What's the most useful policy

Sorry if this thread has already been done before; I'm new to civ 5
And I was wondering what the more experienced players think the most useful social policies are that should be used in every game.

Personally I think Honor is pretty useful, especially in the early game when you constantly have to battle barbs. But it's also useful for the extra happiness from walls, castles, etc. I also like Piety, but I suppose it isn't quite as useful as honor.

Depends.

Tradition is good if you are going to be small (up to 4 cities).
Liberty is good if you are going to be big (more than 4 cities).
Honour is always crap.
Deity is good if you want focus on religion.
Patronage if you want city states as allies.
Commerce if you have a lot of coastal cities and want to earn more gold.
Rationalism if you need more science (who doesn't?).

And later on...

Freedom if you are small, Order if you are big, Autocracy if you want the world to burn.

Securion said:

Tradition is good if you are going to be small (up to 4 cities).
Liberty is good if you are going to be big (more than 4 cities).
Honour is always crap.
Deity is good if you want focus on religion.
Patronage if you want city states as allies.
Commerce if you have a lot of coastal cities and want to earn more gold.
Rationalism if you need more science (who doesn't?).

And later on...

Freedom if you are small, Order if you are big, Autocracy if you want the world to burn.

Click to expand...

Honor is the weakest of the first 3 starting policies but it's not bad at all, For conquest I'd take Honor over Autocracy any time.

I am not sure I could pick just one.

Depends

Tradition best first policy, IMO. if I'm playing as Huns, Mongols or similar faction Honor my second favourite social policy tree. if I'm playing for cultural victory, I go with Piety, which gives good amount of culture and faith. if I'm going for science victory, go with rationalism. also, Commerce good for coastal civs and freedom good for small empires.

This is coming from a long time lurker long time deity/immortal player.
Tradition is definitely the strongest policy out of the three starters, even if you decide to go wide. Liberty gives you a faster start but is a lot weaker later on.
Honor is always crap, the tree is just broken, for a lot of reasons. If you want a quick rush go liberty.
Piety is also crap, i guess if youre doing a pure culture game its okay, but for a normal game you will always want rationalism since science is the most common victory, especially at higher levels.
A few points in Patronage/Commerce are okay if youre waiting for the renaissance to unlock rationalism.
As for the modern era ones go Order if youre big, Freedom if small, Autocracy really isnt worth it either.
shimi

its funny how this works.

when I just "look" at the SP trees, to ME, Liberty kicks the bleep out of Tradition. getting that free worker, settler, its just so helpful. that said, tradition IS a better policy tree. go figure. I would think not spending the 500g or time on a settler, and 310 and time on a worker(etc etc etc based on changing prices) would be a far better route than 10 percent growth and 2 food but its not. getting those aqueducts is pretty boss. although the wording is specific on those aqueducts. I took a CS and sadly no aqueduct.

imo the best tree is rationalism if I had to pick one, because that 17 percent from universities, the additions of 1 science to trade posts, can make the difference in keeping the tech lead, and losing it

Shimicakan said:

This is coming from a long time lurker long time deity/immortal player.
Tradition is definitely the strongest policy out of the three starters, even if you decide to go wide. Liberty gives you a faster start but is a lot weaker later on.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's the other way around if you consider domination games. Sure, tradition is good, but liberty outshines it in the long run: in a 20+ cities game.

Let's assume your average city size is 8 population. That gives 8 bonus happiness (5% discount from 160 population in 20 cities) + 19 happiness (+1 happy per trade route) = 27. You would need a size 54 capital in a tradition game to compete with that.

Also, free monuments are nice, but representation will be at least equal in power, when you start annexing city after city and buy science/culture buildings there.

That said, I had both successful tradition and liberty domination games on deity. Lately, I favor the latter tree more and more.

Wait a minute, Aristocracy gives 1 happiness per 10 pop in a city.

I now think Liberty is bad if you have puppets, you must annex.

That being said, if I start to acquire many cities, I open the right side of Liberty.

Tradition is good for late-game.
Liberty is good for REXing, but crap for anything that isn't pretty much max ICS late-game.
Honour is a nice second tree for conquest, or for Songhai/Aztecs.
Piety is cool for culture or for ICS (half price shrines with Asceticism is always cool).
Patronage is a nice second tree if you have to take a policy or two before hitting Rationalism.
Commerce is a great on water maps, kinda crappy on anything else, other than Protectionism.
Rationalism is extraordinary. No more needed.
Freedom is good for culture.
Autocracy is good for domination on smaller maps.
Order is another tree that is just amazing. It's not that Freedom or Autocracy are bad, per se, but Order is just so much better.

Moriarte said:

Actually, it's the other way around if you consider domination games. Sure, tradition is good, but liberty outshines it in the long run: in a 20+ cities game.

Let's assume your average city size is 8 population. That gives 8 bonus happiness (5% discount from 160 population in 20 cities) + 19 happiness (+1 happy per trade route) = 27. You would need a size 54 capital in a tradition game to compete with that.

Also, free monuments are nice, but representation will be at least equal in power, when you start annexing city after city and buy science/culture buildings there.

That said, I had both successful tradition and liberty domination games on deity. Lately, I favor the latter tree more and more.

Click to expand...

Let's assume that each of your cities grows 2 more pop, giving you bonus happiness of 20 from Aristocracy, compared to Meritocracy's 20 (you get one from your capital, too). Meritocracy also give you -5% unhappiness, too. At 19 cities * 10 pop, that's 9.5 happy. Raw, that's a size 19 capital for Monarchy to outstrip Meritocracy. +0.95 happiness from Meritocracy, means it still beats Tradition. At 20 pop, that's +1 from Aristocracy, meaning that's where it hits neutral. Size 20 capital is not uncommon. T-Hawk did a much more advanced look into Tradition vs. Liberty here. Tradition beats Liberty, even in happiness.

Also, just so you know that he isn't just a die-hard Tradition fan, look here for a T183 SV by him as Korea with Liberty. He beats that in two subsequent attempts with Tradition with T182 as Babylon, and T171 as the Dutch.

tomtom5858 said:

Let's assume that each of your cities grows 2 more pop, giving you bonus happiness of 20 from Aristocracy, compared to Meritocracy's 20 (you get one from your capital, too). Meritocracy also give you -5% unhappiness, too. At 19 cities * 10 pop, that's 9.5 happy. Raw, that's a size 19 capital for Monarchy to outstrip Meritocracy. +0.95 happiness from Meritocracy, means it still beats Tradition. At 20 pop, that's +1 from Aristocracy, meaning that's where it hits neutral. Size 20 capital is not uncommon. T-Hawk did a much more advanced look into Tradition vs. Liberty here. Tradition beats Liberty, even in happiness.

Also, just so you know that he isn't just a die-hard Tradition fan, look here for a T183 SV by him as Korea with Liberty. He beats that in two subsequent attempts with Tradition with T182 as Babylon, and T171 as the Dutch.

Click to expand...

Yep, forgot aristocracy. Even though size 10 puppets are not uncommon in later stages of a domination game, liberty gives a more instantaneous boost in that regard (by the way of meritocracy), which can be helpful if one fights non - stop.

Indeed, tradition beats liberty in SV/diplo (and probably culture) win times, but in deity domination games, it is rarely so.

Besides, let's not forget a free (for example) Great Scientist unlocking Crossbows, allowing you to establish definitive advantage, by securing lots of land early. Or GE for NC, while flooding your neighbors with units. Some things tradition just can't do.

In the long run, both trees seem pretty even (domination - wise), that's why I don't think liberty is actually "weaker" in such game. Liberty is much harder to master though, growing wide needs a very careful happiness management.

Moriarte said:

Actually, it's the other way around if you consider domination games. Sure, tradition is good, but liberty outshines it in the long run: in a 20+ cities game.

Let's assume your average city size is 8 population. That gives 8 bonus happiness (5% discount from 160 population in 20 cities) + 19 happiness (+1 happy per trade route) = 27. You would need a size 54 capital in a tradition game to compete with that.

Also, free monuments are nice, but representation will be at least equal in power, when you start annexing city after city and buy science/culture buildings there.

That said, I had both successful tradition and liberty domination games on deity. Lately, I favor the latter tree more and more.

Click to expand...

No, you forget the 1 happy/10 pop aswell, and getting 20 cities really isnt something you can count on.

Moriarte said:

Besides, let's not forget a free (for example) Great Scientist

Click to expand...

That's actually my biggest gripe with Liberty. It's not free. What it is is 100 non-tethered Great Person points. Yeah, it can get you your XBows 8 turns earlier, or a NC up ~20 turns earlier, but it eats up that first GP slot, making your first "real" GP come far later. It's still a fantastic tree, but I don't think it measures up to Tradition. Also, Deity Domination is a rather specific, small subset of games.

Shimicakan said:

No, you forget the 1 happy/10 pop aswell, and getting 20 cities really isnt something you can count on.

Click to expand...

That is what domination is all about: getting 20+ cities.

tomtom5858 said:

That's actually my biggest gripe with Liberty. It's not free. What it is is 100 non-tethered Great Person points. Yeah, it can get you your XBows 8 turns earlier, or a NC up ~20 turns earlier, but it eats up that first GP slot, making your first "real" GP come far later. It's still a fantastic tree, but I don't think it measures up to Tradition. Also, Deity Domination is a rather specific, small subset of games.

Click to expand...

You mean it doesn't measure up to science victory, right? With that I agree.

Shimicakan said:

No, you forget the 1 happy/10 pop aswell

Click to expand...

Actually, it's 1 happiness for every city at 10 pop, 20 pop, etc. 1/10 would be amazing, and would actually outstrip the percentile part of Meritocracy.

tomtom5858 said:

That's actually my biggest gripe with Liberty. It's not free. What it is is 100 non-tethered Great Person points. Yeah, it can get you your XBows 8 turns earlier, or a NC up ~20 turns earlier, but it eats up that first GP slot, making your first "real" GP come far later. It's still a fantastic tree, but I don't think it measures up to Tradition. Also, Deity Domination is a rather specific, small subset of games.

Click to expand...

At the end of the game you probably spawned one more GP than you would if you had gone into another tree.

King_Course said:

At the end of the game you probably spawned one more GP than you would if you had gone into another tree.

Click to expand...

It's probably not even one extra GP. You only save 100 GP points. At the end of the game, a GP can cost 1000+ GP points, so it's unlikely that the extra 100 points will make a difference.

I like Tradition a lot (who doesn't?), but the Liberty tree is NOT only these things mentioned:

1. The extra hammers in all your cities is not something to be forgotten (and don't tell me about religions, since in that aspect you can also get extra food from them). The point is that with Liberty you get the hammers right away when you need them the most (at the start).

2. That depends a little on the map and the game speed, but in most large enough maps you will also have to chop forests, clear jungles, etc. If you find yourself in one of these games with Tradition, you will remember with nostalgia Liberty every time you have to wait for 11!!! turns (standard speed, WITH Pyramids) to build a trading post on a jungle. If combined with Pyramids (which the AI tends to omit) that gives a huge advantage to Liberty - you simply get the resources and the trading routes faster, you can easily switch improvements, etc.

3. If you like early wars (I do) Liberty is almost a must. The point is NOT the saving of some gold by the free settler/worker, but the usage of that same gold for units. Plus, 500 gold at T60 is definitely not the same as 500 gold in T110 or T160 - economy scales are simply different. Additionally, the extra happiness from trading routes, at the moment where your puppet cities are still small, is making expansion so much easier.

That being said, food is science and there is nothing like science. If you manage to puppet 5-6 cities and 1-2 capitals you will outnumber Tradition, but maybe not in the early mid-game (somewhat later). Otherwise the Tradition tree is simply very strong and solid, it doesn't depend much on luck factors, and guarantees a solid game in most cases.

Tradition is slightly superior than Liberty but it's only because it can beat the other in 2 domains compared to 1. But, a domination game is...a domination game. Fastest way to finish a game is almost always by domination. And it's where a lot of players take their fun

Still, in some mp games the Trad tree will outpace Liberty in a domination game if the Trad player can beeline some important and later techs faster than any other Liberty players(i'm looking at you, artillery and cavalry units).