The single most critical Social Policy

lol. Never used rationalism. Never used Freedom.

Seabastian Civ said:

I disagree. It only takes 1 policy to get a 15% empire-wide boost in *the* most important element in the game and maintaining that bonus is extremely easy. It opens up the rationalism tree which is a critical tree to most victory conditions, because above King, the AI outtechs you from turn 1, and without opening rationalism you will never catch up.

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Not true. I can easily out tech the AI on emperor without touching any of the Rationalism tree.

Why don't you start a social policy elimination thread?

If we're just talking about universally useful policies, the Commerce opener will always benefit you. Every strategy can use gold to its advantage, as it's the most versatile resource in the game. I've had plenty of games where I would just tap Commerce for its 25% gold boost (unless I'm running culture, in which case I would finish the tree).

Tradition opener for faster border expansion and extra culture. I always take this, irregardless of victory conditions I am aiming for. This gives me most flexibility in selecting the needed tiles, because I have more/faster selection to choose from.

Yeah, it's mostly habit, now that I think about it.

(By the way, this is my first post after 10 or so years of lurking)

SledgeHammer said:

(By the way, this is my first post after 10 or so years of lurking)

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That's pretty damned impressive lol

draaibaar said:

Why don't you start a social policy elimination thread?

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No, no, not an ELIMINATION THREAD!!!
I can't stand it any longer!!

:suicide:

draaibaar said:

Why don't you start a social policy elimination thread?

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Because we all know 'Republic' would win.

I really like republic. Its great when ICS. The +5% production adds up over time.

Seabastian Civ said:

Does the social policy calculus change in MP? I've never not taken rationalism in MP, and I usually do pretty well (and always end up beating up on the poor fools who take piety )

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You make this sound like Piety is a bad tree, which it's not. The 50% happy to culture bonus is good if you have a very happy empire, the money boost from temples is okay, the free golden age and culture boost is great, and the -10% on future policies is the Cristo Redentor 150 turns earlier. (I play on Quick ^^)

pensivepeppers said:

You make this sound like Piety is a bad tree, which it's not. The 50% happy to culture bonus is good if you have a very happy empire, the money boost from temples is okay, the free golden age and culture boost is great, and the -10% on future policies is the Cristo Redentor 150 turns earlier. (I play on Quick ^^)

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I do think Piety is a bad tree. I think it comes too late. I think it doesn't provide enough happiness. I think the +10% gold is not nearly enough of a bonus to justify its cost (-1 gold for shrine, -2 gold for temple for it to kick in). The free golden age is pretty good. The -10% culture isn't a big deal early in the game.

But the #1 thing Piety has going against it is that you can't get Rationalism! 15% boost to science, lots of happiness in a wide empire, lots and lots of science from TP and 17% boost to university! Not to mention the trade agreement boost...

So I do understand why you would go Piety en route to a turtle-ing cultural victory... I don't think its worth it in any other circumstance.

@sebastian

I think you are under-rating piety. I've seen a lot of comments like this and I really have to disagree.

If you want to go wide, and do not have a faith producing UB like the Mayans or Ethiopians (and don't get lucky), piety is the only way to get a good religion at the high levels. And getting a good religion is pretty much a necessity if you want to expand a lot. There's no other way to get the equivalent happiness bonuses than via religion. Seriously, you can get up to +6 happy per city. And piety doesn't offer happiness you say?

The key is to just take the first two policies (discounted shrines/temples and +1 faith each). Then stop. The rest of the tree is not suited to this strategy. If you time your expansion properly with the policies, build the buildings, you will be first to found your religion, first to enhance, you will dominate the spread, etc. But most importantly you will secure the good happiness benefits that will enable your wide empire to grow into a wide AND tall empire.

You can always switch to rationalism later too. In fact, its a pretty good strategy. Late in the game, a few extra faith points are not a very big deal, and the piety opener is completely meaningless. So switching off piety is not a big deal. You'll probably have a large stockpile of faith built up too - why not buy some scientists?

Seabastian Civ said:

I do think Piety is a bad tree. I think it comes too late. I think it doesn't provide enough happiness. I think the +10% gold is not nearly enough of a bonus to justify its cost (-1 gold for shrine, -2 gold for temple for it to kick in). The free golden age is pretty good. The -10% culture isn't a big deal early in the game.

But the #1 thing Piety has going against it is that you can't get Rationalism! 15% boost to science, lots of happiness in a wide empire, lots and lots of science from TP and 17% boost to university! Not to mention the trade agreement boost...

So I do understand why you would go Piety en route to a turtle-ing cultural victory... I don't think its worth it in any other circumstance.

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Think you just contradicted yourself there

I will agree Rationalism is a better tree, maybe even substantially so, but I enjoy Piety all the same. It's a pretty good deal to anyone pursuing Culture Vic, and sometimes I fly by policies too quick to get another option. (i.e. Tradition-> Piety-> Commerce-> Freedom-> Liberty) or something of that sort. I get to my 2nd tree around Classical Era!

But you have very valid points, and I agree with almost all of them, but tend to find Piety a bit more useful and common for me

honesty is the best policy

cakes said:

honesty is the best policy

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I see what you did there.

I agree that piety is crucial at the higher levels for founding a good religion with a non-religious civ. For example, I recently played a game as Sweden on immortal and used liberty to quickly expand to 7ish cities, producing a military and culture buildings until I was able to unlock piety and then switched all cities to shrines/temples. 5 faith per city will quickly get you a religion, and then you can finish liberty for either a Great Prophet to enhance or a Great Engineer to build Hagia Sophia for the prophet. Pagoda spam until a foreign religion encroaches and then switch to missionary spam.

Seabastian Civ said:

So I do understand why you would go Piety en route to a turtle-ing cultural victory... I don't think its worth it in any other circumstance.

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Yep. I love the idea of Piety, but Rationalism is so much stronger in every circumstance except cultural victory. Rationalism opener IMO is the single strongest b
policy

Each policy in Piety is good, even great, and most of them will give you an advantage no matter what you're doing. The problem is that it tries to combine culture and faith, and they don't necessarily go together. It would probably be better to make a culture tree and a faith tree (which would likely require an upgrade to religion, otherwise the faith tree will fade with religion into the late game).

I will say, however, that piety should change how you plan your religion a bit, if you want to take it (and keep it). Just think of something that gives +5 faith, +2 food, +3 happiness, and +10% gold, at the cost of 3 maintenance. That is a normal shrine and a normal temple with ancestor worship, feed the world, organized religion, theocracy, and religious center, without any investment of faith at all. Sure, you probably won't want all of that, but not half bad for a cheap building that builds even faster because of piety.

That being said, if Piety were all about faith, it could be better.

chazzycat said:

. . . You can always switch to rationalism later too. In fact, its a pretty good strategy. . .

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I actually have never done this, but yeah it does seem like a decent idea, especially if you only those first two Piety policies. I might have to try this one game instead of going Commerce or Patronage with that awkward medieval policy.

Rooftrellen said:

Each policy in Piety is good, even great, and most of them will give you an advantage no matter what you're doing. The problem is that it tries to combine culture and faith, and they don't necessarily go together. It would probably be better to make a culture tree and a faith tree (which would likely require an upgrade to religion, otherwise the faith tree will fade with religion into the late game).

I will say, however, that piety should change how you plan your religion a bit, if you want to take it (and keep it). Just think of something that gives +5 faith, +2 food, +3 happiness, and +10% gold, at the cost of 3 maintenance. That is a normal shrine and a normal temple with ancestor worship, feed the world, organized religion, theocracy, and religious center, without any investment of faith at all. Sure, you probably won't want all of that, but not half bad for a cheap building that builds even faster because of piety.

That being said, if Piety were all about faith, it could be better.

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Actually, each policy in Piety isn't great as pointed out above. Of couse they are useful, but when you have the choice between a) picking Piety and either b) finishing whatever tree you started in Classical or c) opening either Rationalism or one of the Industrial trees in later game (which is very often the choice I face) I most often end skipping Piety.

As noted above, the Gold outcome from Theocracy is not that impressive, the happiness-carry-over from Mandate of Heaven doesn't do you a lot good when this is one of the few trees that doesn't provide you any Happiness, and the finisher is not too great either.

Opening Piety in Ancient era would actually help Piety because it would help you get Monuments up very fast to secure you founding - particularly if the +1 Happiness from (Monuments and) Temples was restored to one of the policies. A spiffy closer like choosing an extra belief for your religion would also go a long way.



Anyway, on topic, I agree Rationalism opener is up there. There might be competitors, but +15 % Science + the ability to purchase Great Scientists with faith is hard to turn down. Also love Order opener for same reason, and Order also have two other of my favorite policies, the one that adds Science from Factories and the one that adds production to Mines and Quarries.