I think that you will need to be thinking about your "data" mission and data
specifics with all of these databases as a being the core of answering this
question. (or maybe you have already and didn't describe it to us.)

For example:

Are these different locations editing records that are for the same entity
(e.g. updating data for a particular person at multiple locations)

Are these different locations just adding records, or are they editing
existing records? If it's the latter, what will they be looking at to edit?


Etc.

Once you get those kinds of things decided, then those decision should how
you created your structure.


Replication was, in essence, to manage having, (and, more to the point,
editing on) multiple copies of the same database.