So I take it you're playing in Warlords and so don't have the financial trait for Cathy.
Bureaucracy is an excellent civic, plus it has medium upkeep instead of the high upkeep for Vassalage. I rarely use Vassalage, and if I do it it's only when I'm building my army. Otherwise Bureaucracy and later Free Speech are much better in my opinion.
If you're that low on research then it means a lot of your commerce is turned into gold. As Murky said, you could boost it through markets and banks so that they will allow you to run a higher science rate. Also, look at how much maintenance costs you in each city. If it's pretty high then build a courthouse in there. Also build the Forbidden Palace pretty early if you have that many cities. Try to have two poles in your empire: one in the capital, one in the city with Forbidden Palace, so that you can reduce the "distance" maintenance everywhere. Don't worry now about later conquests, you'll either have enough money from economy/razings to support them, or you could try building/rushing with a Great Engineer the Versailles wonder to create a third pole.
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Some civics remarks:
- if you have a cottage filled or heavy production capital you're probably better off running
Bureaucracy most of the time. (not so if you're farming it for GPs, but you shouldn't do that anyway) And use Theocracy to get 2 more XP for your units for two promotions (with +3 from Barracks). An additional 2 XP from Vassalage won't get you anywhere.
- when building units switch to
war civics: Theocracy (+optionaly Vassalage, maybe for mounted units?), Slavery (if you've been running Caste System) and try to shorten as much as you can the unit building period. Don't be afraid of multiple unhappiness from repeated whips.
- you'll most likely need infrastructure after a period like this to support the troops and the war. Hence using
Organized Religion. Avoid things like: half your cities build infrastructure, half of them build units. You won't make good use of the civics this way.
-
slavery is great for getting infrastructure in newly conquered cities. Many times they are too angry/starving to use their full population, so whipping them to get theaters, courthouses, granaries, etc is your best bet.
- if you're running lots of specialits, consider not expending too much through war. You're better off running
Pacifism to boost your Great Person creation, and that's incompatible with a large army. Remember that it gets harder and harder to get the next Great Person, so at some point Pacifism runs its course. OrgRel, Theo or Free Religion will be better choices.
You might want to try playing with a
Spiritual civ to make best use of the civics changes. Just don't forget to change them.
