Russia social policy

[firstconsul]

Should Russia go tradition or liberty/

[Syailendra]

Is it a rhetorical question? Liberty of course!
Expand like mad, sell every lux copy, but keep the last one. Also sell your abundant strategic res, keep 4 horses and 2 irons for a knight-trebs army.

[joncnunn]

I'm afraid that the current answer is Liberty for every civ on every non-OCC.

It's only at the second policy where how you want to win comes into play.

[BIOGENETIC]

Going further, what's the optimal social policy progression for Russia if you want to get a domination win?

I found another thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=410137

That strongly advocates going Tradition...now I'm confused! I just picked up Civ 5 a few days ago, started as Russia on Prince on Continents with 3 other civs (Greece, India, Siam) and took them all out by turn 125 but went flat broke and couldn't continue playing as I had -20gpt no matter what I did. Starting another game tonight maybe.

Guys, how do I win lol

[A Rabid Dopsis]

They're talking about exploiting a bug, BIOGENETIC.

Liberty is simply the best tree right now because it gives you a free settler, worker, golden age and great person. Nothing can compete.

About your money issues, take puppets and don't annex. After puppeting, build trading posts around the city (particularly on hills and rivers). Connect every city with roads/harbours to create trade routes that bring in cash.

If you go mass puppeting, Piety is a good policy tree in order to get 1 per monument and temple. That helps alleviate all the unhappiness from your subjects. You also get 10% extra gold from temples which is nice.

(First post!)

[binhthuy71]

I vary my strategy according to the map, Civ, and my research path. Sometimes I'll take the Honor opener before starting Liberty. If I am beelining Ironworking, for instance, an early Worker won't have much to do. I always switch newly built cities to food focus so on most maps building farms isn't immediately essential. In most instances the culture you can accrue from Barb farming makes up for the later start on Liberty. There's the added bonus that your troops gain experience.

I skip Tradition altogether and I open up Piety ASAP. Tradition is, to me, nearly useless unless you have an irresistible urge to build Wonders. I usually let others build Wonders and then I take them away from them.

[joncnunn]

Originally Posted by BIOGENETIC

Going further, what's the optimal social policy progression for Russia if you want to get a domination win?

I found another thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=410137

That strongly advocates going Tradition...now I'm confused! I just picked up Civ 5 a few days ago, started as Russia on Prince on Continents with 3 other civs (Greece, India, Siam) and took them all out by turn 125 but went flat broke and couldn't continue playing as I had -20gpt no matter what I did. Starting another game tonight maybe.

Guys, how do I win lol

Domination:
Liberty first; then Honor

Probably doesn't matter what you choose after that, but Tradition opener following that would be for more cultural expansion, while Piety would instead be if you wanted more happiness, and Commerce right side would be if you wanted to save money on road maintenance, while Commerce left side would be if you wanted increased production in coastal cities.

As to going broke after conquering other civs, you probably captured too many workers. When there's nothing for them to do, disband some. But first have them trade post the lands around the puppet cities you conquered, starting with river tiles.

Also you may have either not built any trade route or alternatively might have built too many roads. (That's things like roads to nowhere [such as a resource] if your used to Civ IV; in Civ V you don't need a road to access those. Or can be a road whose route doesn't come close to paying for itself [a road to a pop 2 city])
Normal way to stay afloat is surplus luxury & resource sells, but it sounds like you killed all potential trading partners already.

[pspboy7]

Tradition has to many specific abilities, bonus to wonder building is nice, but that's easy to get around. Defence benefit is nice too, but is also easy to work around, and free culture building is better left for later when you build prerequisite monuments or temples when it really pays off. By then a full liberty tree will pay even bigger dividends.