Postponing Civilization Level progression

[Darksky]

Hi,

I am playing with Roman, glorious republic. I am quite happy about my situation: good money and metal flow (that easily sustain my armies), good level of loyalty, good diplomatic situation, CDR under tracking and in good shape.
I was delaying as much as possible reaching the 5 progress token that would let me to progress to empire, till the point that in some turns i was moving pop from culture to other assignment in order to get out from the "green" progress part of the CDR ladder. But it happens situation went out of my hands and I got the option to be "promoted" to Empire.

The point here is that i feel i don't need this now. I would like to post pone it in order to get later a bigger halving of my government age. I want to play this "move" later not now. Is my thought wrong ? Should I aim as early as possible to progress to empire and then aim to golden ages over golden ages ?

[loki100]

you can ignore the option, its a good time to reduce pop-culture allocation and concentrate on other aspects.

you build up age related decadence much quicker so if you are doing this, grab the reduce govt age decision when it comes up - but watch out for the risk of losing a progress token. Now you may not mind (as being reduced to 4 eliminates the decadence increase).

There are real gains to civ 3 (even with the Roman civil wars) but I tend not to take it before t100 if I can help.

Clearly with Rome, if you can, make the transition with a stable territory and then lunge for glorious/III asap.

if 1.04/5 work as intended, going to III too early will now generate end game problems, so holding back should help with this.

[Darksky]

Now you may not mind (as being reduced to 4 eliminates the decadence increase).

About this. Overing the mouse on the button to "upgrade" to empire i read a sentence that says that if I hold in doing this I will get decadence increase. It is not clear but I guess it is related to what you wrote above.
So, If i don't want to "upgrade", in order to not have this decadence increase I should come back to 4 token, right ?

[loki100]

yes its a modifier that kicks in if you have 5 tokens but don't advance. If you drop to 4 then this no longer applies.

so there are a few options around this transition point and how you manage things.