Is National College start too powerful?

Randall Turner said:

I think that before they buffed up the Tradition/Liberty trees there was more of a tendency to see early policies as "wasted". I do remember wishing I didn't have to take them before I got far enough to open the Patronage tree back when.

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I always play with 'save policies' (and save promotions for that matter) on in the settings. In my opinion this should be the default setting since the Social Policies system is such a heavily rigid system to dance with, that you want to make sure that not a singe sp is wasted.

chazzycat said:

I prefer to grab the land early. The best city sites always seem to get taken by the AI when I go NC start. So my opinion would be no, it's not too powerful.

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I run into the same thing. If I'm not grabbing land, all the good cities will be taken. Depending on the geography, I have trouble getting 3 good cities before the AI.

Agent Cooper said:

I always play with 'save policies' (and save promotions for that matter) on in the settings. In my opinion this should be the default setting since the Social Policies system is such a heavily rigid system to dance with, that you want to make sure that not a singe sp is wasted.

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There were serious exploits with saving both policies and promotions. For promotions, people would save up a couple promotions and use them for insta full heals as needed, making warfare virtually risk-free. For policies, people would save up policies and spend them all at once for enormous benefits in the mid-game.

yea duh! Who needs tradition when you can have a full Patronage tree.

Drawmeus said:

There were serious exploits with saving both policies and promotions. For promotions, people would save up a couple promotions and use them for insta full heals as needed, making warfare virtually risk-free. For policies, people would save up policies and spend them all at once for enormous benefits in the mid-game.

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Yeah, but that's sort of my point. The SP system was/is so rigid in design that some deem it necessary to 'exploit' it like you describe. They should have altered how the system works instead of adding checkboxes in advanced settings and then leave it as it was.

But that will be an everlasting characteristic of Civ V, this feeling of playing a half finished game where some of the serious issues will never be addressed. Like the way they just decided to remove religion, counter espionage etc. etc. from 4 to V instead of improving on them and adjusting them to the design of Civ V.

For the record I don't save promotions for instant healing, but for giving units the best possible promotions when I know where they are headed and how exactly I will use them (plains/hills/city busting/medic unit etc.). No way this can be considered an exploit.