I need some advice on how best to use the Tradition tree when going tall. Here's some background info. I'm playing as India on Small Continents (started on my own mid-sized continent), standard size and speed, Emperor difficulty. Plan to go tall (3-5 cities on my continent, possibly 1 or 2 extra if there are any nearby islands worth settling). Went for a GL/NC start and probably looking to go for a science victory.

My starting build was scout, monument, worker, Great Library. That finished on ~ turn 46, got Philosophy as a free tech. I picked up culture from a ruin so got my first policy choice (IIRC) on ~ turn 12. Opened Tradition. With Tradition open and my monument complete I was running at 6 culture per turn and so the next few policies were gained quickly. I chose Aristocracy (+ wonder speed) as my second policy to help my Great Library build.

Now my problem is the 3rd and 4th policies would be unlocked before the Great Library was ready, so if I used purely Tradition I would have to take Legalism before temples were available, losing the free culture building in my capital. (Firaxis, please fix this bug :() Therefore I chose to divert into Liberty. I took the opener as my 3rd policy and Citizenship (free worker) as my 4th. However, now I have the dilemma of whether to move back to Tradition now temples are available or, since Liberty is now open, to take Collective Rule (free settler) and/or Representation (-33% SP increase from founding cities).

So, firstly, did I do the right thing in opening Liberty? If not then how is it best to avoid the problem of Legalism? Should I have not built the monument and/or avoided ruins to slow down my culture? Do I need to tech Philosophy sooner? Should I have just taken Legalism anyway, even though I wouldn't have got a free building in my capital?

Secondly, given where I am now, what should my next policies be? My 5th policy will be ready at about the same time as the National College finishes, so I'm considering getting the free settler from Collective Rule and then building one or two more settlers to do a mini REX. Then I could build monuments in these cities and take Legalism as the 6th policy (or 7th policy if the monuments aren't ready, in which case I could take Representation or Oligarchy as the 6th policy). My concern is that Tradition won't be filled out until much later than I'd planned - sort of defeating the point of trying to boost early growth.

I guess, finally (for those of you who have read this far), I'd welcome any thoughts on my opening strategy. In particular, I often wonder whether I leave my expansion till too late. Would I be better ignoring the GL/NC and just pumping out a few early settlers?

Advice would be greatly appreciated! :)

TL;DR - when going tall with Tradition, is it best to avoid Liberty? If so, when do you take Legalism?

I think the problem you are having is thinking of the policy trees and needing to be finished. If you read the War Academy, you will find that a lot of players will take some policies in a particular tree but leave others. One example is when going for a Science VC, it is advisable to take the left side of Rationalism and the right side of Freedom.

The only time it is necessary to finish each policy tree that you open is when you are going for a Cultural VC. Otherwise, mixing and matching policies which help you is often better than trying to finish each tree that you open.

I think the problem you are having is thinking of the policy trees and needing to be finished.

But for a tall empire surely you need to finish Tradition - the finisher is the one that gives you the extra food and growth.

I play mostly peaceful cultural VC or science VC games so I deal with this regularly. Since you're wanting to use a GL slingshot I'd say start Tradition, grab Aristocracy, and then go Liberty until you have 3-4 cities for Legalism. I would save it for Opera Houses if it were me.

A pretty simple way to get to Acoustics quickly is to use the Theology slingshot with the GL, beeline Acoustics, build Oracle, and then build Hagia Sophia and use the free GP for a GS and bulb Civil Service, and then start building PT. You can use the GP from Liberty finisher to get a GE to rush PT (is that enough acronyms?), then use the free GS to bulb Acoustics. Properly executed this should be completed around or before turn 100 (just depending on RNG). Then you can use Legalism for Opera Houses. This works great for science or cultural VC's.

Good luck!

Finishing Tradition is a good idea. Finishing Tradition before opening up Liberty is not necessary though. Finishing both Tradition and Liberty while playing with only 3-5 cities may delay other policies which would be much more helpful. My point was to look at all of the options and not necessarily think of each Policy tree as a group which needs to be finished in a particular order.

I often open Tradition and then come back to pick up Legalism for Museums in my first four cities. When playing Siam, you can get Wats (UB replacement for the University) by abusing the Legalism mechanic as well. There are a lot of good strategies where you open a tree and then come back later. There are also good strategies where you open a policy tree intending to take only 1 or 2 policies and not ever come back to finish it.

I play mostly peaceful cultural VC or science VC games so I deal with this regularly. Since you're wanting to use a GL slingshot I'd say start Tradition, grab Aristocracy, and then go Liberty until you have 3-4 cities for Legalism. I would save it for Opera Houses if it were me.

A pretty simple way to get to Acoustics quickly is to use the Theology slingshot with the GL, beeline Acoustics, build Oracle, and then build Hagia Sophia and use the free GP for a GS and bulb Civil Service, and then start building PT. You can use the GP from Liberty finisher to get a GE to rush PT (is that enough acronyms?), then use the free GS to bulb Acoustics. Properly executed this should be completed around or before turn 100 (just depending on RNG). Then you can use Legalism for Opera Houses. This works great for science or cultural VC's.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. My concern though is that it will take much longer to get to the Tradition finisher. For a culture victory your advice seems to make sense (in fact it's broadly similar to what I did in my last game when I got a culture victory), but for a science victory does the benefit of getting 4 opera houses outweigh the cost of delaying Landed Elite and the Tradition finisher? Also, won't it mean that Rationalism will become available before I finish Tradition? If so should I delay Tradition further in order to pick up some Rationalism policies? As I said above, my concern is that leaving the Tradition finisher so late will reduce its usefulness.

Finishing Tradition is a good idea. Finishing Tradition before opening up Liberty is not necessary though. Finishing both Tradition and Liberty while playing with only 3-5 cities may delay other policies which would be much more helpful. My point was to look at all of the options and not necessarily think of each Policy tree as a group which needs to be finished in a particular order.

I often open Tradition and then come back to pick up Legalism for Museums in my first four cities. When playing Siam, you can get Wats (UB replacement for the University) by abusing the Legalism mechanic as well. There are a lot of good strategies where you open a tree and then come back later. There are also good strategies where you open a policy tree intending to take only 1 or 2 policies and not ever come back to finish it.

Thanks Mesix. I realise that trees don't need to be finished once they are opened - maybe I gave a different impression. My thoughts were that for a tall empire, Landed Elite and the Tradition finisher should be early targets, and therefore delaying these by opening Liberty may be sub-optimal. Unfortunately, with the way that Legalism currently works, it seems difficult avoid delaying them without wasting Legalism.

Yeah you'd want to change that up for science. Start with Writing so you can build the GL ASAP (if you beeline Education right away, it will take you through Calendar before Writing) then beeline Education. If you want to utilize Legalism a bit more you can go Tradition, Aristocracy, Liberty, and Collective Rule. Steal a worker from the nearest CS and buy a settler ASAP (between your scouts finding money goodie huts and CS's and selling off open borders and excess luxes you should be able to buy one fairly early). You should be able to get 3 cities up before GL is finished. It will just be a matter of balancing happiness. Once 3 cities are up use Legalism (probably for temples). Once GL is finished the slingshot Theology, build the Oracle, which can help you finish Tradition before Rationalism opens up. You can use the free GP from HS to bulb Education and you should be far enough ahead of the AI not to worry about them building PT before you.

It's a good idea to do a bit of warmongering earlier on so you can puppet a few cities, fill their tiles up with trading posts, to fuel Free Thought.

Anywho, hopefully this helps, have fun!

the no free culture building if you already have monument built isn't a bug.

even going tall, liberty is a better overall tree than tradition. the early free settler and discount on producing them are stronger than the things available in tradition.

if you want to plow through tradition anyway to do something different, you generally shouldn't switch branches (unless there's a good reason to, ie honor opener with germany or songhai, or delayed legalism for egypt)

given that you have two basic choices: don't build a monument, start scout, scout, hit a culture ruin and take legalism as second policy. i think you can get it as early as turn 10 with an early culture ruin. this frees up your queue to build a worker, and allows for landed elite as 3rd policy for a nice growth boost.

second choice is delay building monument a little bit so you have enough time to get to philosophy before fourth policy, and take aristocracy and oligarchy in the meantime. i prefer the first method; the sooner to landed elite, the better.

I agree with vexing. I find Liberty to be the best tree even with a tall empire. The free settler and worker (and faster build times) plus free GP is too powerful to pass up. However, it is definitely viable to go Tradition and not take any Liberty policies, even on Deity. In that case I would not delay Legalism and would take it for free monuments so as to get to Landed Elite ASAP. Build order would be scout - worker - granary (until Writing is finished) - switch to GL - finish granary - NC - settler (or settler - NC and buy a library for city 2). It's not like you are wasting Legalism by taking free monuments as you will be getting your additional cities up and running faster with the monument plus Landed Elite. When playing a civ that has a big benefit by gaming Legalism (e.g., Siam for free wats) I would highly favor the Liberty plan over Tradition to start.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm surprised that you think Liberty is better than Tradition for tall empires given that Tradition is supposedly designed for tall empires. Is that the general consensus?

Vexing, I have to disagree with you about Legalism. Maybe bug is the wrong word but I do not think it currently operates the way it should. However, that's off topic and it's been discussed elsewhere so I won't argue about it here.

Pretty much ever start, be it Tall, wide, peaceful, or domination, tends to dabble in Liberty for the settler and worker, so I'd say that it's probably the general consensus. I know that I tend to pop them for my 1st-3rd or 2nd-4th policies in every game.

I'm surprised that you think Liberty is better than Tradition for tall empires given that Tradition is supposedly designed for tall empires. Is that the general consensus?

The problem comes from the last patch. Before that, Tradition was be able to compete with Liberty thanks to the great Landed Elite policy available as the 3rd pick. Now, to get this bonus, you have to complete the whole tree.

More funnier, before last patch the Tradition tree was stronger than Liberty for wide empires!(mainly because happiness was more abundant early on).

These 2 trees are unbalanced and need to be revamped. Liberty is always the best decision. Certainly not the best decision taken from The Frankenstein team, devs, etc.

Case where Tradition still better than Liberty: OCC

But anyways if your planning on geting both Liberty & Tradition trees, then Liberty is the one to complete first.

That free settler & worker along with cheaper future settlers are worth more taken early; the growing tall can wait until second; if anything that just increases the value of the cultural buildings you get from legalism.

Thanks for the replies. Looks like I'll worry less about Tradition in future then. :)

Case where Tradition still better than Liberty: OCC


Yep it's the only exception.

spain with luck could to get away with pure tradition, as buying settlers becomes a reasonable route.
songhai could do tradition -> honor opener then fill tradition, buying settler(s) with encampment proceeds, with legalism as 5th policy for mpms

whether these end up stronger in the end vs using liberty is questionable, but they seem reasonable alternatives.

I'm thinking Songhai is better with Liberty on the maps I play.
The barb notification isn't really needed; much of the ones the policy tells you about that other sources wouldn't tell you soon enough are so far away as to not be helpful.

And that cash is probably better applied towards other stuff in his case since he's only getting 135 gold at a time. The other stuff being what you normally do with spare cash, he just peroidically gets more of it with ranging barbs on.

As to spain and luck, in many cases some of those natural wonders if discovered soon enough to make a difference in the policy tree amount to a "Win Now" button unless playing on a higher difficultly level than normal.

spain with luck could to get away with pure tradition, as buying settlers becomes a reasonable route.
songhai could do tradition -> honor opener then fill tradition, buying settler(s) with encampment proceeds, with legalism as 5th policy for mpms

whether these end up stronger in the end vs using liberty is questionable, but they seem reasonable alternatives.