Do you build monuments when going for tradition?

Only in the capital, though sometimes I'll skip it if I find an early culture ruin.

Makavcio said:

Try them. These guys are crazy.
You say 4 ruins? With Shoshone you get: +30 culture, +1 pop, +enough religion to fund a pantheon, +1 pop. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

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On a huge map i usually find 50 ruins with my pathfinders even on immortal (raging barbs ). This leads to fast having the most pop (cap of size 10), biggest army (6 Bowfinders), a lot of SPs (definitely via the suggested route a), a tech lead and an enhanced religion before others even have been founded. It's hard to loose the game as Shoshone on a huge map (OK, deity is another story).

Interesting views. My 2nd policy 90% of the time is ARISTOCRACY because Stonehenge and the Oracle are too important to wait for when playing on Immortal. I always view Legalism as being a bit trite because I use it to get free amphitheaters (one I have monuments built already).

sabotai said:

Unless they've changed things, the tradition policy that gives cultural buildings will give the lowest one (not yet built), and if none is available, give you the lowest one once it is researched.

I sometimes used to take advantage of this to get a nice bunch of hammers, taking the policy when I had the monuments and using the hammers to instead get amphitheaters or whatever comes next (can depend on Civ).

But I just noticed that Cultural buildings have been nerfed. Its questionable whether the amphitheater is even worth much around the time you build it (the free maintenance is nice).

I wondered what people usually do (feel free to outline situations that change your behavior):
a) Get the policy to get 4 free monuments
b) Get the policy after getting 4 monuments so that the subsequent culture building is free (one might have to delay middle of tradition policy for this, and that is a hard sell to me).
c) Put a monument in the capitol, use the policy to get free monuments in other cities.

Realistically, the choice is between C and A for me.

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Bear with me...
My routine opening is HONOR for the cultural bump for killing barbs and location help to farming them out for XP and $. Then either TRADITION or LIBERTY as second and third selection (again for the fast cultural bumps). This leaves open the following with your next cultural selection:

a) Free worker (do I even need it yet? Have I stolen one yet with an early DOW?)
- Can I use even use it? do I have the techs needed to improve my resources?

b) A bump in production for ALL buildings (including wonders)..with a serious look at lining up the next choice: that free settler...which again I ask: Do I need it yet?

c) A 15% bump in just wonders...good when pushing for the Great Library et al General wonder whoring
- I usually couple and select (b) AND (c) back to back when really going for all wonders and I limit myself to ONE city for quite a while to gain the advantage of only having to build one coliseum, market, barracks, library (free from GL).

d) 50% city range protection and free maintenance for military unit (non-ship) in city
- sometime I DO Need this early depending on my neighbors and only IF they are
obviously going to go for an early rush at me.

e) YOUR FREE CULTURE BUILDING (?) - So to answer your question. Do I want a free monument which I already built. Cost is so low so no. Even cost for the next cities is so low...so no. Have I even gotten to the tech already to give me that free amphitheater? No...because I selected PHILOSOPHY in order to build the National College with my free library in place and start whizzing past the other civs in both culture and tech progress.

I usually SAVE Legalism (e) until I have reached the time to bump up all 4 cities with Opera Houses. Yes...OR even Museums! One shot-insta-build Opera houses with Legalism then it is a short 8 turn build of The Hermitage (on standard speed) ...and the double up your capital with the Sistine Chapel and you will be rocking the Renaissance and on your way to getting that awesome FIRST Ideology bump! Opera houses and Museums are pricey and slow to build. Using Legalism in this way is a huge advantage in getting your cultural moving fast again during the Renaissance slow down. The strategy also will yield you Monarchy and Landed Elite when you most need them and they are actually effective due to your city sizes.

You can do the same thing with Museums and The Louve build ...but honestly I hold off and seem to have found the Free Opera House/Hermitage/Sistine Chapel strategy my standard best play.

The earlier you get Landed Elite and Monarchy the better. Aristocracy gives a comparable benefit when it comes to wonders (+15% vs more hammers from larger city size), but since LE also gives science it wins out. And when you consider the fact that Legalism also opens up Monarchy then it's a no-brainer imo.

Imo it's a mistake to wait until Amphis or Opera Houses with Legalism. You forego the benefits of free culture when you need it most (i.e. early), tie up cities building Monuments instead of Granaries, Archers or Shrines, delay the vital policies of LE and Monarchy for an unsightly period of time, and lose the saved maintenance from the 4 free monuments for all that time. It'd be a different case if Ampitheatres etc actually gave decent cpt (as they used to); as it is they're nearly useless when you get them. You should only build them once you'll have the Great Works to stuff into them, and by then the hammer issues will be much less severe.

EDIT: Ofc I didn't take into account that you'd take Liberty policies instead... That evens it out a bit, but imo Liberty is sub-par compared to Tradition in BNW, barring exceptional circumstances (4 good spots of land about to be taken by Shaka etc). Liberty gives you mostly one-time boosts while Tradition gives lasting benefits... The 5% science penalty further cripples the Liberty tree.

i dont understand taking Aristocracy as 2nd policy. normally in my games the capitol isn't ready for a serious run at GL or SH until (usually) around the time for my 3rd policy. if i'll even go for a run at GL/SH, i really then want the cap to have as many people as possible but not only that but also having Granary/Worker (1 or the other instead of both can suffice in a pinch). if i just take Aristocracy as 2nd policy and have just researched Writing and try to start on GL (or if i just researched Calendar for a run on SH) normally my capitol just doesn't have the passive growth power to gain enough population while building this Wonder, due to lack of either/or/both Worker and Granary.

opener situations could make the above not matter: e.g. i have 2 Cultural CS's right by me, i found a ton of ruins gold + my capitol is built on lucky gold+food heavy terrain (buy Worker), i was able to demand gold from CS's. stealing a Worker from a CS normally doesn't apply to this early in the game; from what i've seen a CS typically won't have kicked out a Worker at this point.

I usually go with C but after reading through this thread I think I've been convinced to start trying A. In that time that I would spend building a monument, I could get a head start on a pantheon instead.

Getting Landed Elite & Monarchy are the priority over all else. Make a monument ASAP to get to those policies ASAP.

I alternative between C and A. If I get a culture ruin I will go A, no question, but that's far from guaranteed and such delayed culture can really hurt. I probably have a success rate of 50% if I ignore the monument and just hope for a culture ruin.

Does that trick still work with Siam where if you build an Amphitheater then adopt Legalism, you'll get a free Wat with Education? If so, that's the one case where it might actually be worth holding off on Legalism until you get your Amphitheaters up. Getting 4 free Wats immediately would be a huge boost to your beakers, save a fair amount of production, and also save some money since you don't have to pay the Wats' 8 maintenance. The downside is having to wait on Monarchy and Landed Elite, so I think Siam is the only situation where that would make sense.

It's a toss-up. If I pop a culture goodie hut I'll skip the monument in my capital; otherwise, I'll often build one there and then use Legalism to get ones in the rest of my cities. However, I always hard-build a Stele in my capital when playing Ethiopia - no point in delaying that extra faith, now, is there?

I go with A pretty much always. (Ethiopa and their stelles being 90% of the "almost.")

To me the extra gold per turn and turns lost to building outweigh the benefits of building the first monument. Of course you can sell the monument right before claiming the freebie policy, which somewhat mitigates it. But those turns lost also could have been another unit, which cascades into being able to produce and protect a trade route. With unit maintenance costs as high as they are in the very early game I find it hard to justify. And negative cash balance means a science penalty that seriously hurts.

I never build monuments. Start with 2 scouts and feel the power.

In BNW? No. Amphitheater is largely useless until you get a great work in it.

I'd sometimes do it in G&K to start working the artist slot as soon as I finished the tech (not to mention the higher culture on the building as well).

Tabarnak said:

I never build monuments. Start with 2 scouts and feel the power.

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I tried this a few times recently.

Two tries, it turned out I had an isolated start and would have gotten them all anyway. I felt this wasn't optimal.

Another try, I spawned in such a crowded area that by the time the second scout spawned therev were ai units everywhere. It did find one ruins and I got an extra pop in a city around turn 30. Not sure if that beats a monument.

Where it seems to be ideal is when you spawn on a big continent with one or two ai. Then the second scout beats them to two or three ruins.

But it is suboptimal for a number of starts, and you can't tell by turn 5 whether you are isolated or about to meet four nearby civs.

So I think I will stick with my current style, half build monument, build shrine, finish monument.

Yeah, I don't build a monument when going for Tradition. I go scout, worker, then it's probably time to secure my area with some warriors or archers.

Often I find culture in a ruin and it skips the painful part of waiting for culture to accumulate.

A if I get a culture ruin before I am more than a turn or two into my Cap's monument.

C other wise.

Xiao Xiong said:

I tried this a few times recently.

Two tries, it turned out I had an isolated start and would have gotten them all anyway. I felt this wasn't optimal.

Another try, I spawned in such a crowded area that by the time the second scout spawned therev were ai units everywhere. It did find one ruins and I got an extra pop in a city around turn 30. Not sure if that beats a monument.

Where it seems to be ideal is when you spawn on a big continent with one or two ai. Then the second scout beats them to two or three ruins.

But it is suboptimal for a number of starts, and you can't tell by turn 5 whether you are isolated or about to meet four nearby civs.

So I think I will stick with my current style, half build monument, build shrine, finish monument.

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The only way for me to start with a monument is when i already know that i will be isolated. Most games aren't. I shouldn't say ''always'' but close. I will obviously not start with a svout if i'm on large islands map for example.

Xiao Xiong said:

I tried this a few times recently.

Two tries, it turned out I had an isolated start and would have gotten them all anyway. I felt this wasn't optimal.

Another try, I spawned in such a crowded area that by the time the second scout spawned therev were ai units everywhere. It did find one ruins and I got an extra pop in a city around turn 30. Not sure if that beats a monument.

Where it seems to be ideal is when you spawn on a big continent with one or two ai. Then the second scout beats them to two or three ruins.

But it is suboptimal for a number of starts, and you can't tell by turn 5 whether you are isolated or about to meet four nearby civs.

So I think I will stick with my current style, half build monument, build shrine, finish monument.

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It sounds like you're not playing on Pangaea. That's where the double scout opening is really optimal; on maps with less land I prefer scout-prebuild worker-finish worker/shrine/granary depending on terrain.