Gold is everything in this game. If you have a lot of gold, you can do anything at all because you can buy anything at all (units, buildings, tiles, city-states, bribes). Also, you need a very strong gold supply to maintain both infrastructure (buildings) and any defensive force (units) plus any offensive force (and if you don't have defense you will be attacked almost always). The boosts in Commerce are far more than a "little money". OTOH, the change to the tree so that the double Happy end SP requires the wasted Great Merchant SP is unfortunate.
Rationalism is overrated as there are other ways to get more science. For example, if you ally city-states (and you really need to do so if you are going wide or have a large population, let alone if you are dominating), the Patronage tree has a SP that boosts science far more than Rationalism. The last SP in Rationalism is pointless for anyone going wide or dominating because the AI isn't going to be friends and thus won't be signing any RAs, anyway (and won't do so if you are a tech leader, at least generally).
Happiness is definitely not resolved by Renaissance for anyone playing standard sized maps and going wide or dominating, or even if you are just going with a large population. The Unhappy from pop dwarfs the Unhappy from cities, even puppets, and population is another way of gaining science.
Part of the issue is that the map algorithms treat luxuries as "local" so that the one or two luxuries around your capital will also be pretty much the sole luxuries you'll have even after expanding to four cities. You may get one or two others as single resources, but there will only be the original one or two that you have duplicates of for trading. Since the AI gets very anal very easily if you really try to win (i.e., undermine anything the AI does in its attempts to win), trading usually falls apart and thus you can't get the luxuries (Happy) that you need in mid to late game.
Obviously, if you have Happy problems, the opener for Rationalism is pointless as it is only 10% and only if you are Happy.
This can also become a bigger problem after Ideologies hit.
So, bottom line is that Rationalism is far from the OP source that is often said here.
Note that these factors are mitigated by smaller maps or certain other changes from standard play settings.
I'm gonna have to say I disagree with almost everything you say. I was talking from the perspective of what I'm pretty sure most people play - 4-6 cities - (when he said small I presumed he meant so small he needed rationalism to stay relatively competitive) and happiness is all but fixed by then. If you have no-one to trade with by the Renaissance, something seriously must be wrong. Normally I have my DoF's from the ancient/classical era until Industrial, but after that ideologies can muck it up.
And Patronage will never give you as much science as rationalism. Ignoring all RA's, and off the top of my head, rationalism gives you this:
+ 17% science from universities (that's 17% more in pretty much every city by the time you get it) and +1 science from trading posts (makes trading posts on jungle insanely powerful, but relatively minor)
+ 10% science in happiness
+ 2 science per specialist (that is an insane amount. That often gets me from 240 or 250 bpt to 350+ (I play on Quick if you're wondering)
+ 50% GS generation (or was it 25%?). That's also very major, as academies are just starting to wane in usefulness, so you can use that to save for bulbing at the end of the game
Compared to Patronage, unless you have tiny base science generation and have gone with every single CS on the map, that's massive. Normally with 5-6 of the available 12 city states I'm ally, and the patronage policy gets me a maybe... 20% increase max? Even with 1 policy in rationalism + opener I'm getting more than that.
I understand that you normally only have 2 or 3 duplicates, but call it 3. That's another 3 luxuries - I don't understand how everyone hates you at this point, even if you're warmongering just bribe them to DoW with you and your best buds forever - equivalent, you've got the happiness from tradition/liberty, you've got colosseums and circus maximus, etc. Then ideologies come in and they give so much happiness that I can't recall going into unhappiness in BNW after getting one, except when I had +2 tourism per turn and I was the only freedom.
The only point I half-agree with you is the importance of gold, but it's still secondary to science. Sure, you can afford a larger army with a massive economy, and you can rush-buy buildings. But I don't see why that's needed - if you get rationalism you'll often be at infantry vs riflemen, or at least GWI against riflemen. They don't stand a chance, you don't need the economy as you have the science. It's a major problem with all the Civ games - science is just way too important. Dunno how to change it.
I agree that the happiness policy at the end of commerce is crazy useful, but the opportunity cost is too high. Purchasing Landscneckts (spelling
) is useless, the land trade routes are practically useless (as coastal trade routes are just better in almost every way), and that's already 2 useless policies. The others are mediocre, and the GM policy just wastes perfectly good GS or GE.
Note: I play completely standard settings, except Quick speed and often doing some non-normal maps like Continents Plus or archipelago to change things up. But what I'm saying is very similar to what the 'pros' say
