Bureacracy is netting us a mere 22 commerce and 8.5 production per turn. In a golden age. The commerce goes through an average booster of 50%. Most cities have that. It's upkeep is 20 more than FS. I counted 5 towns, which is 10 commerce, which may be just enough to make the civic worth it. There are many more hamlets/villages being worked, though, and the AI lands will probably have some towns in it.
Okay, that argument is fair enough. However, it means that we want to focus on taking over AI Cities to make the switch really worth it. Build units, units, units, units, and more units.
FR probably doesn't need explanation with us still in paganism.
True, Free Religion definitely tips the scale in favour of the early Liberalism (taking Nationalism with it). Fine by me.
That doesn't make the fourth city not worth it. A commerce focused city can easily pay for it's upkeep, as far as I know. Of course, there is no need to keep 6 or more cities, or to keep junk cities.
It's all relative. If we start taking over multiple AI islands, which is what we are set up to do if we can get those units built, then our Maintenance Costs are going to start going through the roof. They might not be too bad on Prince, but that fact doesn't mean that we should be developing bad habits, since I think that one of the goals was to improve the playing style of everyone in the game so that they could feel more comfortable playing on a higher difficulty than they normally do.
The third City on an island which does not contain:
a) Your Palace
OR
b) Your Forbidden Palace
OR
c) Versailles
already starts to costs you a reasonable amount in Colonial Maintenance Costs. The forth City costs a LOT in Colonial Maintenance Costs and actually also increases the Colonial Maintenance Costs of every other City on that island. Check it out yourself. Keeping a fourth City on an island thus very quickly stunts out research rate, as it means having to focus more of our Commerce into Gold, but we have only a few Gold-multiplying buildings (although I do remember whipping a few Markets at least), thereby reducing our return on every Commerce that we take in.
Basically, once you've kept that 4th City on an island, you'll want Courthouses in nearly every City on that island to make up for having kept that 4th City. If the 4th City has 17 or so population, then you might be able justify keeping it due to the fact that you can use a lot of excess population points to whip Courthouses, but even then the population points are focused in a single City instead of spread out amongst multiple Cities.
If keeping said City is the only way to get a unique Resource, it could be justified if said Resource lets many Cities empire-wide to grow 1 size larger, but here, we are Creative, so our borders will expand twice in newly-captured Cities within a reasonable timeframe (3 Culture per turn in Cities with a Religion in them under Paganism or Free Religion). Thus, I wouldn't worry much about missing Resources, as our 3 Cities per island should be able to get any such Resources within our borders quickly.
Yes, "3 Cities per island" is a general guideline and you can often find exception cases to just about any rule or guideline. However, it is a good guideline to get in the habit of following since far more often than not, keeping a 4th City on an island will cost you more than it gains you.
We can bulb steel if we wish to do so - if you set all cities to wealth production for the entire length for the golden age, it would be achieved just after the golden age. This would mean self-teching Nationalism. We could use our cannons + maces to take Persepolis, the MoM city.
Trebs work just as well as Cannons in many cases, due to the way that a Treb's bonus works. As long as we're fighting AI units inside of Cities (which we should be doing in most cases due to us being able to drop armies adjacent to AI Cities thanks to having Galleons), then the two unit types will be roughly the same.
At this point, we want our Hammers to go into unit-building, not Wealth-building. If we had a Great Merchant, then sure, we could use it to execute a Trade Mission for extra Gold. In fact, we could be running Merchant Specialists instead of Scientist Specialists in a City or two, such as our Great Person Farm, to try and generate a Great Merchant or two over time.
Spending our Hammers on Gold is more suitable for a situation when you are BEHIND technologically, such as what often happens on Deity level. We're far enough ahead that we want to focus almost all of our Hammers on units (with exceptions for Granaries and possibly Lighthouses where appropriate).
One less Barracks (i.e. I suggest skipping the building of Barracks until a bit later) means one more unit that can be thrown into battle. I'd rather have 5 more Macemen in a stack of 3 Macemen and 3 Trebuchets and lose 3 of those 5 Macemen in battle while capturing the City two turns after landing (bombard for one turn then attack) than to only have 3 Macemen and 3 Trebs each with 1 extra promotion but being unable to capture a City for about 10 turns.
(remember to set GP farm to full scientists, we don't want a merchant as we can't start a GA with two merchants)
Wait, WHAT??? We have a Great Merchant and Galleons? Well then we should be shipping him off to an overseas AI with a large-population City, as long as we have Open Borders with said AI. The City with The Temple of Artemis in it is probably a good bet, but any large-sized AI City should do the trick.
I'd rather have a couple of more Trade Missions from Great Merchants than run a 2-Great-Person Golden Age. If we really want such a Golden Age, though, we'll want to switch from running Scientist Specialists to other types of Specialists in multiple Cities. I personally wouldn't make it a priority unless General Olaf wants to do a lot of micromanagement and would just keep it simple by running a few Merchant Specialists in 2 Cities that might generate a Great Person before the end of the game.
As I discovered, golden ages boost our research with 100% atm
Which is fine, but what we want are units, units, and units. Units require Hammers, not Science.
Once we finally start capturing the AIs' Cities, you'll find that your business model of staying at a 100% Science Rate is no longer sustainable using Golden Ages, thanks to our increased Maintenance Costs from owning said Cities. However, it might be sustainable due to running Great-Merchant-generated Trade Missions.
We could then go Cuirassiers + cannons to take over the world.
But why? Maces + Trebs + Galleons will be more than sufficient to take over the world. The higher in tech that we go, the more Hammers that each unit will cost, meaning less units.
As I understand it, there is at least one AI without Longbowmen even. The longer that you wait to go to war, the higher the techs that you will face from the AIs. Sure, we can have Cuirassiers and Cannons but then every AI will have Longbowmen and many will have Musketmen. Meanwhile, we would have even less units since each unit would cost more Hammers to produce. So, would we really come out ahead?
Sure, once we get Steel, we can upgrade any Trebs that survived into Cannons, but even doing so is not a priority. The priority is attacking the AIs before THEY advance much in tech level.
As soon as we research Gunpowder, the easier we make it for the AIs to research and trade it around themselves, so the more that we focus on tech, the faster the AIs will catch up in techs, too.
On the other hand, the more that we focus on building big stacks of units (even unpromoted units), the faster the AIs will lose their biggest and best Cities and the slower they will tech.
So: Hammers into units.