x-post : a pen-dragon posting in 3 lines what took me an hour to write
Foreign Trade just means income from trade routes. In your case, they're still nternal
Yeah it's been a bit odd he didn't go for Fishing earlier but who am I to judge? Likewise slow building a settler in Djembe at size 2, Maybe he was having an off day. The PH mine may just be desperation to get some culture going, he's not got Myst yet either.
No, no, no. You make the effort to judge what you can.
Replicating a game, like you're doing, can be a very good exercise if it has purpose. The purpose being to understand the rationale behind the
good decisions,
So that you become better able to make those for yourself.
Seeing a game from this close is an opportunity to spot the
bad decisions. And, in this case, you shouldn't refrain from judging them.
Recognizing good from bad decisions is skill.
Some players are better than others but everybody will make a bad play or miss a beat, be it in management or in strategy.
Being able to reflect on a game and identify the good and the bad plays paves the way for improvement.
So you're right to question the settler from Djenne, because from a pure management perspective it doesn't make sense.
He talks a bit about it at T60. What I understand is that he doesn't think that cottaging the grassland is worth much (implied) ;
And, foremost, he's stressed about getting DoWed, so he plans for a gift city (expressed). <-- So there's context to that decision and, if it makes sense, the Deity difficulty definitely plays a part because the AIs are that much more oppressive.
The ph mine is very simple to look at rationally. It takes 2 turns to grow to size 2 so :
Over the course of those two turns, the city working the mine instead of the grassland forest produces 6 more hammers
Over the course of the following turns, the city that has grown to 2 produces 1 more hammer per turn
Therefore, if the city stagnates at size 1 for 6 or more turns (and, looking at the rate on that Library, that's definitely going to be the case),
Then it is strictly worse to work the mine at size 1 than to grow first and then work both tiles.
It would be a little different if the food bin was empty but, here, it's like the worst timing to stagnate a city
You can even hear Lain grunt from dissatisfaction when he clicks to work the mine
Skipping Mysticism (rationale) is to get Writing and Alphabet earlier. This is also format dependent (i.e. difficulty level). If you get to Alphabet too late on Deity, it will make the game extremely difficult (I would feel increasingly stressed every turn after 875 BC where I do not have tech trades available).
Getting a single border pop a little bit easier is not worth the delay towards vital techs. A lot depends on Writing as well, especially
and getting it any turn past T60... that's being in for a rough ride.
tl;dr : players are faillible (streaming also takes a toll). There are decisions in strategy and management. There are rationales in strategy and means in management.
Players can miss the most effective strategy or the most effective ways to implement it.
You should know better at this point 
In fact, he switched from grass forest 2 turns before city growth 
