, which you are not).  If the orc is stealing resources and throwing up blockades and you need every last resource because you're running a JIT economy (like you actually were when smaller) then you are probably feeling the pinch and it's hurting your production and you'll want to do something about that.  Back to human nature for the other 99.98%.  Sure, your smarter than that, but we are talking about a real threat with the real possibility of doing damage and most people aren't in the 0.02% for a reason.

I would like to point out that using the same example (your account) the end game (again, people at the 0.02% level) comes down to who cranks out the most combat power (attack or defense) over time regardless of resources.  The unit that has the highest value in that category is always going to be the human knight and this unit excels in plains combat.  With 7 of your 10 cities in plains any human player of equal size will be hitting you with knights doing 10% more damage than your marshals will do hitting the humans.  The exceptional elven range unit gives no initial advantage in that situation (on plains and behind lvl 20 walls elven archers are outmatched by human knights by almost 17% on an upkeep gold vs. upkeep gold comparison) and any initial advantage of building phalanx over pikeman (do you have phalanx) will rapidly disappear in plains combat.  An orc player enjoys the same T2 cav unit as the elf but with much better initial defensive units vs. the T2 cav (it will last longer).  Why so many cities in the elven version of an Achilles heel?  If I was your size, human and attacking you one on one (which I would never do) I'd send small (1,000 to 5,000) forces of knights at your elven plains cities and keep a large force of pikeman at mine.  Eventually, whatever forces we would have would transition to 100% marshals and knights (can't make anything else and keep up after combat starts) as our other troops were destroyed.  The humans would break through to the elven cities faster than the elf would get to the human.  Those forces of 5,000 knights would grow to 20,000+ and take 3 mil resources and gold per attack (the elves will eventually break through too but will not be able to steal as much because of their lesser capacity).  That would eventually ruin the elf's ability to build anything and siege and city destruction becomes possible in all 7 plains cities.  Then the human would have an economic advantage and could clean up the last three cities by sheer numbers.  Of course, this is not a game of pure military strategy, it's a game of human nature and your networking skills, alliances and super smarts will undoubtedly play a much greater role at that stage than the pure military action.

Obviously all this is just opinion ("paper warrior").  I'm throwing out ideas and thoughts for people to pick apart and if people don't bite against the blockades/thieves and the blockades/thieves do not net significant resources from the defenders then those ideas don't help the orc.  I have no specific numbers for either to evaluate how effective they are from a purely gold in/military damage out perspective.  The orc still has an advantage over the elf if the elf builds cities on the plains.  Both are at a disadvantage to the human with cities on the plains.  As a general rule, plains cities have the best food values and these give economic advantages that turn into military advantages but there are ways around that in other terrains.  It can get too complex for me.  Way too complicated to evaluate everything so I'll just stick to trying to show some ways some races have some advantages.  I'm not trying to prove any one race is better than any other because I think there are a lot of variables and it boils down to how smart you play the race you chose vs how stupid the other guy is.  Orc have real advantages.  I really do not understand why as an elf you would put 70% of your cities in the plains.  That combination doesn't make sense to me (although it makes more sense than dwarves) and I hope you'll be so gracious as to explain.

Nah.

Depending on the region, Jungle tiles provide decent amounts of other resources as well.