I labeled your arguments and put my counter arguments in the same order.
1. The 1st question is when are you going to do the 2 pop whip of granary? At size 4, you whip away a citizen which can work on the improved cow tile, isn't that a bad operation? ... What do you gain by whipping granary right now?
No, I don't think it's a bad operation. With the 2-pop whipping I mentioned, the pop on the cow can be regained 3 turns after the whipping, that's -1F-3H x 3 turns = -3F-9H of loss. But Granary can start stocking food much much earlier (Granary can be whipped in +T5 after kossin's set, compared to T15-T20 or later if settler first ). With granary, you double the convert ratio from food to hammer when whipping (whipping with granary: 1food=2hammers; building settler/worker or whipping without granary, 1food = 1hammer), so during 13 turns (T18 - T5), you loose some 10food x 1hammer/food x 13turns = 130 hammers.
10 food= The extra food that 1Fish+1Pig+1Cow provide
1 hammer/food = Ratio difference between whipping with granary and without granary.
Some other loss from delaying the WB for the Crab city. If the clam is improved as soon as it can, we can reach size 2 at T9, otherwise it's T17. That's loosing 8 turns of the gold of the crab city, -7C-2H x 8 turns = -56C-16H.
These two things are what I meant loss of food by delaying Granary and loss of commerce by delaying the pop growth in the previous post, though the calculation may not be 100% accurate.
2. I mentioned of this option in the 1st post and then found it's bad since you still need a WB before the settler for the Crab/Gold site and the only way that you can produce the WB in time is 1 pop whip, which again add an extra anger for nothing. Earlier settler in this stage does not add any commerce to the empire, instead it eat commerce, hence you gain food only, not 20 commerce, but negative commerce.
In terms of commerce loss, my argument is the new city beside the fish can gives +6C-+7C from traderoad, +2C from 1pop on Fish and +1C from city tile itself, adding 4-6 maintenance to the empire. That's +3-+6C and +1H x 3 turns + 3 turns of earlier pop growth, I don't think 20 commerce is exaggerated and it certainly won't be negative. Besides, you failed to notice the way I proposed to produce the WB is by overflow from 2-pop whipping (settler or granary) in Pata, and not 1-pop whipping.
3. Again 2 pop whip at size 4 is a bad operation to whip citizen working on Cow and earlier settler in this stage is commercial leakage. We want to research Lib as early as possible, which is better than a few turns of food/hammer gain in a new city. Moreover, all the new cities needs WB and/or worker force to start, our cities and FW are pretty busy in this stage.
I've mentioned commerce gain from an earlier new city. Loss of 4 turns' running of the cow, -4F-12H, can be covered by the earlier settlement of the new city, which is worth +2F+1H+4C (or +5F+1H+4C with fish improved) per turn itself.
Also you may also notice the fish city is food-rich as well. Earlier settlement and earlier improvement of the Fish = earlier scientists here = earlier Lib.
The WB for this city should be made in Pata anyway and any 1-pop whipping is not welcome. So you may agree that 2-pop whipping into Settler+WB can be the most harmless way to produce the WB.
4. The question is -- when the AIs can researched Calendar, remember it's emperor game. I doubt that they can have the resource available ~1AD. Ourselves only has Sugar in sight, do we want to research ourselves? and when? These are all questions undetermined. Therefore it's the same thing as the 75% bonus of Aqua + HG, using something uncertain or very possibly unexisted is not a good argument. Here's the common buildings we need to whip in pat -- Gra, LH, Lib, Forge, CH, Univ and probably Monastery and Temple until ~1AD. Adding the 2 existing whipping angers, have you calculated how many whipping angers will be left at that time and what's the happy cap at that time? Remember we won't adopt HR!
About Calendar resource, for one thing, you ignored the Incenses. For another, AIs can improve them earlier if we finish Calendar early and trade/give it away.
About happiness resources: you may have ignored that Toku has extra Gems and Ivorys, which may be obtained with Incense, Stone and Silver. Also Saladin has two Wines, which we can get with Horse or sth else. With Sugar and Incense, that's + 5 happiness already. Let alone the other possibilities of trade with other AIs.
5. I don't understand why OR depends on Hindu spreading. We can get Mono ~15 turns later and that's a perfect time to switch to OR since the period of settler spam is end and cities start to build infrastructures. Did you mean that you want to adopt Hindu and run OR? In that case we need missionaries from the new and weak cities 1st and then spend lots of time on spreading it to cities in our continent, do you still want it? Another reason behind your statement is that you were worrying about annoying Saladin if when adopt Confu. My answer is no, simply because he can be easily pleased by tech trade.
Objective is Diplo Victory, adopting Confu can be a temporary measure but you won't wanna make it long right? I said OR is not relevant but didn't say it won't help. +25% in wonder spamming with certainly be awesome.
Frankly I will adopt Hindu immediately when the Hindu missionary comes out of the poor gold spot.
There's nothing wrong to post some thoughts immature and they are more than welcome. However, against other people's mature opinion needs strong arguments. Last and again, I hope you can think carefully and/or run tests to try other people's plan before against it.
Again you have no idea how many tests I've run right?
I tried to make my conclusions in short just because I didn't have much time on line and I thought some of the arguments, the number of happiness resources available and the whipping efficiency with and without granary for instance, were implied.
I thought a player as experienced as you would have no difficulty to understand the things we were talking about, like how great MoM is in the game. So I didn't give the details of my thoughts and directly came to my conclusions. I didn't post a long post with all the details, but that's certainly not being said that I was talking of sth out of the air.