[vanilla] Social Policy: Tradition

[vexing]

Tradition
A closer look at the social policy branch

Introduction

Tradition is one of the three social policy branches available in the ancient era. Choosing the tradition tree opens three policy choices: Aristocracy, Legalism and Oligarchy, with the remaining Landed Elite and Monarchy requiring Legalism. Although the game claims "Tradition is best for small empires," its finisher is one of the best policies in the game for any empire, though the prerequisite policies are less than stellar.

The Policies

• Tradition
• Aristocracy
• Legalism
• Oligarchy
• Landed Elite
• Monarchy
• Finisher

General Use

• Abusing Legalism

The Policies

Tradition
Adopting Tradition greatly increases the rate of border expansion in cities and also grants 3 Culture in the Capital.

In addition to the 3 culture per turn in the capital, this reduces the exponent in the cultural border expansion formula by 0.25. This significantly cuts the amount of culture needed to gain tiles, especially later ones; the 5th expanded tile costs about half as much as without tradition, the 15th about one third. Note that taking tradition purely to get other branches "faster" via the +3 culture does not work. The 3 culture never makes up for the exponentially increasing social policy costs.

Aristocracy
+15% when building Wonders and +1 Happiness for every 10 Citizens in a City.

This production boost works on national wonders as well as regular wonders. The percentage gain stacks additively with other boosts such as marble's +15% or a workshop's +10% . The value of this policy is entirely dependent upon how many wonders are going to be built; in an OCC culture game where most time is spent building wonders it can be a huge boon. The happiness portion adds one happiness for each multiple of 10 a city reaches. Having twenty population 9 cities provides no happiness, having one city with population 30 provides 3 happiness.

Legalism
Provides a free culture building in your first 4 cities.

Grants the highest culture divided by cost building available to be built in each of the first four cities founded or captured. This is generally the earliest technologically available with exceptions for monastery and civs that get unique buildings that produce culture (see list below). Note that this goes by the base raw building culture, so although monasteries end up providing more total culture they are granted after both opera houses and museums. If four cities have not yet been founded or captured, the next cities founded will start with a monument. If there are no culture buildings available in your first four cities, legalism will provide nothing. With less than four cities, capturing a city after getting the policy neither grants that city a monument nor counts against the four total. See the tips on Abusing Legalism below. As with most culture related policies, due to exponentially scaling policy costs Legalism is generally only worthwhile if further policies in the branch will be taken.

Spoiler for Buildings from Legalism in order of precedence:

Monument
Mud Pyramid Mosque (Songhai's temple replacement)
Temple
Burial Tomb (Egypt's temple replacement)
Opera House
Monastery
Museum
Wat (Siam's university replacement)
Mughal Fort (India's castle replacement)
Broadcast tower

Oligarchy
Garrisoned units cost no maintenance and cities with a garrison gain +100% Ranged Combat Strength.

If a city contains a garrisoned unit this changes the bombardment formula such that the damage is doubled (which is slightly different than adding 100% combat strength). This requires some micromanagement to use effectively when using ranged units inside the city; first garrison the unit, then city bombard, then do the ranged attack with the unit which takes the unit out of garrison.

Landed Elite
+10% Growth and +2 in the Capital.
Requires: Legalism

Increases in the capital excess food by 10% and raw food by 2. Can be used directly for growth or be used to shift a citizen to work a production tile without impeding growth. The +10% stacks additively with other modifiers, such as the branch finisher or a we love the king day boost.

Monarchy
+1 Gold and -1 Unhappiness for every 2 Citizens in the Capital.
Requires: Legalism

This can provide a significant amount of happiness and gold with a large capital. The gold gained is modified as normal, such as by a market's +25%. Note that the 50% unhappiness multiplies with other unhappiness reducers, for example each population in India's capital produces 0.25 unhappiness under monarchy.

Finisher
Adopting all Policies in the Tradition tree will grant +15% Growth and +2 in each city.

Increases excess food by 15% and raw food by 2. The crème de la crème of the tradition branch, this policy can be used to increase the growth of all cities, or used to let new cities work production tiles and still grow to size two at least, or can be used to sustain specialists.

General Use

Tradition is one of the staple branches for a culture victory. Aristocracy provides a boost to wonder production and legalism can be used to jump start hermitage production the moment acoustics is researched. It can be a decent choice as a branch to finish straight off. Compared to straight liberty, it excels in situations where high production tiles are available to put citizens to work and enough early gold is available to purchase settlers rather than build (eg playing as Spain or Songhai).

There are a couple basic strategies for finishing the branch optimally:

• Straight through: Rely on a culture ruin to get to the opener, take legalism for a monument, then landed elite, aristocracy or monarchy depending on whether a wonder is being built, finish with oligarchy. Not building a monument frees up a few turns to get started on a granary or worker. Don't fret about not getting a better culture building as this is the fastest way to finish the branch.
• Slight dallying: Delay legalism via mixing with another early policy branch until it will provide temples in a few cities. This is a great approach for Egypt or Songhai (with their temple replacements). With Egypt take Tradition -> Liberty -> Collective Rule, get a few cities set up taking other policies, and when they all have monuments built fire off legalism for a pleasant +8 happiness boost. With Songhai taking Tradition->Honor->Aristocracy->Oligarchy->Legalism can work out: the goal is to fund settlers via camp clearing. This works especially well on epic or marathon speed settings.

Abusing Legalism

Legalism's free culture building can be very useful in a few situations:

Egypt
Egypt can gain its +2 +2 Burial Tomb by having monuments and the philosophy technology. This can provide a very early 8 happiness boost, making Egypt formidable at rapid early expansion.

Siam
Siam's +3 +33% university replacement, the Wat, can be gained by having the education technology as well as monuments, libraries and temples built in the first four cities. With improved wine or incense around a monastery will be gotten instead, and with the acoustics technology an opera house takes precedence. Opening with tradition and waiting to take legalism allows Siam to set up a minor infrastructure investment for a large return; gaining 4 free Wats after education provides an immediate significant research boost.

Culture Victory
Any civ going for a culture victory can get a significant culture boost by saving legalism until acoustics is researched. A four city setup with all the prerequisite culture buildings can instantly have four opera houses, allowing immediate building of the hermitage. This can save a significant number of turns.


Patch version of this article: 1.0.1.383

[vexing]

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[vexing]

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[weregamer]

Abusing Legalism: What to take while waiting for Acoustics?

I really like this approach, but I'm wondering about choices while working toward Acoustics. So far I've been following a culture path with exactly 4 well-spread-out cities early on in many of my games even if I plan to spread more once I have Navigation. (Terra has always been my favorite map in every version of Civ that had it, but I do this on almost any map type.) Usually this means I take Liberty for my "fill-in" policies; the free Settler and Worker, faster workers, reduced penalty for extra cities, and eventual Great Engineer help out even while I'm staying small and eventually the extra happiness helps after I explode.

I have also done a few Cultural victories on Prince with this start, staying small all the way through or sometimes adding some puppets when the AIs insisted that I do so (:-). But I wonder if there is a better approach for those "fill-in" policies when you can't start Piety yet - for example, does early Commerce pay off comparably to early Liberty when you don't plan to switch to a wide empire later, with coastal production and extra happiness?

I'm pretty sure the right side of Honor would work well, even when staying small. With the free garrison maintenance from Oligarchy, the etra 2 culture and 1 happiness per city would be handy, and another happiness from walls.

[vexing]

in an abusing legalism game it's pretty optimal to start with tradition, liberty, and then free settler. askia in particular may want to do tradition then honor openers before starting liberty. for siam or egypt working on filling the rest of liberty for the free GP works well.

for a cultural game you can generally get tradition, liberty, settler, worker and representation before starting on piety. if you use RAs, acoustics can land around the time you're finishing the piety branch.

[DaveMcW]

Originally Posted by vexing

Buildings from Legalism in order of precedence

Monument
Mud Pyramid Mosque (Songhai's temple replacement)
Temple
Burial Tomb (Egypt's temple replacement)
Opera House
Museum
Monastery
Wat (Siam's university replacement)
Mughal Fort (India's castle replacement)
Broadcast tower

Monastery comes before Museum.

[vexing]

Originally Posted by DaveMcW

Monastery comes before Museum.

fixed it. they're at the same cost/culture, i didn't even bother looking for that =0 i guess testing could need to be done to determine the secondary ordering, but it's not overly important

[Tabarnak]

So you can pop up Operas before monasteries from Legalism even if you have wine or incense? Did they changed that from last patch or it was always like this?

Well good news, it's easier than i tought.

[vexing]

Originally Posted by Tabarnak

So you can pop up Operas before monasteries from Legalism even if you have wine or incense? Did they changed that from last patch or it was always like this?

it changed. they reduced the base culture from monastery and modified building costs. previously they'd pop before temples.

[tommynt]

waiting for Museums to Legalism abuse should DEFINATLY pay off in a well played culture game - the 2 Artists slots right away give a significant boost to cult when u need it most times (when cities are big enough to work multiple slots)

overall nerfing the food gain to be applied to nocap cities in finisher was a unneeded hit to Tradition, before going 3-4 into Tradition was a nice "strat" even in multiplayer.
Now for allomst every type off game finishing Liberty is the way to go which is a bit sad as good games offer multiple "best" ways to play

[Tabarnak]

Originally Posted by tommynt

overall nerfing the food gain to be applied to nocap cities in finisher was a unneeded hit to Tradition, before going 3-4 into Tradition was a nice "strat" even in multiplayer.
Now for allomst every type off game finishing Liberty is the way to go which is a bit sad as good games offer multiple "best" ways to play

Yeah i don't know why they did that. Same for sp mode. Liberty is superior in any cases now. Unless you just want to have ''fun''.

[binhthuy71]

This production boost works on national wonders as well as regular wonders. The percentage gain stacks additively with other boosts such as marble's +15% or a workshop's +10% .

Just to be sure that I understand this correctly, does the fact that the bonuses stack additively mean that if I take Aristocracy, have an improved Marble resource, and I build a Workshop, my cumulative bonus when building Wonders is 40% in that city?

I have been taking the Tradition opener, then the Honor opener (Barb farming for Culture and promotions), then taking the Liberty opener before I begin filling out the Liberty tree.

Under Abusing Legalism, I have held off taking Legalism until Opera House became available. I have also tried holding off taking it until Museums and even Broadcast Towers. Now I'm beginning to think that taking it for Temples may be best. The cumulative effect of 3CpT game long seems to yield more Culture in total than a later game boost of 4CpT. It also seem to me that the 100 cost of a Temple during the Classical Era comes at a much higher opportunity cost than the 200 cost of the Opera House during the Renaissance Era.

[vexing]

Originally Posted by binhthuy71

Just to be sure that I understand this correctly, does the fact that the bonuses stack additively mean that if I take Aristocracy, have an improved Marble resource, and I build a Workshop, my cumulative bonus when building Wonders is 40% in that city?

yes

Under Abusing Legalism, I have held off taking Legalism until Opera House became available. I have also tried holding off taking it until Museums and even Broadcast Towers. Now I'm beginning to think that taking it for Temples may be best. The cumulative effect of 3CpT game long seems to yield more Culture in total than a later game boost of 4CpT. It also seem to me that the 100 cost of a Temple during the Classical Era comes at a much higher opportunity cost than the 200 cost of the Opera House during the Renaissance Era.

the goal with legalism for a culture game isn't just to get the opera houses, it's to get the opera houses at a time when your build queue can be filled by many other important things like hermitage and sistine chapel; that the opera houses are prerequisites of the hermitage is a key point here. if the timing doesn't work out, and if RA signing is such that you'll be getting archaeology for museums soon anyway saving it for museums can be a valid approach too. saving legalism for broadcast towers will be suboptimal, you'll be much better off using it sooner and saving gold for broadcast towers.

getting up temples early should be relatively easy and your 3 cpt game long is irrelevant as it's only 3 cpt over the turns over the turns before you'd have built the temples.

if you're referring to using legalism in a non culture game, you generally shouldn't be unless you're finishing tradition for the food bonus. the raw culture gains never catch up to exponentially increasing policy costs.

[binhthuy71]

vexing, thank you for the clarification. Thank you also for pointing out the holes in my strategy and for explaining the context of taking Opera Houses with Legalism rather than delaying for a more expensive Culture building.

If I keep hanging around I may actually become good at this game.

[ezbutton]

I use to think tradition got nerfed so hard from the previous patches that it was often in my best interest to go liberty first. But after I read this article and tried the straight through strategy, I achieved my highest score yet. I think civs with poor food start bias such as Incans and Iroquois benefit the greatest from this strategy as it gets landed elite very early and helps you focus on food as opposed to culture early thanks in part to legalism putting monuments down into the next two or three cities I settle.

For the delay legalism strat, I often end up popping a GS to sync my policy and opera houses but sometimes I'm without GS or my infrastructure isn't set to pop legalism and have to dabble into freedom. I was wondering what tips or strategies you might have or is it on my part to be more observant of my timeline?

[Smirk]

First off, great article, thanks for posting.

Originally Posted by vexing

getting up temples early should be relatively easy and your 3 cpt game long is irrelevant as it's only 3 cpt over the turns over the turns before you'd have built the temples.

But the same logic applies to Opera Houses, the only difference is that being much further along, roads hooked up, fully developed tiles and higher population etc means you are better able to just buy Opera Houses outright the turn you research it.

Also consider specialists, its a waterfall effect, getting those earlier equates to earlier landmarks. In my opinion, landmarks are the best culture generator in the game. After Sistine/Hermitage, each one you plop is giving you 25 or so culture per turn, and not affecting city growth. Also, its mostly unaffected by difficulty or map etc.

[IronfighterXXX]

Recently I noticed and it is not included in the text that aristocracy doesn't provide +1happiness for every 10 citizens in a puppet city; only in cities you built or annexed.

[MaDaZi]

Hmm, this can be good for Boudicca, if you wait for her Opera House replacement

[FeiLing]

I just noticed something interesting in G&Ks:
-Free culture buildings appear in annexed cities only.
-Free Aqueducts will appear in annexed and puppeted cities.

[The Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by FeiLing

I just noticed something interesting in G&Ks:
-Free culture buildings appear in annexed cities only.
-Free Aqueducts will appear in annexed and puppeted cities.

And here we go again.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=482144