T-hawk, I have been reading over some of your games. Impressive results. I have some suggestions on other things to try.
Firstly, I think you may be underestimating Representation. It makes a significant impact in a wide game. (However, I think the effect does vary with map size, so my analysis may not be correct for what you're doing). On standard size, a ten-city empire will have policy costs at 235% of base cost. Representation reduces that to 190% of base cost. Therefore, a 10-city civ with Representation will have policy costs at about 80% of what a civ without Representation would have. In a normal game, you'll take about 12 policies post-Representation (not counting free policies). If my math is right, that means Representation actually means about 2 extra policies over a full game.
If you're having difficulties finding enough policies, taking Representation would definitely solve it. Of course, there may be diminishing returns on policies, so you might not actually want a full two extra policies. But this may free you up in other ways -- for example, you seem to build Kremlin/SoL a lot, while I often ignore these. And Representation will also mean faster progress through Rationalism in the Renaissance.
One cost of Representation is that it's hard to find a build that grabs it without completing Liberty early. If you prefer to save the Liberty finisher for the endgame, this is a problem. However, there's a build that I think is under-explored that addresses this problem: take all of Liberty except for Collective Rule, and use that as the endgame finisher.
I know Collective Rule is typically seen as the big draw to Liberty, but it is skippable. Liberty still pays out in other ways (Republic may be even better than Collective Rule, fast Workers are great, etc). Skipping Collective Rule can mean either early Citizenship or opening another tree extra-early. I've gotten some promising results with this approach using Egypt Liberty/Piety, so it's something to explore if you're interested in going Jesuit Education.
This does suggest some big changes to early game approach. I prefer rolling for starts that cash-buy a Settler very early -- I like to quickly develop multiple cities so I can distribute Settler building in more than one place. Higher difficulties may be better for this, since AIs have more gold and get plunderable Caravans out early. "Settle on a Mining resource, then get 240 lump-sum gold in a peace deal before t20" is generally what I dream about.
Firstly, I think you may be underestimating Representation. It makes a significant impact in a wide game. (However, I think the effect does vary with map size, so my analysis may not be correct for what you're doing). On standard size, a ten-city empire will have policy costs at 235% of base cost. Representation reduces that to 190% of base cost. Therefore, a 10-city civ with Representation will have policy costs at about 80% of what a civ without Representation would have. In a normal game, you'll take about 12 policies post-Representation (not counting free policies). If my math is right, that means Representation actually means about 2 extra policies over a full game.
If you're having difficulties finding enough policies, taking Representation would definitely solve it. Of course, there may be diminishing returns on policies, so you might not actually want a full two extra policies. But this may free you up in other ways -- for example, you seem to build Kremlin/SoL a lot, while I often ignore these. And Representation will also mean faster progress through Rationalism in the Renaissance.
One cost of Representation is that it's hard to find a build that grabs it without completing Liberty early. If you prefer to save the Liberty finisher for the endgame, this is a problem. However, there's a build that I think is under-explored that addresses this problem: take all of Liberty except for Collective Rule, and use that as the endgame finisher.
I know Collective Rule is typically seen as the big draw to Liberty, but it is skippable. Liberty still pays out in other ways (Republic may be even better than Collective Rule, fast Workers are great, etc). Skipping Collective Rule can mean either early Citizenship or opening another tree extra-early. I've gotten some promising results with this approach using Egypt Liberty/Piety, so it's something to explore if you're interested in going Jesuit Education.
This does suggest some big changes to early game approach. I prefer rolling for starts that cash-buy a Settler very early -- I like to quickly develop multiple cities so I can distribute Settler building in more than one place. Higher difficulties may be better for this, since AIs have more gold and get plunderable Caravans out early. "Settle on a Mining resource, then get 240 lump-sum gold in a peace deal before t20" is generally what I dream about.