Rationalism SP

3drawegroeg

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 8, 2009
Messages
77
Is it possible to beat difficulty 7 or 8 without taking rationalism? I'm a bit ambivalent about this set up. It's probably the most powerful policy tree; the AI doesn't care much about it; it doesn't seem possible to win without using it. Am I reading this wrong? It doesn't seem like there is much room to strategize. I felt like I could try different policy combinations with some degree of success on difficulty 6 (I don't care about winning every game, just want it to be interesting and have my civ be competitive), but on diff. 7 it's basically tradition->patronage->rationalism if I don't want to consitently be an era behind in technology. The fact that the AI seems to be programmed to not prioritize the most powerful SP tree in the game just makes it seem like too much of an I Win Button.
 
The other policies just aren't very appealing. Exploration and Commerce suck, Honor is only good for a pure warmonger and Piety is only good if you get it early. Only about half of the tenets in each Ideology are any good. In a high culture game it just gets to a point where no social policy is appealing at all.

The whole Rationalism tree probably accounts for about a 40-50% increase in science and one extra Great Scientist, and because Science snowballs into more Science (unlike Culture, Gold, Faith), this makes it much better.
 
Personally I wouldn't bother with the full Patronage tree. City states don't produce much science unless you have a lot of them. You're better off completing rationalism first.

Opener of Exploration is good for the Louvre.
 
I'd say that Rationalism and Tradition are the two trees that I completely fill in every game I've played in BNW, regardless of which victory I'm pursuing.

Now that the "fill 5 trees" mechanic has been removed from the culture victory requirements, there's much less motivation to complete trees. Add the fact that I'm a wonder whore, and I find myself taking the openers for each tree and then picking & choosing what I want from there. Despite my sticking to Rationalism & Tradition, the changes to policies/culture have added a bit of variety to my games..
 
No. Or at least full Rationalism isn't needed. If I don't want to spend too many I will just get opener and Secularism.

I'd say as a general rule the wider your empire the less number of Rationalism policies are "needed". It is still one of the more powerful trees either way, just that some of the policies have a better synergy with taller/smaller empires.
 
I'd say that Rationalism and Tradition are the two trees that I completely fill in every game I've played in BNW, regardless of which victory I'm pursuing.

This.

I don't play wide so I have never opened Liberty. 45+ Capital plus two/three 35+ cities is more than enough for me.

Consulates and Pledge to Protect for all the City/State friendships is a nice start, then just naturally ally them when they all start doing random quests. Once I have a fair number allied then I'll open Scholasticism. At that point policies tend to get pretty boring. With half of the Ideology policies being pretty weak I'll just take Freedom for Statue of Liberty and the few tenents I care about
 
The other policies just aren't very appealing. Exploration and Commerce suck, Honor is only good for a pure warmonger and Piety is only good if you get it early. Only about half of the tenets in each Ideology are any good. In a high culture game it just gets to a point where no social policy is appealing at all.

The whole Rationalism tree probably accounts for about a 40-50% increase in science and one extra Great Scientist, and because Science snowballs into more Science (unlike Culture, Gold, Faith), this makes it much better.

I guess that's what I'm getting at. The other policies might look better if rationalism weren't so good. It's also kind of a weak mechanic that the challenge comes from giving the AI insane bonuses to research, but then having an SP that the AI doesn't care about that helps you catch up. You're basically railroaded into playing a certain way. At least the first three policies of exploration are reasonable if you want to play a sort of wide coastal empire. I like doing that, but it fails hard on difficulty 7. Wouldn't matter so much if the AI would build enough units on lower difficulties. Not trying to be disagreeable, but faith does snowball if you have mosques/pagodas and go wide. Still it's all weak by virtue of rationalism being so good and basically a free catch up mode.

Personally I wouldn't bother with the full Patronage tree. City states don't produce much science unless you have a lot of them. You're better off completing rationalism first.

Opener of Exploration is good for the Louvre.

No argument here. I wasn't suggesting to fill patronage, but getting to consulates basically gets all the CS goodies for almost nothing. It's kind of sadly humorous that the SP side of the game is rationalized down to "get rationalism" ASAP.
 
I guess that's what I'm getting at. The other policies might look better if rationalism weren't so good. It's also kind of a weak mechanic that the challenge comes from giving the AI insane bonuses to research, but then having an SP that the AI doesn't care about that helps you catch up. You're basically railroaded into playing a certain way. At least the first three policies of exploration are reasonable if you want to play a sort of wide coastal empire. I like doing that, but it fails hard on difficulty 7. Wouldn't matter so much if the AI would build enough units on lower difficulties. Not trying to be disagreeable, but faith does snowball if you have mosques/pagodas and go wide. Still it's all weak by virtue of rationalism being so good and basically a free catch up mode.

Well I've won Science on 7 taking the first two Exploration policies (Archipelago, every city was coastal), but still not before Secularism and Free Thought. I usually hold off on finishing Rationalism until a key tech though.

It's a good point about Pagodas. However Faith has no multipliers, so a Pagoda is going to take 100-150 turns to pay for itself. The Science investment to hit certain techs (Philosophy, Education and Plastics most prominently) very quickly pays for itself, such that it very often is the best choice to rush them.
 
Doesn't that make your game in question an effective difficulty of 5 or 6? (AI naval logic)

Well it's not very good admittedly. But have you played a water map in BNW yet? The AI feels a lot better and they definitely seem to build a lot more ships, and also prioritize water techs more.

Like I remember playing an islands game on 7 or 8 as Denmark and as soon as I hit Battleships the game was mine, despite being ahead of me in tech the AI was just spamming Mobile SAMs all over their islands while I bombard their capitals from the sea...

But this game I just played recently, the AI stayed competitive in water techs (Elizabeth actually had SOTL out when I had Frigates, pretty scary stuff) and they all built a LOT of ships. They also pulled off some interesting tactics several times where they would encircle an isolated ship of mine (carrier or sub usually) with Frigates/Battleships/Subs so that I could not escape through ZOC.

So while the AI is no Lord Nelson just yet, its naval tactics seem massively improved in BNW, at least on a level with their ground tactics now.
 
Top Bottom