K - so the Caesar mirror - some good stuff here.
Try to follow this, but what basically happens is he build a 6 villie lead on you, out-micros you in a crucial battle, and it's gg. Small early differences snowball.
1) He builds 2 shrines immediately (in map control spots); you build one and hang onto some wood
2) His shrines are on food, yours are on wood (for a bit, you switch after a while)
3) First card: he plays 2 shrines, giving him house room (right? are these houses?), map control, and .76 food/sec. You play 15% food card, giving you .04 food in your 1 shrine, and .12 food/villie, or about 1.2 food/sec at this point in the game. (note that at 6:30 - that will be roughly 240 extra food you will have collected, while at 6:30 that's 2 shrines of wood, houses, and bonus 175 food by 6:30 as well). See below on why I pick 6:30 as the time to measure
4) he ages around 2:55, you age around 3:32. The sum of the above differences is already around 40 seconds. Remember the exponential effect of time when troops are ready to be built? 2 minutes from now, you will have had maybe 40 seconds in age 2 compared to his 80.
5) he plays 4 villie, 5 ashi. you play 5 ashi, 5 ashi. He also builds 5 ashi (due to his lead), and therefore he takes a 4-villie lead on you right there. he builds the lead out to 6 villies by 6:30. b/c of your economy, you can't start first ashis, despite having a rax, until 6:11
6) snapshot at 6:30. He has 24 villies (16-0-7 food-gold-wood), 10 ashis, samurai, 4-5 ashis queued up, and 7 shrines. You have 18 villies, 9 ashis, 5 ashis queued up, 1 shrine, and 1 TP. he already has a significant eco lead, and he leads by a samurai.
7) you guys have a battle where you meet 5 ashis with 9 of yours. due to his micro (and all he did was pull the guy out that your guys were firing at - sometimes grabbing extras it wasn't perfect), he loses 3 while you lose 5 before reinforcements are showing on both sides. That sounds small, but as a direct result you lose your rax in the middle (go look and follow those ashis)
That's the last significant thing, b/c after that you are chasing from behind and it's GG.
I picked 6:30 b/c that seemed to be what he was after - get a constant rax flow going by 6:30 and go hit the enemy. That was his theme. His eco is peaking right then with enough stuff to keep that rax going, and his card picks seem to have peak benefit within about that time frame.
Your theme appears to be longer term. The 15% food card is not going to pay out until past 10 minutes or so. The TP may pay out earlier, but it caused delay in your aging time to the extent that you had to play 2 5-ashi cards rather than being able to play a 4-villie card. Villies collect enough resources to pay out 5 ashis in about 200 secs (+/-) so at 3:45 or so it pays off by 6:55 - pretty close to 6:30. As the second card in age ii - it won't pay off until close to 9 minutes or so, and that is probably why he played the 5 ashi as a second age 2 card.
If your theme involves a hard rush, the 5 ashi as the second age 2 card could be worth it, but I think you had to throw it in your case to merely play catch up.
Hope this helped.
I think there is a lot of opportunity here to see a great Japan player and how it all sort of comes together.
I think you should strongly consider the 2-shrine, 4-villie, 5-ashi card order b/c it seems to fit your style of slightly delayed rush while you figure out what the other guy is doing. Also, consider that everything age I should have the goal of getting to age II quickly, therefore a shrine is probably a better use for your wood than the TP in that age.