Possible science city strategy?

[bernlin2000]

No, it will giv a civ the technological advantage...

But if a Civ has Theocracy +Piety they can maintain more happiness->more pop->more science
or Freedom letting them support more science specialists.

So civs without rationaism will be technologicaly behind... but probably not irrecoverably so.

What you highlight was a scenario where an empire could stick with piety and use the larger city growth to compensate for the loss of research you would get from rationalism. It sounds like switching social policies is something you really want to avoid, I don't think it will be "required" that you switch to rationalism when it is available in order to stay in the tech lead. Just build more cities

 

[remconius]

Some concepts in Civ are more game mechanics than realism, such emprire-wide happiness. Although I must admit Las Vegas is a good example in real life.

Of course, the happiness as population cap is not realistic at all!
In real life there are many unhappy people that do nothing but drink, play lottery and make babies.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

What I would like to know is what does and doesn't remove Jungle. Based on what I'm seeing you can keep the +1 food with plantation improvements and oil wells, but any other improvement (including GP improvements) will destroy the Jungle.

If that is not the case and you can build GP improvements and trading posts you could have a very strong Jungle research city. Drop academies on some tiles and trading posts on others and reap the benefits when you build a university (with +3 food, +2 science, and +2 commerce coming from a trading post. Remove the jungle on hills (with mines) though so you get at least SOME production.