With mexico I think the classic hacienda boom is not very viable, just compare to brit:
- Cost more w per vil (360 for 2 vs 270 for 2)
- Requires land grab, equivalent of VC but brit can skip
- Benefits are later
- No full pop space
- Less total bonus vils (14/17.5 with hac trickle vs 20)
I just don’t think you can justify sending land grab 2nd every game for a boom so much worse than brit’s. Before you got a bigger eco (factoring hac trickle), but the downside was all vils were on the tail end of the build, making it less flexible and more vulnerable to pressure, in addition to being more costly and being housed. Now it is a little more flexible, but ironically having to send tlaxcala 3rd in a build designed to send land grab 2nd on a civ designed to send 2vil+hac first also restricts flexibility in of itself, while its other disadvantages are still there. Maybe the solution is skipping the 2v+hac shipment, but it feels so wrong…
Tlaxcala is still a good age-up option, probably the best, but don’t be scared of playing the dock one on water.
You might be able to so some kind of funky extended hac boom with CA revolt, but I never got it to work for me, seems you’d want to send 700w before revolt then maybe 700w or towers after revolt, but that means your boom is coming in at like your fifth card, and until then the 700w shipments are going to be used in 360w buildings that give you a 0.5f trickle - very high opportunity cost, and you spent 3 shipment for what, 3.9 haciendas? You might still come out on top cause the 7 vil CA gives you is kinda broken, but it’s not really better than other booms in this game cause it still mostly kicks in at the tail end and is so costly.
Problem with skipping land grab and sending tlaxcala 2nd is both CA and Baja do not have good hacienda shipments, so no point of playing hac boom at all if you revolt and skip land grab.
Imo there are 3 options for 1v1 as mexico: Baja all-in, CA FI, and early Navajo pressure. I’m most familiar with the latter, hits at early 5 min with 2 groups of 5 skirm that each one-shot vil, use double explorer to scout his base before. Military wagon is training pikes bcuz it counters their counter for your skirm and is the only thing you can afford. They aren’t true skirm, they are speedy, low range, low resist, and have zero bonus to HI and LC, but they function as a very strong harass opening if you find like a 130f treasure.
Regarding USA, I see people playing more chinese immigrant, 400w age1 + tp wagons all game is amazing value, especially now with so many viable natives. Generally speaking I think their late-game is above average and their early game is weak.
edit: Also I find it hilarious USA has to pay 200w for 3 courier while france gets it for free, so essentially usa players are paying 200w for villager movespeed LOL