I played out the pyramids game (that I posted a few posts ago) a little ways, beelined astronomy. Things are looking okay.
-Still somewhat behind the AI in tech, but catching up with trades and I believe faster research with the specialists.
-Militarily very weak, depending on drafting stage to catch up with that.
-Vulnerable if we have a close AI in the short term in the real game.
Production. I might not be expanding fast enough and without slavery our production really takes a big hit. I razed a barbarian city since it was poorly placed, but even a settler without slavery is a hard build.
I have ~6 swordsmen for barbarian cities.
Timed a few chops to get a galleon about the same time as astronomy.
I ended up having to build several triremes for barbarian galley protection.
Great people/research
I switched to pacifism with caste system after a whipping courthouse phase. I popped 2 great scientists 1st GS was from the 2 clam city which got an early library. 2nd GS was from the capital (some risk of Great engineer with the pyramids). I got a great merchant from a side city running merchants (probably could have afforded to run scientists since I was getting some gold from trades with the AI)
I'm not trading Astronomy to the AI, seems like something we want to keep as a military advantage if possible.
I got beat to music and the free Great Artist by 1 turn
I got an academy in the capital with 1 GS, and 1 GS partially bulbed Astronomy.
The Great Merchant waits to do a trade mission with the AI.
City management
The happiness and health issues are significant if our real game start is as sparse as Griff's III test game (I should have taken out the huts too, but they only gave me ~50 gold so far, I did take out the fish on the eastern shore for the whole game)
I stopped actively growing most of the cities with pacifism & caste system switch over, other than what they could grow with their good food (mostly seafood) resource tiles. Slowly built up the specialist population you can see in the save.
Possible useful insights for the real game
-With all the AI so far away an early-ish Forbidden palace or Communism might be something to shoot for.
-Balancing trades with the AI so we can catch up to them but don't accelerate them too much will be a delicate dance.
-Whipping early courthouses I think pays off, in reduced maintenance and free espionage
---However espionage will possibly be very expensive unless we more our capital closer (and build the Forbidden palace near original starting location) or gift chain a few cities so get a city close to us with our culture for massive espionage cost discounts.
-We are vulnerable if we switch to Caste system early since we sacrifice a lot of production to maximize the benefit from the pyramids. And workshops aren't that great until we get Chemistry and/or Guilds and/or Communism.
If anyone is interested in playing an Oracle game out or a game focused on pure growth (no wonders) it would be interesting to compare the empire situation (tech, number cities, military, etc) with and without the pyramids.