You may be right about Representation, at least on Huge maps. It does pay for itself at minimum, though, so if that means an extra endgame Great Person it may be worth it.
Ignoring Collective Rule means totally rethinking the early game. It looks like you emphasize Collective Rule pretty heavily, but the way I play, I often don't actually make big use of it. I'm in the midst of a 10-city Spain game (which should finish the tech tree by t175 -- don't know if I'll be able to get the Order endgame right for sub-180 though) that provides a nice illustrative example. In this game I cash-bought five Settlers, got one free with Collective Rule, and built three in the capital. This means Collective Rule only contributed about 500 gold and 100 hammers, which is good, but not gamebreaking when it comes after t30.
I know that cash-buying Settlers feels terribly inefficient when you're using Collective Rule, but I don't think that matters much next to raw city-spamming speed. Earlier cities pay back the inefficiency pretty fast. Obviously a Spain game isn't a universally applicable example, but there are other things you can do -- e.g., my Spain game didn't build any Settlers in expos. An early Citizenship Worker could give you some extra chops for these if you have any forest-heavy areas to plant expos.
I think the typical "no Collective Rule" opening would take Liberty, Republic, then Citizenship/Piety as the next two policies. Those are all valuable early-game efficiency policies (provided you have a Temple-heavy gameplan), so it's not like you aren't getting anything from taking a different policy over Collective Rule.
Ignoring Collective Rule means totally rethinking the early game. It looks like you emphasize Collective Rule pretty heavily, but the way I play, I often don't actually make big use of it. I'm in the midst of a 10-city Spain game (which should finish the tech tree by t175 -- don't know if I'll be able to get the Order endgame right for sub-180 though) that provides a nice illustrative example. In this game I cash-bought five Settlers, got one free with Collective Rule, and built three in the capital. This means Collective Rule only contributed about 500 gold and 100 hammers, which is good, but not gamebreaking when it comes after t30.
I know that cash-buying Settlers feels terribly inefficient when you're using Collective Rule, but I don't think that matters much next to raw city-spamming speed. Earlier cities pay back the inefficiency pretty fast. Obviously a Spain game isn't a universally applicable example, but there are other things you can do -- e.g., my Spain game didn't build any Settlers in expos. An early Citizenship Worker could give you some extra chops for these if you have any forest-heavy areas to plant expos.
I think the typical "no Collective Rule" opening would take Liberty, Republic, then Citizenship/Piety as the next two policies. Those are all valuable early-game efficiency policies (provided you have a Temple-heavy gameplan), so it's not like you aren't getting anything from taking a different policy over Collective Rule.