Exploration Tree

Hello Fellow Civ Fans

How many of you fill out the Exploration Tree even when you can choose tenets from the Ideology selections. I always play on small continents and have only Coastal cities. After Tradition I will go with something that helps that is open. Then Exploration opens and I will go with that but when I get the next chance for a selection on Exploration .. Rationalism is open. So I will fill out all the science and then Ideology then opens. I still go back to complete Exploration because on small continents and coastal cities I think it's huge.

What are you guys opinion on this and what would you change.

Brew God

I often open Exploration midgame for the extra sight for naval units, and to unlock the Louvre. I don't usually fill it, but when I have a lot of coastal cities it's very good. Maybe even better than filling Rationalism.

The lower half of the tree is pretty much worthless apart from the closer. The irony is that the hidden archaeology sites are so grossly imbalanced that it will sometimes, if not always, be worthwhile to complete the tree simply for those, because the culture return if you find 3 or 4 of the "special" sites and collect the cultural renaissance can easily give you back more culture than you invested in the policies in the first place. Of course this only works if sufficient time of game remains to make it worthwhile to postpone the policies you could otherwise have taken, and it's a gamble, because sometimes most of the hidden sites end up places that you can't access due to closed borders and you may not find a single of the good sites.

So to recap, I think it's a very poorly balanced tree. I think it's a great pity that BnW never really got a real balance patch to polish it all, many of the policy trees are in dire need of this (apart from Exploration, that would be Commerce (boost), Aesthetics (boost), Honor (boost/balance), Tradition/Liberty (balance) and Rationalism (nerf)). Opening the tree to get opener + maritime infrastructure + Louve is generally worth it if you have at least a couple of coastal cities.

OP is asking about filling out Exploration. I think most people agree the opener and early policies in Exploration are strong.

I tend to want to fill out trees if I possibly can -- because all the closers are strong. I open Exploration less often than I would like because it is often not unlocked after I close out Tradition or Liberty. What am I doing wrong there?

I like kaspergm's observation that that Exploration closer can be strong enough to pay back a couple of extra picks. I want to experiment more with that! (I also agree that it's a poorly balanced tree.)

I never fill out exploration, but I do like exploration as a policy tree. It really depends on the game, since generally speaking what you should be doing is Tradition / Liberty -> Filler -> Rationalism, and all the policies in between serve very well for that - strong opening policies and first few tenets, but not so worth filling out completely. Exploration is very good for what it does - letting you become a coastal powerhouse that supports a large number of cities and production. The best part is, you can get the best of exploration in just 3 social policies, and then go straight to rationalism.

Opener and first 2 tenets are quite strong on ocean maps. Everything else about exploration is pretty much crap, however.

I tend to prioritize maritime infrastructure over the happiness tenet, because it's fun founding cities in the medieval era with +3 production off the bat. Really gets medieval cities going very quickly, you'll be able to have them functional with lighthouse / workshop in no time flat. However, the happiness tenet really makes coastal city spam a viable strategy, and might even justify founding cities in the Renaissance era (something you normally should never do) given how ridiculously fast maritime infrastructure allows new cities to get going. You can just skip the happiness tenet if you've enough happiness on your own, or if you hit renaissance quickly enough and can go into rationalism straight away. Always nice to have it open though, as a sort of "oh crap I'm out of happiness" emergency option. Generating an extra 3 happiness per city makes coastal sprawl just so much more viable.

I only open exploration if my capital plus at least 3/4 of my other cities are coastal and/or if naval battle is likely to be at least 1/2 of the total warring I plan on doing, and these two conditions usually occur concurrently.

I like exploration because it is a good SP tree to have uncompleted and pick at when you need something. A little short on happiness? They have a 1st tier SP that gives 3 happy per city for all your coastal cities. Too much shtuff to build? The 1st tier production bonus really helps.

More importantly, having a social policy "snack" to pick at between your social policy "meals" is something that always seems to come up. There's a period between finishing tradition and having rationalism open where you need to chuck some culture at a policy tree that you don't intend to do much with and exploration is pretty good at this, if most of your cities are coastal. In most other cases and sometimes even when I am mostly coastal, I prefer either commerce or patronage for this purpose. Commerce is a little tougher because protectionism and extra trading post gold are so good for my style that I want/need to finish it.

beetle said:

I open Exploration less often than I would like because it is often not unlocked after I close out Tradition or Liberty. What am I doing wrong there?

Click to expand...

Well there's 2 possible answers to this
1)You're early science is too low or you don't beeline a medieval tech
and/or
2)You're culture and social policy generation is too fast relative to science. I suppose you can consider delaying building monuments in many cities if you want to slow early culture or plant more expo's earlier. I'd certainly delay the Writers Guid too if you intend to open Exploration early.

But if you do exploration it only really synergizes with Liberty. So I'd just take Exploration opener and Maritime Infrastructure and maybe the happiness policy if you need it. Any more than that & it's a waste.

Actually when you get better at the game, you can control it so that there is no spare policy between opening rationalism and finishing tradition. If there is one spare (due to oracle usually), I almost always put into patronage or commerce. Both are better trees than opening exploration on most maps. Also like others said, the rest of exploration is either situational or simply bad. There is also little reason to finish exploration. You don't need the extra dig sites in most games, if your tech is quick enough, you can dig up any archaeology sites and can fill every slots easily without exploration. Usually I will open exploration if I have a clear chance on Lourve, but it's not priority in any case.

El Dorado, Mt Kilimajaro, Mt Fuji usually is too much culture and you'll end up finishing tradition quickly and have a spare policy, but they're strong and wouldn't justify not working them since I usually also picked OWN pantheon. What you can do is to time it so that your next policy coincides with reaching Renaissance era. By selectively working culture or guilds.