ya that's what I decided when playing last night. Plus the extra culture helps put 2 or so policies into Patronage while waiting for rationalim which are really really useful. After that, you've got scholasticism as an alternative/addition to the science from factories policy in order. I also think it works much better than the legalism trick imo.
If you intend to complete rationalism, imo order is a much better choice, there'll be no time to finish freedom, which is the only real big bonus (opener is decent but order is stronger unless you only have time for 1 policy, in which case the freedom opener won't be working for very long anyway). Are you suggesting filling out freedom before rationalism? Sounds....odd, though admittedly I never tried it for a SV game. Rationalism just seems so much better. Would certainly only try it if I were on a culture blinder as well. Rationalism opener and 3 left side policies just seem too strong to ignore for any length of time, and finisher is way way to strong to risk not getting or mistiming.
I was looking at filling Tradition, then getting Rationalism unlock and the first left policy, maybe the second, then filling out Freedom entirely. If I was playing a higher difficulty game I would say go down the entire left tree of Rationalism, however, especially at my current difficulty the AI almost never helps with RA's anyway. I tend to play Prince because I play with friends a lot and they hate the thought of going higher, although I would personally like to at least try and get myself up to Emperor.
You would miss out on two free techs, a boost from RA's, and some happiness/gold. You might also miss 17% university boost and the science from trading posts. Of course I never cared about the trading post boost anyway, I always build farms or production boosters.
Now, if you only put two policies into Rationalism (unlock and Secularism), maaaaaybe even only one point for the initial unlock, what you could get is:
-An even higher birth rate for great people which would work one of two ways, focused entirely on scientists if you did not take Secularism, or helping you pump out a plethora of random GPs. Not sure which is better here honestly.
-You would also get what looks like a significant culture boost from +2 for each wonder. You're going to be ahead in tech, at least at my current difficulty setting, so you should get most if not all wonders ahead of the AI
-Specialists only eating half food and creating half as much unhappiness. This seems to make me think Freedom would be better for Korea instead of Babylon since you could fill out every specialist slot and be getting +4 science per (with Secularism) and they would cause very little drain on your food.
-You're playing tall so the +33% damage to cities would be a huge help, and with Tradition giving you even more damage I think it would be quite hard to take out your cities.
-Free Speech is nice but not important right now, it is a gold boost though
The big one here is +100% effectiveness on GP tile improvements. In theory, especially with Babylon, you could be adding another 100-200 science per turn upon completion of Freedom. I don't know if that would balance out the loss of two free techs in Rationalism, but it seems like the policies in Rationalism would not give you the same value as the policies in Freedom.
If I was playing as Korea I would say Freedom hands down, Secularism, Civil Society, and Democracy would be a huge increase. Still not sure if it would beat out Babylon though, +4 per specialist, maybe ten specialists per city, is only +40 bpt. If you finish up Freedom you could get +40 from only two planted GS's. It would take a lot of cities, more of a wide game than a tall game I think. With enough cities Korea would outdo Babylon I think, but not if both played tall.
Anyway, I'm not an expert in this game (far from it) but it seems like Freedom has a lot to offer a tall science nation, possibly even more than Rationalism and Order. I would love to hear from more experienced players though.
