Ok - game one (v. skyline2)
I'm not sure, but I think you won this one ?? You were much more solid than the other guy, but there were a number of things I think you could work on. Some of these didn't matter b/c of your opponent. I'm not a Japan expert at all, but I'll do a little research there b/c some of the things I saw may just be required by japan and I don't know.
1) Your deck is age 1 heavy. This is unusual but may be civ-specific. My general thought is there are probably some better cards later that you should have instead. Typically, you should have 1-3 age 1 cards max.
2) Your game needs a theme. You were sort of rushing, but not really, and a lot of your card plays were eco-longterm versus military short-term, but you didnt' go fortress age or anything. I'll look around and think on Japan some and see if I can make more specific recommendations there. You should decide a theme for your game, and each action should support the theme, subject to reacting to your opponent.
3) You were housed at about 5 min with wood in hand. This blunts your rush considerably.
4) You built the consulate at 6:30. I'm thinking that's typically early, b/c you don't have much export built up and you probably have better uses for the wood at this point of the game. However, I'd like to hear more of what you're doing there so I can think about it more concretely.
5) You may have had his FB at 6 min or so. Pikes are weak against ashis, it may have been worth a look (like by your dying explorer scouting his barracks).
6) you used th 15% atk card. You had 14 muskets at the time. 5 musket card = 5 muskets, 15% cards = +/- 2 muskets (15% of 14, but without the extra hp of 2 muskets). This again is related to your theme. Probably a resource or musket ship is better at this point of the game, giving you more hitting power earlier. I tend to play upgrade cards when I have more guys on the map.
7) Ashis are not the best raiders with skirms around. They are slow anyway, and then skirms are their counter. Horses would be better, but he didn't make you pay for this, so...
you had 1200 F and 450 G at 9:30. What is your theme? Use this for fortress or build troops, but that money in your pocket isn't hurting your opponent.
9) I think you stayed on ashis too long without cav or yumi backup. A few cav or yumis mixed in increases your staying power against skirms. He built too many pikes, but this could have been ugly for you if he had spammed skirms more.
10) When you were attacked in your base, your ashis ran home - all the way across the map. You may have been better off just raiding away with them and using ships/militia/ built troops to fend off the raid. He had 9 of his 13 villies next to your ashis unprotected. Instead those guys spent about a minute walking the map. Just something to think about - your troops standing on the map are a resource, and travel time is a wasted resource. Of course, if you need them to save your base, then you need them. Another reason cav are superior for raiding.
GG though. You have a lot of the basics and I don't see any deep flaws (decent scouting, explorer usage, keeping villies going). I probably won't repeat too much of this in future posts, but the theme concept is one you should definitely be working on.