the best civics

[Iranon]

Even without the Kremlin, mature towns with both civic boosts beat every production improvement bar State Property workshops.
Also, gold multipliers are available earlier and don't cause health trouble - with a heavy focus on cottages it's often more efficient to give industrialisation an almost complete miss (excepting cities with the Heroic Epic or Ironworks... possibly one or two more for building spaceship parts).

With the Kremlin, nothing else comes close... except whipping in small cities.

 

[Bostock]

Even without the Kremlin, mature towns with both civic boosts beat every production improvement bar State Property workshops.
Also, gold multipliers are available earlier and don't cause health trouble - with a heavy focus on cottages it's often more efficient to give industrialisation an almost complete miss (excepting cities with the Heroic Epic or Ironworks... possibly one or two more for building spaceship parts).

With the Kremlin, nothing else comes close... except whipping in small cities.

In my opinion, unless you are a genius who forsees every crisis, you need *some* ability to "teleport in" production in crisis points on any given turn. That means either slavery or US. And not having to scramble to keep your cities happy in the late game (+3 happy in 5 cities is chicken feed at that point) because everyone else decided to run Emancipation is pretty nice...

(This meant is on top of your points, not in opposition to them.)

 

[Gwynnja]

In my opinion, unless you are a genius who forsees every crisis, you need *some* ability to "teleport in" production in crisis points on any given turn. That means either slavery or US. And not having to scramble to keep your cities happy in the late game (+3 happy in 5 cities is chicken feed at that point) because everyone else decided to run Emancipation is pretty nice...

(This meant is on top of your points, not in opposition to them.)

By the time you have democracy your cities should be pretty well specialized. If you have a crisis and have to turn your cottage cities into production cities, you may want to work on getting other production cities online earlier.

 

[Ian Kognitow]

By the time you have democracy your cities should be pretty well specialized. If you have a crisis and have to turn your cottage cities into production cities, you may want to work on getting other production cities online earlier.

Those cottage cities still receive significant benefits from late buildings (public transport, recycling center, supermarket, etc...). Both main benefits of US--hammer bonus from towns and rush buying--make it much easier to get them. Even if there is no immediate crisis, why would you want to spend 10+ turns on a recycling center?--better to buy it after a turn or three and reap the immediate health improvement. And besides, if you're making all sorts of gold from cottage towns, what exactly would you be doing with all that money if not in US?

 

[Gwynnja]

Those cottage cities still receive significant benefits from late buildings (public transport, recycling center, supermarket, etc...). Both main benefits of US--hammer bonus from towns and rush buying--make it much easier to get them. Even if there is no immediate crisis, why would you want to spend 10+ turns on a recycling center?--better to buy it after a turn or three and reap the immediate health improvement. And besides, if you're making all sorts of gold from cottage towns, what exactly would you be doing with all that money if not in US?

I'd rather turn my old horse archers into cavalry, turn all my CR III units into rifles, turn all my galleons into transports and triremes and privateers into destroyers. none of that is cheap. Plus, I'd rather have the ~ +20% research from my specialists and just run Rep.

 

[champ82]

Earlier I advocated for Rep over US.

Since then I won my first Emperor game with US / CE - not even as a financial civ.

The great debate continues.