Is it worth delaying Tradition/Liberty for first policy Honor as Songhai?

Playing as Askia does it seem worth it to spend your first SP on Honor then switch over to the standard tradition/liberty Policies? 45 Culture for the ability to see barb camps as they spawn and the 25% combat strength to farm them efficiently? In this latest patch you can't even grab a quick horseman and clear out camps fast. Warrior Barbs fortified on a hill will beat a single horseman without the 25% bonus.

If I find a culture ruin I'd probably take tradition first, but otherwise, yeah honor would seem to be a pretty solid choice. It was already a good choice for Songhai, but now with tougher barbs in the patch, it's even better.

SureYouCan said:

Playing as Askia does it seem worth it to spend your first SP on Honor then switch over to the standard tradition/liberty Policies? 45 Culture for the ability to see barb camps as they spawn and the 25% combat strength to farm them efficiently? In this latest patch you can't even grab a quick horseman and clear out camps fast. Warrior Barbs fortified on a hill will beat a single horseman without the 25% bonus.

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I'd probably take tradition first regardless of start. If you build a monument, you still double cultural output. If you don't, you quadruple it. Plus you'd open more tiles (and hopefully better tiles) to help product more units quicker... assuming thats your route ofcourse.

(On Epic) With a monument and tradition you'd get honour SP about 11 turns later, and considering you'll probably have to stand around and heal for a bunch of turns between attacks and camps, might aswell gain that culture in the mean time.

Taking tradition first, on the other hand, greatly delays your SPs later in the game, so unless you plan on going deeper than just opening the tradition tree itself, I would rather do liberty -> honor or straight honor. As shongai, tradition first with the free culture building isn't too bad w/ their UB but it still does delay your very late game SPs.

That beeing said, I'm not a big fan of going honor if you don't plan on mass warmongering and actually spending at least 3 policies in it. You could always go liberty-citizenship-meritocracy, settle a GE for production and use 2 horsemens to clear barbs. CSs will point you the most important barb camps anyway.

If you put razing barbarians in your maps,yes it worths so much(it's even better in water maps).

Deau said:

Taking tradition first, on the other hand, greatly delays your SPs later in the game, so unless you plan on going deeper than just opening the tradition tree itself, I would rather do liberty -> honor or straight honor.

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Can you explain this statement please? I thought taking an extra 3 culture per turn would make you gain policies faster, not slower. Is it just that you are one policy behind?

fromar said:

Can you explain this statement please? I thought taking an extra 3 culture per turn would make you gain policies faster, not slower. Is it just that you are one policy behind?

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The idea is that your policies in other trees cost more culture. So for eample if you wanted mediocracy, it would cost 240(?) culture, instead of 135 culture if you took tradition first (again on Epic speed)

However, I think its offset by gaining more culture with tradition and therefore gain more SPs (in general) in the same amount of time.

so lets assume goal is mediocracy, on Epic, no huts, and build a momunet first.

first SP costs 35 culture - get at approx turn 20

Next SP costs 65 culture:

with Traditon (6 culture per turn) - 11 turns (turn 31) - get liberty
with liberty (4 culture per turn) - 16 turns (turn 36) - get free worker

Next SP costs 135:

With tradtion (7 culture per turn) - 19 turns ( turn 50) - get free worker
with liberty (4 culture per turn) - 34 turns (turn 70) - get mediocracy

Next SP costs 240(?):

With tradition (7 culture per turn) - 34 turns (turn 84) - get mediocracy
With liberty (4 culture per turn) - 60 turns (turn 130) - get (whatever)

... ok so now that I started typing this out I can't remember the rest of the SP costs.

BUT I think you "catch up" by the next SP and even if your goal is medicocracy, you get it only 14 turns later (which don't get me wrong can be important), and you also will have a much larger area and more tiles to choose from... and therefore (potentially) more hammers, food and/or gold. (and ofcourse this all changes if you build more cities, a wonder, somehow get philosophy early and build a temple, don't build a temple etc).

The only way I wouldn't take Tradition first in any game, is if for some reason I was not going to take the tradition tree at all... and given the nice SP in it, it would have to be a very specific and situational strategy.

Deau said:

Taking tradition first, on the other hand, greatly delays your SPs later in the game, so unless you plan on going deeper than just opening the tradition tree itself, I would rather do liberty -> honor or straight honor..

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if you're not going into tradition as songhai you're doing it wrong.

to the op, yes, honor is helpful. getting it first isn't so important though.

tradition -> liberty -> free settler -> free mud pyramid mosques -> landed elite is a really, really powerful opener as songhai. you have to tech to philosophy for the mpms but the instant +5 culture in your first 4 cities is well worth it.

vexing said:

if you're not going into tradition as songhai you're doing it wrong.

to the op, yes, honor is helpful. getting it first isn't so important though.

tradition -> liberty -> free settler -> free mud pyramid mosques -> landed elite is a really, really powerful opener as songhai. you have to tech to philosophy for the mpms but the instant +5 culture in your first 4 cities is well worth it.

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I presume that you have to also build 4 monuments, but they don't take that long once the city has a bit of production.

neilkaz said:

I presume that you have to also build 4 monuments, but they don't take that long once the city has a bit of production.

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nope, hence the really, really powerful part. they pop immediately when you settle a new city.

vexing said:

nope, hence the really, really powerful part. they pop immediately when you settle a new city.

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Thx..that is what I'd read before, but I don't understand why? I thought Legalism gave you the the first available free cultural building and monuments would come prior to MPM's even though they aren't a pre-req.

thx .. neilkaz ..

vexing said:

if you're not going into tradition as songhai you're doing it wrong.

to the op, yes, honor is helpful. getting it first isn't so important though.

tradition -> liberty -> free settler -> free mud pyramid mosques -> landed elite is a really, really powerful opener as songhai. you have to tech to philosophy for the mpms but the instant +5 culture in your first 4 cities is well worth it.

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hmmm I'll have to try this, thanks! Too bad there doens't seem to be any room for honor in there, the first policy just SCREAMS songhia to me...makes me wonder..how essential is liberty for the strat? I'm thinking tradition -> honor -> Free mosques -> landed elite might be viable, to take better advantage of extra barb gold while still going for the free mosques. Have you tried that?

legalism goes by the formula culture given / production, descending.

the order of precedence is

mud pyramid mosque
monument
monastery
temple
opera house
wat
museum
public school

i forget where india's unique ends up but it's somewhere low. i've given the full list elsewhere.

vexing said:

if you're not going into tradition as songhai you're doing it wrong.

to the op, yes, honor is helpful. getting it first isn't so important though.

tradition -> liberty -> free settler -> free mud pyramid mosques -> landed elite is a really, really powerful opener as songhai. you have to tech to philosophy for the mpms but the instant +5 culture in your first 4 cities is well worth it.

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I agree that the free mud pyramid mosques is awesome for shongai, on the other hand, many people do a tradition opener without going deeper in the tree which is very bad later in the game. My goal with the comment was to hopefully use this thread as a mean to pull players away from doing tradition-liberty-citizenship-meritocracy and then never using any other tradition SPs as it really cripples your late game. Depending on your total culture output and number of settled cities, taking tradition in this way leads to delaying scholaticism or delaying theocracy (and all of the policies afterwards).
*Edit* as shown by rough simple maths in my later post, the break point seems to be somewhere around meritocracy. So picking tradition will delay every policy after meritocracy.

@Fromar

Increasing the speed is relative. The SP cost increases depending on the number of SP you have. The exact culture costs are presented in depth in the crunching numbers thread(strategy articles subforum)

What my statement implies is that the relative strength of +3 culture, relative to your total produced culture scales down as your empire culture goes up. Thus, it's impact is less and less important. On the other hand though, having picked it first increase the cost of every other policy you intend to get afterwards "more and more" (exponential scaling) so as soon as the 3 culture per turn doesn't cover the cost increase, it means every SP from there on till the end has had an increased time to obtain due to picking tradition.

A different way to see this is once the total culture generated by tradition is caught by the cost of a SP, every SP afterwards happens to have been delayed by taking tradition.

Those 2 approaches each don't lead to the same weighting of traditions' relative value. The first views the delay between 2 SPs as beeing slowed by tradition at a certain point in the game. The later views the delay of policy "n" and all of the ones after.

I will try and think of a somewhat simple example I could provide with numbers throughout the night and get back to you about it.

chazzycat said:

hmmm I'll have to try this, thanks! Too bad there doens't seem to be any room for honor in there, the first policy just SCREAMS songhia to me...makes me wonder..how essential is liberty for the strat? I'm thinking tradition -> honor -> Free mosques -> landed elite might be viable, to take better advantage of extra barb gold while still going for the free mosques. Have you tried that?

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i have not tried it. the free settler, +50% production makes it so you can get to four cities really easily, and since they all start with the mud pyramid mosques you actually speed up next policy with each of the four (unless you've got a cultural ally or two).

honor is nice, but simply compare the gold cost of two settlers (what you gain if you take liberty and build 2 in capital) to how much extra you gain from huts. given that you can clear huts without honor it's pretty clear that it can wait.

Well the question is, does it speed up or slow down the 3rd Freedom policy? How quickly do you have to reach the Reniassance for Tradition to speed up that policy?

@vexing: gotcha, thanks! I haven't played much Songhai but this is really helpful, I will try them again soon. It's tough to pass up honor in the short term but I can see how the other choices pay off more in the long run. Thanks.

I also don't think Honor does enough. While early gold is nice, you can take some of those barb camps later with two warriors or with horses which you'll be making as they'll become city killing Mandakalus. If Honor had some stronger additional policies (ie b4 it was nerfed) I'd be more inclined.

I'll have to try that Tradition etc opening for my next Songhai game. Normally I just go Liberty and beeline into the left side of Patronage.

GeorgeF said:

Well the question is, does it speed up or slow down the 3rd Freedom policy? How quickly do you have to reach the Reniassance for Tradition to speed up that policy?

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Note : the [ ] represent a Roof function (aka rounding up) since you have to generate AT LEAST the required culture to obtain the policy...obviously

one city costs for first 4 policies:
25 45 90 160

so either you take liberty and need to generate 135 more culture to get meritocracy or take tradition and need to generate 295.

In the case where you DON'T build monument,
Opening w tradition will grant you 4 culture/turn for 12 turns and 5 culture/turn afterwards thus taking you [12 + (295 - 4*12)/5] = 62 turns after picking your first policy.

Openin w liberty grant you 2 culture/turn thus [135/2] = 68 turns. So you save 6 turns to meritocracy in that situation.

In the case where you build a monument and, for the sake of simplifying, lets say your monument was built on the turn you selected your first policy.
Opening w tradition will grant you 6 culture/turn for [45/6] = 8 turns and 7 culture/turn afterwards. Thus, [8 + ( 295 - 6*8)/7] = 44 turns after you picked your first policy.

Opening w liberty will grant you 4 culture/turn all the way. [135/4] = 34 turns so you save 10 turns in that situation.


So as an answer to your comment GeorgeF, it depends if you build a monument or not and when you build it. It may also depend on when you settle your other cities if any and again wether you build monument or not in there.

As a general statement though, the breaking point where tradition SLOWS the obtention of new policies seems to be somewhere around the 3rd-4rth SP. So unless you plan to get more policies in the tradition tree, it is a very awful way to open. It's plus value is the fast border expansion in your capital which could possibly give you more luxs' to exploit and sell to neighbors but that would be in very rare cases and then it's about determining wether 300g early in the game is worth delaying every SP beyond meritocracy.


Again, this is for a tradition-liberty-citizenship-meritocracy opener in which you DON'T intend to put anymore SPs into tradition.

In my case, I often play Monty, and sometimes its a problem with too much early culture, with all the +6 for killing Brutes. Which means that I want Tradition opened anyway, at least down the middle. So I usually go open Tradition first, then fill out Liberty, then back to Tradition.