Always One In Tradition?

Hello,

I was planning on doing a domination game. My thought was to go honor --> commerce --> autocratic. I am debating on taking the first sp in tradition though so that I can receive a 3 culture per turn bonus (in order to get other sp quickly). Does the benefit usually outway the cost? Or should I take honor first and forget tradition completely? Your help would be greatly appreciated.

It's pretty much the consensus that taking a policy to get policies is a bad investment. You're better off going all honor. Now if you're going to take the tradition opener for the border pop and to possibly take oligarchy later then it could be worth it. The thing you have to remember is it's the last few policies in honor that are actually good so the earlier you get them the better. Taking tradition first could slow that down unless you've got a UA or pantheon feeding you some extra culture.

Agreed, both Tradition opener and Honor opener to get policies in other trees faster is a very bad investment.

However, I note that Honor is so bad an opening tree that you are much better off starting and finishing Tradition first and only using Honor as a second tree.

Well, since you are choosing Honor, provided that there are heaps of barbs, culture shouldn't be an issue, but gold will be, and the loot from barb encampments won't cover you for long. My best recommendation for that approach would be to produce a trade route as soon as possible to fund your army. As Vic said, you could take tradition to get oligarchy, so then with military tradition you get gold, culture and happiness per garrisoned unit, which will help you when expanding.

Also, don't aim for statue of Zeus, as it isn't worth the hammers.

Taking opener but not finishing finishing the tree is bad investment unless you are Poland or Aztec. Also, liberty domination is much safer than honor. But honor can be more fun so its all up to you.

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If you do get the opener only, do it for the border expansion, not the culture.

Vitruvius said:

Taking opener but not finishing finishing the tree is bad investment unless you are Poland or Aztec.

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Not finishing doesn't really matter much anymore. It can work out really well to cherry pick what you want from other trees. I think dumping 2 policies into tradition to get oligarchy will really help an honor opener who intends to go rationalism instead of commerce. You'll need the garrison happiness since rationalism doesn't have any and the savings on garrisoned units make up for not having the commerce economic boost. Of course if you are going commerce I don't think it's worth it since happiness and gold are good in commerce. If you have a couple extra policies there it works out well to just get free thought from rationalism and then move on to ideologies.

I just try to always finish any one of tradition, commerce or rationalism in any game so I can faith buy a useful GP later on. Honor's generals are kind of meh, especially since warrior code and military tradition combined ensure you'll be popping a ton of generals.

The border expansion is very nice. When I go liberty I really miss the border expansion, takes forever to expand. With tradition border expansion the only tiles I need to buy are specific third ring tiles and since you are not buying very many they are pretty cheap to do so.

You don't have to always open with the tradition opener. You only get +3 culture in the capital anyways.

Border expansion is good but it delays honor finisher and I would rather spend the next policy on patronage or commerce opener

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