Tips for Emperor level?

I find the biggest drawback of Feudalism that it comes later. But if you've got it available and you're still in Despotism it is worth analysing the situation. I recommend looking at the economy tab of CivAssist for that. Comparing Feudalism with Monarchy is easy, as they both have the same contribution to science and the same MP allowance (3 units per town). So you can simply look at how many units each government would support, and pick the government that'll save you the most money. War weariness should hardly be a factor if you're stronger than your opponants.
Comparing with Republic is more difficult, as that's quite a different animal.

Regarding the cats to trebs upgrade: I've never noticed much difference between the two types of units, so in itself this upgrade may not be value for money, but looking at the whole upgrade line cat > treb > cannon > artillery it does come as interesting. You don't want to still be carrying around catapults in the Industrial Age! You do want to upgrade your artillery, even if the first step is not that fantastic - it doesn't cost more if you're upgrading in more steps, by the way.

 

Well, in the attack on Cuzco, my Catapults were pants. 8 Catapults, 3 Trebuchets - each Trebuchet caused a hit point of damage on the enemy units, none (and I mean NONE AT ALL) of the Catapults did anything, even after the Trebuchets.

I like growing my cities, so Feudalism might be out the window. I have a choice now between Monarchy and Republic (yep, got the latter via my Great Library), but with a 7-turn Anarchy...well...I have to be certain.

 

It is hard to give a blank piece of advice on upgrading bombardment units. In some games you may have so much excess cash that you upgrade for the heck of it. Most of the time I will not upgrade anything, except some cannons.

It is very expensive to get them to artillery, even with Leo's ( I am unlikely to have it). I will just build new things. Cats in AA, Trebs in MA, then cannon near the end of age. Artillery as soon as I get the tech.

There are so many scenarios that break this, most common for me, ships bombarding me. I will often upgrade whatever I have to get up some artillery to drive some of those boats away.

The only other case that I run into enough to remember is siege of my towns. It is often worth my cost to get a few upgrades to ping incoming two tiles away. Then they may have to retreat, rather than attack.

To me this is another one of the things that you just have to evaluate each time it comes up. The stiffer the game, the less you can use Rules Of Thumb, unless it comes up in all your games in the same situations.

 

That's true, but during the Industrial age 356 gold is a lot less than in the Ancient age. That's also something you need to factor in.

You generally want to get rid of 356 gold asap in the AA because of threats/demands from other Civs. But you're better off using it to buy techs, or workers, or run high science with deficit or upgrade other units.

 

I'd just like to say that yesterday, I switched to Republic. I made a save at the end of the last turn before leaving Anarchy, in order to check out Republic, Monarchy and Feudalism. It turns out, even with my military support, that Republic offers me greater wealth.

 

You can also use the Economy tab in CivAssist II to check those without having to actually switch governments. Republic is generally considered the best all-around government and that commerce bonus goes a long way. Republic can be a little more "fiddly" than Monarchy, because of the WW, but it's really durable enough for all but particularly war-heavy games.