The opening of tradition seems to be the strong of all the opening

It can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 25% after you have expanded for 2 tiles, and can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 50% after you have expanded for 4 tiles, even stronger than Angkor Wat+Krepost combination. I think we should take this policy no matter you are going to adopt liberty/honor/piety. Unless you will build your city very close to each other or play as America.

ps: I want to say strongest, make a mistake here

myclan said:

It can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 25% after you have expanded for 2 tiles, and can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 50% after you have expanded for 4 tiles, even stronger than Angkor Wat+Krepost combination. I think we should take this policy no matter you are going to adopt liberty/honor/piety. Unless you will building city very close to each other or play as America.

ps: I want to say strongest, make a mistake here

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Or be shoshone and arm urself with settlers, u have all the land u need.

I always enter tradition first because it seems logical as it is the 'pivot' of the policies. You cant build much wonderful science without having ur base developed first

As far as openers I agree the border growth is very powerful, it's basicly culture or gold in a different formula, and even Liberty Empires benefits from just the 1 point. Border growth can go beyond the 3 tile rings to still benefit from luxes/strategics even if they won't yield anything for city.

Same can go for the 1 point in honor if it's a specific map with raging barbs but it's far more limited.

I used to go Liberty all the time for the free workers+settlers+pyramids, but I think BNW's dynamics changed tradition a whole lot due to internal trade routes (even more significant over sea).

Even on huge maps it all depends on map type, liberty might still work out better if there are really lots of great city spots around.
(only 2% science penalty per city on Huge)
Worker speed bonus would help there as well as the connection bonus+policy cost reducer. I'd say it's need at least like 8 or more larger cities to become significant.

On a map type like Boreal with lower growth and less city spots, I'd pick tradition any day, same for smaller maps where expanding hurts a lot more then growth.

Now I just love the extra growth/monument/aquaduct, and less penalty for a large capital.

The trouble with tradition in general is that it's simply never NOT good to have a booming capital city, and the other openers are so much more situational. Also, the only thing that really benefits a lot from going wide is religion, since for some reason the easiest way to generate lots of faith is either through claiming a lot of tiles quickly, or building a bunch of shrines, temples, or follower belief buildings. More cities also leads to more religious pressure on your neighbours. The other advantage of going Liberty is that you can grab a Great Prophet as a finisher, which you also can in Piety (which also highly favours going wide).

mclericp said:

Or be shoshone and arm urself with settlers, u have all the land u need.

I always enter tradition first because it seems logical as it is the 'pivot' of the policies. You cant build much wonderful science without having ur base developed first

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It can boost the following 2~3 policies, then become slower in future policies.

Myomoto said:

The trouble with tradition in general is that it's simply never NOT good to have a booming capital city, and the other openers are so much more situational. Also, the only thing that really benefits a lot from going wide is religion, since for some reason the easiest way to generate lots of faith is either through claiming a lot of tiles quickly, or building a bunch of shrines, temples, or follower belief buildings. More cities also leads to more religious pressure on your neighbours. The other advantage of going Liberty is that you can grab a Great Prophet as a finisher, which you also can in Piety (which also highly favours going wide).

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But piety lacks ways to improve your culture output. If you adopt piety alone, it will take very long time for you to get your next policy. Maybe Songhai will be better for its great UB

myclan said:

But piety lacks ways to improve your culture output. If you adopt piety alone, it will take very long time for you to get your next policy. Maybe Songhai will be better for its great UB

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I think the only civs that can viably pick Piety are the ones that can generate a lot of faith without a faith pantheon, and thus pick a culture pantheon instead, so the Maya, Songhai, Egypt, Celts, Byzantium (pick 1 or 2 culture pantheons), etc. The thing with religion is that now you're not only racing faith to get the prophets to claim the good beliefs, but you're also racing culture get the Reformation Belief that you want.

To be honest, writing my initial post made me kind of sad that there never was a religious victory type, since it would have been an ideal way to make a victory that wasn't very dependant on science (you get the major religious buildings on the way to universities) and would have been powerful when going very wide. As it stands now, there simply isn't enough reward in the late game from the heavy investment it takes to get a good religion up and running.

Myomoto said:

I think the only civs that can viably pick Piety are the ones that can generate a lot of faith without a faith pantheon, and thus pick a culture pantheon instead, so the Maya, Songhai, Egypt, Celts, Byzantium (pick 1 or 2 culture pantheons), etc. The thing with religion is that now you're not only racing faith to get the prophets to claim the good beliefs, but you're also racing culture get the Reformation Belief that you want.

To be honest, writing my initial post made me kind of sad that there never was a religious victory type, since it would have been an ideal way to make a victory that wasn't very dependant on science (you get the major religious buildings on the way to universities) and would have been powerful when going very wide. As it stands now, there simply isn't enough reward in the late game from the heavy investment it takes to get a good religion up and running.

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The main advantage Piety policy tree could provide is more and faster faith, but we where can we use them? Puchasing building is good, but it is usually difficult for us to get 2 buiding-related follower belief. To spread a religion is so difficult and provide so little reward that it just doesn't worth the cost. Interfaith dialogue I think is the only reason for you to purchase a missionary. In a word, it cost too much early, and reward too little later.

myclan said:

It can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 25% after you have expanded for 2 tiles, and can decrease the culture cost to expand for more than 50% after you have expanded for 4 tiles, even stronger than Angkor Wat+Krepost combination. I think we should take this policy no matter you are going to adopt liberty/honor/piety. Unless you will build your city very close to each other or play as America.

ps: I want to say strongest, make a mistake here

Click to expand...

The main problem is that the additional cost of the policies result in that actually slowing down the completion of the tree you intended.

If picking Liberty, this would greatly delay your free great person.

If picking Piety, it would greatly delay the free Great Prophet; almost cerinately to the point after you've already enhanced your religion. (Also this is not a popular first tree; about the only one less popular is Honor)

In almost all games, Honor is a terrible first tree even if seeking domination. (Tradition as first tree and then some Honor fillers work better for that)

The cultural expansion part is also retroactive (the cost of the next cultural expansion will go down, possibly to the point where your capital expands three turns in a row) so the Tradition opener makes a great filler policy after having completed either Liberty or Piety for those who did that.