We've had some discussion in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=115595). Now we need to make it official. What tech do you want free from philosophy? The choices are as follows:

*If Republic, Otherwise Construction
*If Republic, Otherwise Other (Please Post)
*Construction
*Currency
*Code of Laws
*Literature
*Map Making
*Horseback Riding
*Polytheism
*Abstain

Note the first two options. They are better explained by DaveShack, who brought them up.
How about the inter-turn trading technique? If someone gets Code of Laws this turn (before we come up) then it is possible to do:

Big Picture
F4
Trade Philo for CoL
F6
Choose Republic
Exit
Get Republic as the free tech
Choose something else for the next tech

So if you want to do this, pick either option one or two, depending on the backup tech that you want. If you don't want to persue a possible republic grab, then simply vote for the tech that you want for free.

I pray this wasn't too confusing. This poll will be open for 48 hours.

Didn't we do this already?

Construction is the most expensive tech and it would be a great idea to get a tech that could take 40 turns to research, for free. then we could sell off philo to the Dutch and try to monopolize either construction or MM. (i think no one else has MM but Dutch, not sure though)

Didn't we do this already?

The poll? Yes, and the choice was Map Making. The Dutch already have it, so choosing it as the free tech would now be an extremely bad idea.

If you mean did we do the play session, no there were objections so I decided to fall back to the normal full planning sequence. ;)

DaveShack, if you pre select Construction before clicking "Big Picture" it may after a few seconds, select construction as the next tech