I'm sorry, I just don't understand this concept. Forgive me, I'm probably being ******ed, but can you explain this as if you were explaining it to a beginner player? I have a feeling that the concept behind this piece of advice is somehow central to explaining my bad play.
So the idea is to finish Tradition and then go into Piety? Does this strategy depend on getting an easy pantheon? You say 5 holy sites, but surely this means more than 5 prophets, since you use the first to found the religion and 2nd to enhance, right? Can you explain a bit more about this?
The reason is that so far, I've managed (while attempting to build towards a CV) to get a decent religion OR decent culture per turn. It seems that you're saying Piety is a great way of getting culture per turn because of the finisher, but if you're doing tradition first, won't it be a bit late?
Sorry to make you explain yourself. I'm sure most other people get it first time.
Well, let me put it this way: do not research techs in which you will have no immediate use. The stupidest thing to do is to, say, bulb a GS for ironworks if your cities are 10 turns away from finishing workshops for example, or get Acoustics for Sistine and opera houses when your empire desperately needs Circus Maximus.
Generally, when you work hammers (immediate result) you lose food (investment for future hammers) and vice versa, but Incas can have these amazing tiles which are, say 3-5 food and 2 hammers or something which allows small cities to get up to speed VERY fast, growing at lightning speed while still working high-production tiles. (a lot of times faster than their natural border expansion) I find that my satellites, if well placed, hardly slow down my national wonders at all so my capitol can build the wonders pretty much the time I get the tech.
If you play Magic the gathering or Hearthstone or some similar games, think of your hammers as your mana source, and your science as creatures or spells you play. Powerful cards (late game techs/wonders/WC stuff) require lots of mana (hammers, and city size in general); you can have a hand full of powerful cards but without the mana to cast it, you are screwed when facing early aggro. (you beelined and got education t80-90, but so what? It's useless if your capitol is size 8 without the gold or pop to work the science slots and take 15 turns for university... while your satellites are still size 5... in that case you'd be best to reach the tech 10 turns later and let your capitol grow a bit more)
Another example, say, you decide to play a "ramp deck" where you get a source of burst mana to cast something big (however, sometimes it is best to leave some mana untapped to be able to play instants/interrupts on the opponents' turn); I.E. you sell all your gpt to a friend for lump sum to rush-buy universities, even in your size 6-7 cities. 5 turns later and your non-friend neighbor shows up with his armies on your borders, and since lump sum cannot be traded to a non-friend, and your gpt is now zero, you cannot bribe him. You and your empire gets wiped out just for the sake of trying to hasten that win turn by a handful of turns.
Of course, you'd have the opposite problem where your hand is all lands without anything to cast with the mana. That would equate to having nothing to build because your are waiting for the tech you want. I find this tends to happen in late game a bit more; nothing left to build, with techs like electronics, atomic theory and whatnot while going peaceful. In which case you'd best to bulb GS around here just to not waste the hammers. etc.
So ideally, you'd want a nice curve (a mix of small and big cards with the small cards ideally being drawn early and the bigger cards being drawn exactly when you have the mana for it), the meaning in CIV is that that your cities' capacity is in a linear relationship with your tech rate such that you have the hammers exactly when you need it and you don't waste excess hammers building meaningless things when you could just be growing.
For SV, the hammer requirement is much lower than CV, with basically only the science buildings required, so you see most people beeline techs with reckless abandon because it's quite obvious what to build first and last. CV however, means you juggle between working farms for growing, and hammers for grand temple, hermitage, ironworks, circus maximus, troops, world wonders, archaeologists, factories, WF and IG etc. , while keeping enough "reserves" for emergencies (I like to keep some copies of my luxes, or gpt for bribes, or to trade for WLTKD/CS quests, or sometimes my friends will ask for a free lux copy which I usually will agree to, enabling me to keep the friendship to the end of the game despite ideologies, so don't sell everything just because you can!) so keeping the curve is crucial.
For Poland, just go like normal tradition with maybe piety opener/+faith from shrine temples if you need, and you get 3 free SP (one from entering Classical, Medieval, and Oracle) which is generally enough to have full tradition and religious tolerance by the time other civs finish tradition without Oracle for example (depends on if your pantheon gives culture or not). This strat kinda requires the pantheon to be faith-generating (preferably DF or tears of the gods/stone circles/other +2 faith pantheons) such that you can found religion without piety finisher.
