Well, simply put, Tradition has been brought down a sizeable notch. You could finish Tradition really early before by going straight for the free Monuments, and now the finisher comes 15-30 turns later.
Straight Tradition was hardly hurt. Personally, I was in the habit of hard building monument in cap anyway (since I might want to switch to Liberty). The free monuments spawn soon enough for the expos. It has to be closer to a handful of turns, not 30!
And Piety can be 'finished' - read: religion reformed - about 15-30 turns quicker. Since a few of the reformation policies are VERY desirable, even to the half-brain-dead AI (I'm looking at you, Jesuits), it's actually really much more worth going for.
I agree that the reformation policy is available 15-30 turns quicker. One can tune a game around early Jesuit Education. It is quite interesting to do things differently!
My last two games have been Liberty-Piety DiploVs (on Deity) that had beakers and turn times comparable with any Tradition run I've made.
When I have replayed my Liberty wide starts as 4-city Tradition, the 4-city Tradition run has always resulted in lower turn count. Of course, map knowledge is part of that. The Liberty runs were more fun though...
I'd argue that overall, the most consistent Policy selection for a game in which you don't explicitly limit yourself to peaceful turtling (SV and non-war CV) dips into Liberty-Piety-Patronage-Commerce-Rationalism (maybe even Trad opener before the above) and can utilise all 3 ideologies equally well depending on which VC you ultimately end up going for.
The real power of Tradition comes from getting the finisher ASAP, but that works against skipping around. Piety/Patronage/Rationalism all makes sense to me. What are the policies you like best in Commerce? I may be undervaluing that tree.
The patch, in short, was a good thing. You can go Liberty, play with a wide empire, ignore the boringness of Rationalism, and still win consistently.
Yes, the patch was a good thing. I don't really see how it particularly helps Liberty though, except for the times you want to pare it with Piety (which is prolly often, but not always). Tradition is now much less appealing for cherry-picking, so the Honor/Liberty player is not tempted by Tradition (except for maybe the opener) like they were before.
None of these observations provides insight as to why the AIs are prioritizing SH now...
It was probably never intended that a player would open one single tree and then finish it before moving on to the next one.
It certainly was intended! The SP get stronger as you drill down, and then there is a powerful finisher in each tree. The change to both Tradition and Piety works against this earlier design, as now there are weak orphaned SP choices that will be last, and consequently finishing either tree is now much less appealing. Yes, the developers could have forced the player to finish trees before opening the next one, but it is better that the player has choices.
