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Current status:
Turn 46/660, year 2620 BC. 54 turns remaining before 1000 BC, which is my tentative "must have Pyramids by" date, though it's probably conservative.
Moscow has 16 turns of whip unhappiness and is size 2 with 9 food stored.
We have 9 turns before the quarry is finished.
Our next techs are probably The Wheel, Pottery, and Animal Husbandry, finished in 8, 20, and 35 turns currently. (It will probably be a little faster than that, because sometimes Moscow will be working the floodplains and getting +1 commerce.)
Some general state-less statistics:
The following calculations assume a steady state.
Without a granary, Moscow will take 11 turns (6 turns, 6 overflow + 5 turns, 7 overflow) to grow from size 2 to size 4, maxing growth, working fish, clams, floodplains, and stone quarry, in that order. To grow to size 6 (5 turns + 9 turns) takes 14 more turns, counting whip unhappiness so the fifth person is unproductive. This is obviously no good for anything.
With a granary, Moscow will take 5 turns (3 turns, 3 overflow + 2 turns, 1 overflow) to grow from 2 to 4, and 8 more turns (3 turns, 1 overflow + 5 turns, 3 overflow) to grow from 4 to 6.
[Note: math could be slightly faulty here because I don't know how the granary handles odd numbers of food. I assumed it adds food rounded down.]
Moscow's next builds:
I'm not sure that whipping the granary is the best use of our next whip. The problem is that we only get about two and two-thirds more whips before we'll need to have the Pyramids done. The last whip goes to the Pyramids, almost certainly. If we whip a granary and a settler, that's it.
If we max growth at Moscow and just let it grow now, in 16 turns when we can whip again, it will have just turned size 5 (4 turns to size 3 with overflow 1, 5 turns to size 4 with overflow 3, 6 turns to size 5 with overflow 3). We will still have to wait four turns for Pottery, but our whip unhappiness will be gone for those turns.
Let's look at an alternative plan: grow to size 4, then start a settler. We need 62 hammers in it before we can whip it at 4 pop. Moscow produces, at size 4, 13 food + hammers per turn (with the quarry up), so if we start the settler then, five turns in we'll be able to whip it, almost right after our past whip unhappiness has dissipated.
The problem, then, is building the granary, because we really want that building up ASAP since it makes everything so much more efficient. If whipped at the earliest opportunity, we'll go down to size 2 with 10 overflow stored, and grow back to 3 in 3 more turns. That should put us close to hand-building the granary. I'm not sure whether it would be more efficient in the long run to grow more slowly to finish the granary sooner, or grow faster--the general rule is the latter, though, and once we hit size 4, we could stagnate while working on mines.
The glimmerings of a plan:
Ok, so here's what I've gotten out of all this analysis.
We have two whips left in Moscow before the Pyramids. Because of the jungle, red dot will not be able to provide a settler before then, so if we want two settlers, I think they have to come from Moscow. What red dot can do for us is build itself up, provide another worker, and provide an extra warrior or two, and then provide a settler not long after we finish the Pyramids. (I think.)
Here's one possible outline:
Tech: Wheel in 8 turns, Pottery in 20 turns, Animal Husbandry in 33 turns, Mysticism in ?? turns
Moscow: build warrior(s) until one turn after size 4, starts settler, whip settler after whip anger dissipates at 16 turns, build Pyramids for four turns until Pottery comes in, start granary, eventually whip settler when anger dissipates again, then Pyramids all the way
Worker: finishes quarry in 9 turns, finish roading to stone in 7 turns, finish hill mine in 11 turns, go to red dot and pasturize cows right after Animal Husbandry comes in, head back to Moscow to mine/chop
Red dot: finish worker in 39 turns, start granary to grow?, whip granary?, send overflow to warrior?; or maybe put hammers into worker, wait until Pottery comes in, grow to size 2, whip granary, send overflow to worker?
Second worker: immediately had to mine-chop.
I have no idea if this is optimized. We should consider whether sending chops to other items (the granary, settlers) would be more efficient. I don't know if this will get us the Pyramids according to schedule. Are there other tweaks to optimize I'm not seeing? If so, we really need to find them and play them, because any improvement in these turns could be vital.
Lee, you could just play up 10 turns (which will take us around size 4 and the time we'd need to decide before growing and starting the settler) so we could talk about this.