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[Archon_Wing]

Well T3/t4 also suffer a tourism penalty and also relations penalty for different governments, so they're generally bad ideas anyways until the AIs switch.

But then given that I still would never pick t4 unless they were also it. But CV/RV usually don't go on for that long anyways.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

While I agree that the inherent bonuses of the T3 governments are better than the T4 ones, those extra card slots far outweigh the cost for most victory types.

The one thing I really dislike however, is that with the added focus on faith in GS (for RV or CV win types), the T2 government Theocracy is by far one of the strongest governments, even when considering that it sucks for card slots.

Had a Deity game yesterday, playing for a CV with BM Teddy.
It wasn't until the absolute very end (when I didn't need to faith buy Naturalists, and generally was so close to victory that I didn't need to faith buy more rock bands) that I bothered slotting in Digital Democracy (as well as for the extra tourism cards).
I never even bothered to slot in a T3 government - I mean, why would I?
Up until then it's all about buying enough Naturalists and Rock Bands (and the odd builder for seaside resorts), possibly Cultists if playing with SS mode on, and that -15% faith cost is immense (and keeps getting better the more you buy faith units, since the discount in absolute faith terms gets bigger and bigger).

Personally I'd remove or tweak the -15% faith discount from Theocracy, as the bonus is simply too good to pass up in RV/CV games until the very end.
This government alone nearly makes any government after it obsolete, and it really shouldn't be like so.

Theocracy is a very strong government yes, be it for cultural victory via Naturalists and Rock Bands or Domination via faith buying units. But you should eventually switch to Democracy during a culture victory, unless enough of the opposing civs are in Theocracy. This is because Democracy has the lowest negative tourism modifier for different governments (and you also benefit a lot from trade routes to allies). It's tricky for me to know when exactly this switch is optimal but there does come a time where the faith reduction is less impactful. I usually just spend down all my faith on the turn before Democracy is unlocked and then switch.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Theocracy is a very strong government yes, be it for cultural victory via Naturalists and Rock Bands or Domination via faith buying units. But you should eventually switch to Democracy during a culture victory, unless enough of the opposing civs are in Theocracy. This is because Democracy has the lowest negative tourism modifier for different governments (and you also benefit a lot from trade routes to allies). It's tricky for me to know when exactly this switch is optimal but there does come a time where the faith reduction is less impactful. I usually just spend down all my faith on the turn before Democracy is unlocked and then switch.

Yeah it is tricky to know and not to be taken as gospel.
In my last game however, none of the contenders went for a T3 government early and some were still stuck with Theocracy, so overall I just stayed there.
My general train of thought is that the T3 government is quite unimportant at that stage in the game, since while it might give a better inherent tourism modifier, base tourism is still rather low at that point (the real kickers tourism modifier-wise, as in policy cards and Online Communities, arrive in the Information Era).
This meant that I figured I might as well keep churning out naturalists under Theocracy to further invest into base tourism, before getting the late game modifiers where I might as well just skip right to T4 in order to get sufficient card slots for said modifiers anyway.
That might of course change if most others are at T3 as well, but it's a delicate choice to make when you've still got investing to do.

TL;DR:
Overall rather disappointed with T3 for culture, even if they are solid picks for all the other win conditions.
If I still have a long way to go on investing into base tourism, I'll stick to Theocracy for as long as possible.

 

[Archon_Wing]

This is because Democracy has the lowest negative tourism modifier for different governments

This is no longer true as of Gathering Storm. It's a flat -20% for t3 governments and -40% for t4s.

 

[chazzycat]

I just wish there was some kind of successor policy to the "new deal" card, to avoid the big hit on housing when switching out of democracy.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

This is no longer true as of Gathering Storm. It's a flat -20% for t3 governments and -40% for t4s.

Oh that's unfortunate. I kinda liked that aspect.