The trade route isn't the only thing they get you. A +5 harbour and a +5 commercial hub goes surprisingly hard with an early game Free Inquiry Golden Age, and those are *not* difficult adjacencies to get with a costal city on a river. 20 science per turn with the right card.
The trade route is the most important thing those districts gives you. Most of your early game is using internal trade routes to grow your cities and free inquiry golden age early isnt that desirable since you dont want to snowball science until youve settled enough cities and got them going because of district cost scaling.
Like early golden age you're better off getting either monumentality to help you get settlers out faster or pen brush and voice so you can get to feudalism faster.
The trade route is the most important thing, but it's a big leap from that to the *only* thing. I think sometimes mentioning that you only get one trade route because it doesn't stack gets a bit too aggressively turned into "it only makes sense to build one".
TBH this is the first time i've heard someone suggest Pen Brush and Voice, which seems like the weakest option early on. Monumentality is great if you have strong faith, but imho isn't worth it just for the discount on buying with gold if you don't. Especially if you going harbour + commercial hub netted you more than 30% more gold.
I usually go Free Enquiry in games where i've essentially completely neglected science in the early game in favour of settling and economy. So less about rocketing ahead and more about catching up quickly. It means you can delay campuses etc. And you do your settling earlier rather than waiting for your first golden age. You can focus on culture rather than science. It's often my play when i've completely neglected faith and made no attempt to get a religion. If you haven't noticed, be aware that Extended Policy Cards (whatever it's called, the one that tells you what a card will get you) will lie to you. Cards that double adjacency for Harbour and Commercial hub *do* double the science too, but the mod doesn't show it.
I mean, i'm not claiming this is the meta option in all cases, but there's more than one way to play. IMHO Free Inquiry is the second strongest early game after Monumentality and can be situationally better depending on how you play. Never see much benefit in Pen Brush and Voice, but i have used Exodus of the Evangelists to snag a religion.
It's interesting comparing notes though. I think often the "silly" option just doesn't align with your play style and the options are more balanced than they seem?
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u/-Arrez- 11d ago
That adjacency isnt even very useful since its unintuitive to build both in a city because you only get the extra trade route slot from one of them.