Perhaps I'm being paranoid about RB when it comes to the Mids. I wouldn't be surprised if they went for it (and won) even without stone. Don't forget that it will still take us many turns before we have the stone connected. So it would be a while before we even start building.
After Mackotti (aka
Midskotti over RB) the Pyramids are highly valued there too I think, so no wonder if they try to build them. But remember what they said about our Stone city - that this does not mess up with their plans. This can mean two things - either they are not even trying Pyramids or they (as you suggest) are after them for some time and they think they will get them sooner than us anyway. As for is it early or late to finish Pyramids late 80's turn, I just dont know. The dates from those 2 Mackotti games Yossa provided (t75 and t79) looks pretty despairing to me, but lets not forget Mack is one known he always beeline whole his empire aiming to Pyramids from the very start of the game and I doubt there will be others like him in the ISDG. Speaking with TMIT he said t88 is early-to-middle date.
Also lets not forget that we can get TGW with stone on the price of 2 monuments! Dont you think we will need culture spread somewhere between two cities? Even if only for that, I think it is worth (not to mention Captain Sommerswerd's obsession with TGW and espionage economy).
And it is not true that a Great Prophet can measure with a Great Spy. If we infiltrate someone, we can get up to 8-10 technologies stolen for that Great Person alone. When a shrine will catch up with that? We can have agreement for friendly stealing or we can decide on enemy and then go and infiltrate/steal (Holy City religion powered) from them. Or having the espionage power to accumulate points, etc, etc...
Barbs can be not that scary, but they are still a factor. TGW will cost less than 2 axes in hammers. Do you think we will lose less (1 axe only) defending from barbarians?
Humans are dangerous, yes, but we are not harmless too. We will build soldiers regardless of good diplomacy. I just want to say that it may turns out we have more soldiers to tackle/rebuff human teams actually building TGW, not risking to lose units fighting the barbs (remember TGW is only 2 axes hammers worth, so even 1 axe lost to barbs will tilt the balance).
As for hammers on expansion, Yossa's/vranassm's sandbox showed that having no good tech rate actually slows our expansion - having 2 settlers in place waiting to get some economic tech to increase income shows me this clearly). We must need to find the sweet spot between expansion and technology. This is around 10 cities at turn 100 I think and it is more than manageable with Pyramids.
It was shown with Pyramids we suffer on food and hammers, but I will make last attempt tonight to make better micromanagement and get comparable results with Yossa and Vranasm in this regard.