Where to go from here? SE

[Freedom]

Monarch difficulty, Fractal. Pericles. In a winning position, but I need some advice on strategy for the late game...

At the start of the game I scouted a lot of good food resources, stone, marble, and of course with Pericles' philosophical trait it basically SCREAMED specialist economy. So I gave it a go and now I am hot on the heels of liberalism blasting past in techs every single AI.... so what's the problem? Well, I don't really know where to go from here. I can see the writing on the wall for my specialist economy....

-I got a lot of GS'... way more than needed probably. So with nothing for them to really do and liberalism in the bag, I just made a bunch of academies. Now any future GS' are probably going to be wasted, so it is probably optimal to switch over to a more cottage based economy... unfortunately there aren't too many great cottage locations imo...
-Capital has great production but weak commerce, so bureaucracy is probably a waste?
-My pop is very low. I don't know how to avoid this in a SE
-Probably a huge mistake was not waiting to whip Courthouses before switching to Pacifism/Caste. But pop is so valuable in an SE game that it was difficult for me to find good times to use the whip...


Some notes :
-Cyrus went into WHEOOH very early in the game, forcing me to convert Sparta into a military production city way early. I originally intended it to be a cottage city...
-Argos is kind of a lame city, settled pretty much only to snag the stone. I tried to make the best out of it and cottaged some tiles however.
-Early in the game I built a few cottages on the few grass rivers in the capital attempting to make it an all-around good bureau capital, but as time progressed I built Pyramids, Parthenon, TGL, National Epic... so the cottages got neglected.

Obviously I'm in a winning position, but I am unfamiliar with how to properly leverage a SE later in the game. Most worrying is that I have rather low pop and rely entirely on workshops for production. So I have to alternate between generating a GP and producing key infra. BUT GPs are getting relatively useless at this point... Do I continue to invest in a SE (chain irrigation) or do I start to gradually convert into a CE?

Save attached, any tips are welcome.

 

[OmgItsSpam]

Hmmm great scientists shouldn't be wastes...you should settle them?

 

[Loki Strikes]

Bulbing down chemistry line to take steel with lib is always a good play with scientists, and one I make quite often on Immortal, you should have no trouble doing so on Monarch. Can't look at your save right now, but my typical GP usage (always depends though, but this is most common (about 30-40% of my games)) is:

Non philosophical: Academy-bulb philo - double bulb edu - (depending on lib situation) - 3 bulbs on SM/Chem, half research one of em - take steel with lib

With philosophical I will often (30-40% of time with philosophical leaders)
Settle-Academy-previous tech bulb pattern

It always depends, but bulbing for me I will use on beginning renaissance techs too, later GSes after that I use for academies or I push out different GP and just do golden ages or trade missions

With not a lot of AI's a good strategy is to academy first, bulb philo (pacifism <3) and then settle the rest in the academied super science city, this works very well if you have early rep from mids.

Other times you push for 4 early scientists nat with lib, push out merchants instead of scientists for mass upgrade to rifles idk...

Basically the only concrete thing is that you should always know which GP is coming up next, and have a plan for them long before they arrive, you should never receive a GP and think "now what should I do with this"?

 

[GenerallyGreat]

You could always switch to hammers. Once you have chem you will have very good workshops and communism makes them great. Then build wealth/research and a nice army