A world without consulates

redwings1340 said:
It's also very helpful in getting world congress power, because even without diplo victory, the world congress power, culture, food, faith, military, and happiness from city state allies is pretty huge.
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Very true! Having control of Congress makes my Religion the World Religion, and since I'm also the World Wonder Champion by a large margin, I can also push through the Cultural Heritage Sites (giving me +3 Culture per Wonder per turn). And pushing through the World's Fair and International Games (which I'm pretty much guaranteed to win) offers some tremendous benefits. (Ex., +100% Culture for 20 turns = at least 1, possibly 2 additional Social policies.)
 
The "problem" with the perma-friendship thing is all the free stuff you get for basically just using two policies. The delay to the Liberty/Tradition finisher is worth it if you can time it properly, since the earlier you get Free Stuff, the more of it you get as the game goes on. Which is particularly OP with Siam.
 
Patronage is still very tempting because of the Forbidden Palace wonder.

Recently though just to mix things up I've been pouring the extra points into the right side of Liberty after completing Tradition. That's because I tend to be a war monger (if not necessarily a Domination victory player). That +1 happiness per connected city policy is really good for conquest beyond the opening cities, as is the increased worker improvement speed because of all the pillaging I do. The AI doesn't often prioritize Pyramids so a lot of times I can grab that too.
 
CaptainPatch said:
I am inclined to suggest that Patronage is probably the most powerful of all of the policy trees. But there are two very important qualifiers: 1) Difficulty level and 2) the number of City States. I really can't say just how things differ up there in Diety-land because the highest I've gone is only King (my current game). And when doing setup I always have a Huge map with all 41 CSs in play, playing at Marathon speed. Inside that criteria, I pretty much dominate by the end of the Renaissance, mainly because I'm Friendly with all 41 CSs, with most of them being Allies. As such, for the entire game, I've never actually built more than a dozen units -- yet I have THE most powerful Military because of all the units the Militaristic CSs send me. I'm also the Faith leader by a very large margin because of the Religious CSs contributions, as well as the Culture leader because of the Cultured CSs sending me Culture points. And the empire is happy as clams because the Commerce CSs sending us Happy points. And Food is no concern because of all the groceries the Maritime CSs contribute. Plus, because I fleshed out the Patronage tree, I'm getting several hundred Research points every turn, along with occasional (more often than "rare") Great People units.

Policy-wise, the first tree I do complete is Patronage. But I also at least initiate practically every other tree as well. I eventually fully complete Commerce (for healthy cashflow), and perhaps Piety (to get the Reformation Belief, and being that close might as well take the last one to complete the tree). Then I cherry-pick certain useful policies from the other trees until Ideology kicks in. The reason I have been able to adopt sooooo many policies is because, beside the CS contributions, I really focus on completing those Wonders and techs that bestow free Social policies. That's between 6 and 12 extra policies where I didn't need to pile on the Culture points AND drive up the per policy price. There are also several things that can reduce Culture costs by 10-33%. If you're paying close attention, it's all quite doable.

This game, I disabled both the Domination and Diplomacy Victories because if I didn't the game would be over -- like all the others before it -- by @1950. And if I enabled the Diplo Victory, because of my total control of the World Congress, I'd be World Leader in the 1800s, at the latest.

And I attribute all that to Patronage.
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It sounds like you're playing on too low of a difficulty level. Try bumping it up to Emperor - if it works there, it's probably a viable strategy! (Not sarcasm, I'm curious if you can make it work at the higher levels :) )
 
Policy-wise, the first tree I do complete is Patronage.
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Weirdly, despite its position in the policy hierarchy Patronage is a better opening tree than Piety or Honor, so someone completing it early actually makes some sense to me. At least, unlike Piety, the moment you open something with Patronage you generally get to take advantage of it.
 
Last time i tried patronage i laughed.
Science from city states? Aww common, i ally you all and all get 50 bakers? Srsly?
+1 gold from CS trade routes? is this a joke?
Two great people in 200 turns, and one of them - musician? Pfhahaha
 
Well, they fixed things a little, now the middle tree used between tradition and rationalism is more open. Still Tradition and Rationalism are sure bets, so there's much work to do on the SP department.

To those who play on lower levels, know that as you rise in difficulty, you have less margin for less competitive SPs, on Deity I always won with trad-consulates-rat-order/freedom. Tried other ways, but deity is quite difficult for me and other options is just rising difficulty.
 
Well after finishing or playing very deep into a number of games trying different approaches to policies, I find the hardest part is getting enough culture going in the late game. Before the patch, I often found myself "wasting" policies on whatever near the end of the game because consulates gave so much cpt. I had just barely got T3 order and the rationalism finisher in one of my Inca games. I suspect we are going to be back to the vanilla style finesse for getting into rationalism right out of tradition, and aesthetics is looking a lot more attractive than before.

Of all the changes made in the Fall Patch, this is the one I am most happy with. Consulates was OP as the 1st policy in patronage. Going to keep playing around with the trees, it should be interesting to see the solutions that the top players here use
 
Aaron90495 said:
It sounds like you're playing on too low of a difficulty level. Try bumping it up to Emperor - if it works there, it's probably a viable strategy! (Not sarcasm, I'm curious if you can make it work at the higher levels :) )
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I've made full patronage work on deity and immortal before, and it's a very good strategy on emperor. I'm not so sure it would work that great in multiplayer, but computers, for whatever reason, just don't compete for city states as much as they could. As soon as you get about a 30 point lead in all the city state alliances, a lot of the time the computer just concedes the city states to you, even if they're banking a million gold.

It's definitely viable to ally all the city states on deity, and patronage can give you a ton of benefits if you do that.
 
Forkandles said:
Im not denying that consulates still has its upside but you dont take it in isolation, theres an opportunity cost of taking those policies ie you dont get to take other policies. Can you argue that consulates is more powerful than a fast start of full trad and a bit of lib? Or full patronage is more powerful than taking rationalism? Or even that consulates is more powerful than commerce and its mercantilism?

Im firmly on the side of ignoring patronage. Would love to have the CS allies of course, but I cant see how you can delay rationalism or not grab mercantilism in commerce (I see this as a science policy cos it allows you to buy science buildings very easily). Then again I always go for Science Victories so perhaps I only see one angle.

You can still grab a few CS allies anyway and secure them with spies. You just have 3 or 4 allies not 12-16 without consulates and the influence degrade rate means you need to keep an eye on them a bit more.
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I see your point. Liberty/Rationalism/Commerce are better in comparison to Patronage maybe. But you answered your argument with mine. CIV is all about making choices based on your particular strategy that game. If your smoking Free GP / 25% of CS Science/ and all that extra happiness is nothing to sneeze at either. I like to take Patronage and all its goodies than run to Rationalism. If I have to DoW then I have my CS Allies ready to roll with me and all their goodies.
 
I kind of like this discussion though, because civ is supposed to be about adapting your choices to each game. If you're an economic engine already and you have money to spare for city states (barring Portugal) or are Greece or Siam, I think going in to patronage is probably a good bet, unless your capital is your economy, in which opening commerce might be better first. If you are a naval/costal civ, then exploration is probably a good tree. A cultural civ can start aesthetics, while a religious powerhouse might want to go down in to piety for the 20% discount. Even taking a few policies for the +50% experience from honor might be worth if you're going for domination. I hope we don't reach a clear consensus here and policies to choose are situational. That would represent a balanced and good game design in my opinion.
 
Anyway I still pretty much always pick Patronage opener, since it alone saves a lot of money.

Combine influence boosts from CS quests, with religion and Patronage opener smaller degradation of influence, and you'll easily get many permanent allies that don't need any gold to maintain.

The other policy, that gave more CS influence for money, that I often took before BNW, is now more often then not not needed, if you don't want to dedicate to Patronage fully.
 
katfish said:
When you make somewhere around 1200 yes. Id rather take another policy in Rationalism or Ideology.
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Well, if you have single ally, 1200 science and want to take this policy, you are doing something wrong. On the other hand, if you already have 4-6 allies, that's completely different thing.
 
player1 fanatic said:
Well, if you have single ally.
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i ally you all and all get 50 bakers
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Sorry for not clarifying that all means 16, not one.
Granted, its was emperor Babylon game, but still its kind of suck when my average with something like japan or denmark in Renaissance is around 600 and simple rationalism opener gives 60?
 
katfish said:
Sorry for not clarifying that all means 16, not one.
Granted, its was emperor Babylon game, but still its kind of suck when my average with something like japan or denmark in Renaissance is around 600 and simple rationalism opener gives 60?
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I think the science boost is decent, and is somehow constant even if you don't go hard into science. Of course if higher on higher diffs...
 
The limiting factor is probably, just how may CSs are available to be Allied with? I'm playing with all 41, and 30-35 are Allied = a couple hundred Research points per turn. Added to everything else they provide, that's nothing to sneeze at.

The trick to the whole Ally-intensive thing is that once you've made a CS an Ally, it's pretty easy to keep them as Allies. Every few turns (Marathon) somebody is looking to see who is the Faith, Science, or Culture leader. With all that CS support, that's most likely going to be you in all three categories. That's like 40 free Influence points (degrading at .33-.067 each turn) being added to a CS that is already an Ally. The other civs generally can't afford to try to bribe one of your Allies over to their camp. Given a healthy enough cashflow, the occasional 500 gold Gift to push a slipping CS from Friendly back to Ally isn't too onerous an expense. And always look for those CS "is looking for investors" to get a 50% Influence boost for cash donations.
 
Qoma said:
IMO, consulates could have been kept as-is but moved a bit further down the tree. At least if you had to invest more into getting it, that might have made sense. I'm just not sure if the policy means a lot anymore.
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Strongly disagree. The early policies in the Patronage tree should help you get City-State allies. The later policies in the Patronage tree should benefit you for having allies. The opposite order doesn't make sense: you'd have to take a bunch of policies like Scholasticism that would have no benefit, since you don't have very many allies yet! This argument especially applies to Consulates, which 1) only benefits you for city-states that you aren't already allies with and 2) takes 20 turns to dole out its benefit.

If you could pick the six Patronage policies in any order, Consulates is the one you'd want first, but I really like the Patronage opener as it is. It's the most general-purpose policy related to city-states. It effectively multiplies the reward of all city-state quests and gifting gold. I like the delay (and higher commitment required) on getting Consulates.
 
Cedbird said:
I see your point. Liberty/Rationalism/Commerce are better in comparison to Patronage maybe. But you answered your argument with mine. CIV is all about making choices based on your particular strategy that game. If your smoking Free GP / 25% of CS Science/ and all that extra happiness is nothing to sneeze at either. I like to take Patronage and all its goodies than run to Rationalism. If I have to DoW then I have my CS Allies ready to roll with me and all their goodies.
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The problem I have with this is that in some games you can get quite unlucky with the CS quests. I have taken consulates since the pledge nerf just to see how it turns out and in games where no convenient quests have come up I was left with 12-16 CS all on 25 influence. 2 social policies for nothing effectively ....

I will really target the odd CS and use a spy to keep it eg a cultural CS during the Worlds Fair or a mercantile CS thats on my borders early game so I will always have at least 1 or 2 CS allies. But I could have and do do that without consulates anyway. It is harder to keep those guys without the patronage opener tho.

I can see a case for opening patronage for the slower influence degrade, especially if you have a 'spare' SP after finishing trad and before rat but I still cant see a case for consulates on standard settings. If you have already completed a bunch of CS quests you dont need it and if you havent then youre gambling that you will later, which doesnt always happen.

One other thing - its soo nice not to get multiple AI pop ups every turn about how theyve bullied your CS! I ended up pledging them all before the International Games last night and wow it took me back how many pop ups. The world was at war mind.
 
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