The one thing I can't seem to do without

disclaimer: I disagree with most of the threads that claim that a certain civilization, or a certain tactic, or a UU or UB is overpowered. I think there's a relatively good balance between the various game aspects (OK, there isn't much that Denmark can do that Persia couldn't do better, but still... it's just that some advantages are easier or more obvious in how to leverage) I'd hate to post a thread that falls along those lines, but I'm having a really tough time with the following....

Preface: Every game that I've played, I try to do something different. Still trying new civs, gearing civs towards victory conditions they aren't well-suited for, SP combos, tech paths, etc. So before starting my current game, I reviewed my previous wins on the turn before victory and found that they all had one thing in common: the tradition social policy tree

Scenario: So for a litmus test, I picked an above average civ (Arabia- everyone here seems to go ape-poopy over them, they seem just above average on paper to me) picked the easiest and most universally accessible victory condition (diplomatic- also favorable to Arabia as most of his advantages are geared towards gold accumulation) and, as luck would have it, played on an ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE map.* Good civ/easy win/great map, let's see how things go and how much of an impact not using tradition will have

Experiment:Trying to keep this concise (I know, too late). The game is going... well. There's no doubt that I'll reach the victory condition, and somewhat timely. However...
The game would be going SOOOOOO much better had I used tradition.
Doing OK without:
-Oligarchy: not the strongest SP in the tradition tree
-Legalism: yeah, there's ways to leverage this policy very effectively, but in the end it's just 4 hammer-free, maintenance free buildings that you could build the old-fashioned way
-Aristocracy: while helpful in building wonders, it's not until a city makes more than 7 or 8 HPT that this is more effective than Republic, and not until the city is making 20 HPT or so before it's noticeably more effective. The hammer from republic is also more versatile. By the time the happiness bonus from this part of the tree really kicks in, it's late enough in the game that happiness isn't as much of a factor.
But really can't seem to do without
-Opener: While it's accepted that this isn't an effective way of getting culture per turn in and of itself, it does help to move the early social policies along. But far more important is the somewhat ill-defined "greatly increases border expansion." It's taking forever for my borders to expand. It's almost NECESSARY that I'm using a gold-centered civ on a crazy map without this policy as I keep needing to buy tiles. Even with a modest prioritization of culture buildings, both in build que and tech que, it's taking a dozen turns, sometimes more for each tile to become available. For the first time ever, Education is a dual purpose tech: it's always THE tech to get to increase research, critical to early diplo wins, but I'm actually looking at Ankor Wat as being game-changing in this situation.
- Monarchy: probably the most effective happiness based SP in the game, when you first get it, it adds four or five, by the middle of the game, it's like having a second Notre Dame, and by the end, accounts for 22 or 23 happiness. Plus adds gobs of gold. In this game, rediculous faith per turn along with 2nd city having 2 new luxes bailed me out of happiness woes, but I imagine if it wasn't for the map conditions, there would be problems. And the civ selected plus map conditions made for easy times with money, can only imagine how much better it would be if I had this bonus as well.
-Landed Elite, plus the closer: I'm growing sssssllllloooowwwww!!!! SLOW!!! Happiness has been positive the whole game and yet it's nearly a dozen turns to grow, even in the capital after building HG, and having Petra make the AVERAGE food per tile worked be around 4, it;s still 10 turns plus to gain 1 citizen. Other games it's less than half of that, without the rediculously favorable map conditions.

Conclusion: The game in question is very likely to achieve victory, but it's very evident that it would have been much, much better had I pursued the tradition social policy tree, as I had in every other game that I played. More importantly, the problems encountered by not using tradition,
a.)slow growth ->slower tech, production, gold accumulation
b.)reduced happiness
c.)believe it or not, tile acquisition

are problems that would hamper all victory conditions. So it seems that all games, while possible without tradition, WILL BE better with tradition.

Are there specific strategies to playing a game without the tradition SP?


*seriously need to go a tangent on this one. By far the best map I've ever played on. If this wasn't a situation-testing scenario, probably would have rerolled because playing this through was pretty much cheating. While I'm not a fan of the desert-start-petra-gamble, this one was, but a river was running through, providing just a few floodplains tiles to get growing well and 5 or 6 riverside desert hills. Two wheat, both on floodplains, one luxury was incense, also on floodplains (never seen that before), other luxury was gold to which there were three, all on desert hills. Two oases, one within the starting grid and irrigating two more desert hills. only 5 total non-desert tiles, one of which was a grass 4X horse, one tundra hill that turned out to have 6Xiron, Only one non-irrigated, non-hill desert tile, and it's placement suggests that it's a safe bet that there's oil there--- desert folklore (along with a CS)allowed for making 30+faith per turn by 700 BC while skipping Stonehenge, production was to the point that newly available wonders could be built in under 12 turns, even when not in a golden age. And that's just the capital.
On opposing ends of what would be my second and third city are two natural wonders, GBR and Uluru. Other than the Uluru city, which will become the frontier city, the capital closes off a nice, 6 city large peninsula, unreachable to other civs and expansion is, therefore, completely at my leisure. The Uluru/frontier city conveniently is well suited towards production, riverside, hills available and livestock, plus has two new luxury resources. The GBR city has 4 seafood resources, 2 of which are redundant but new lux, in addition to the 2GBR tiles. All but one of the 4 remaining city sites provided a new luxury resource and were on good-great sites; the one that didn't provide a new lux had cerro de potassi, making this game the first I'd ever been able to utilize three NWs. Frickin' wow.

Tradition is generally not the best when you found 6+ cities. Several civs benefit from lots of cities like that.

It would be interesting to compare what you would have lost if you had taken Tradition and foresaken the benefits of Liberty for a 6+ city strategy:

Without Republic, you would be struggling to get those many little cities up and running in anything resembling a reasonable time frame.

Without Republic and Collective Rule, you would be lamenting the dozens of extra turns it took to bang out your five Tradition settlers, together with the lost hammers and stagnation in your capital during the extended build times (yes, you might have rush bought a couple of settlers with gold from luxury and strategic resource sales, but that gold could have been used to ally CSs or rush bought buildings or units instead).

Without Republic and Citizenship, you would be bemoaning how many turns you wasted building that additional worker and the interminable turns it took for your workers in all those cities to get tiles improved (which led you either to build more workers or to defer the benefits of those tile improvements)

Without Meritocracy, you would be bewailing your happiness woes, having to limit growth to compensate and prioritizing happiness buildings over other buildings and units to keep from stagnating everywhere.

Without Representation, you would have been staring forlornly at steep cliffs to earn successive policies (in a 4-city Tradition strategy, policy costs are approx. 1.52x the cost for a single city, while a 6-city Liberty strategy (post-Representation) is approx. 1.61x, compared to 2.01x for 6 cities in Tradition -- and those six Liberty cities are generating net 3 more culture (from the Liberty opener) than your Tradition capital's 3 base culture, not to mention the added culture from their own monuments, amphitheaters, etc., whiich should more than outweighs the .09x higher policy cost over a 4-city Tradition strategy)

And the Liberty finisher....what can I say? What missed wonder might have provided just the edge to hasten your victory....?

It really comes down to what your map/strategy looks like.

One thing I tend to think people dont really consider when thinking about liberty vs tradition is how many resources are in the immediate terrain around their capital. If you only have two luxuries in your cross and there isnt a river around, the lack of gold can really slow you down if you go tradition.

Personally, in my recent games Ive been such a fan of culture growth that Ive almost always done a combination of liberty/tradition or tradition/honor. Though current Aztec game is liberty/honor... which is pretty sick.

I dont know, I like to get an aqueduct in my capital but keep my other cities stagnant for a while... though it depends on whats going on with my happiness levels and a variety of other factors.

Every game I play looks completely different. Beat deity pretty easily though so Ive gotta be doing something right

In my current game i only have to choose 1 of 3 early SP tree, and it was Liberty.

Playing as Russia, border growth wasn't an issue because of krespot. Culture for moving forward in Social Policies i gained from Wine (can't remeber what faith it was) and again it stack with krespot.

Tradition wonder build bonus - extra hammers from UA is enought for that. After finishing whole Lib i had access to Commerce where +2 happy faces are to every lux (it beats Monarchy easy). I know that it is on the very end of the right branch, but not taking Trad makes it much much faster to grab than you think.

1. Best game I ever played was Russia as Liberty/honor/order. Expanded like wildfire early on, ended up with 3k score. Was absurd, etc.

2. However, I am starting to feel similarly about tradition to the OP. Food and happiness to support the growth, have become, in my eyes, are incredibly strong for so many reasons. Being able to concentrate your empire as tradition is incredible; defensively and politically it is so superior to wide. As the game wears on, your production really starts to kick in -- especially after industrialization.

3. Played an incredible tall game with the Dutch recently. Trading your last lux for other luxes, along with polders, really supports a really tall style; size 40 capital and two other size 35 ish, with a size 25 city, made for a pretty easy science victory on emperor.

To address Browd's points and touch on what Priah77 added,
yes, liberty is very powerful, particularly if you plan on going wider. And many civs are better with wider empires, Russia, France, Rome and pretty much every civ that has a unique building. But the original post was not "tradition vs. liberty," it was when would it be better to go liberty without tradition. The two policies are not mutually exclusive (perhaps they should be...) and if I plan on having 5 or more cities, I'll designate one of the 4-5 SP trees that I plan on utilizing to be liberty, and one would be tradition. When would it be optimal for one of the other 3-4 SP trees to NOT be tradition?

I guess I didn't read the OP that way (and, FWIW, I usually take Tradition, unless I know I'm going for 6+ cities -- my post was intended more as a "beware of sour grapes" counterpoint to the OP).

To your point, except in culture games, it is rare that I end up taking more than 14-16 policies in a game, so I can't say whether Tradition or Liberty (whichever I didn't open) would be my tree number 4 or 5, but it definitely would not be tree number 2 or 3. Whichever policy tree I open, when it is completed, I find that I'm ready for Patronage, Commerce, or Rationalism, and later some points in Order or Freedom (I never seem to take Autocracy and Honor rarely).

I know some like to take the Tradition opener before opening Liberty, but I recall some careful analysis in this forum showing that approach takes longer to get to the Liberty finisher (7th policy) than just opening and plowing through Liberty (6 policies). So, unless I'm playing a culture game, if I open Liberty or Tradition, I don't find myself backtracking to open (much less complete) the other, given the significant benefits offered by other policy trees.

The last time I opened Liberty (to dash out to 8 cities with the Mayans) I missed the Renaissance by 3 turns after finishing Liberty, so I had to "burn" a policy before opening Rationalism. I chose the Tradition opener, thinking I might later take Legalism for 4 free Opera Houses. Never happened. My subsequent policy choices tracked a typical science game, taking the left side of Rationalism, two policies in Order and then completing Rationalism as the last policies before launching. But, I was starved for gold most of the late game, and should have taken the Commerce opener instead of the Tradition opener. (I was 2 turns from another policy when I launched, but it wasn't going to be Legalism - getting 4 free museums seemed silly at that point.)

OP, first of all I'm jealous of that start, it sounds like a perfect map to play as a giant jerk because you could be largely self-sufficient. I get some serious satisfaction of telling the AI to go suck a lemon on diplomacy screens haha.

Now more to the point of your post, I think it really comes down to play style and circumstance. I've done a few cultural and diplomatic victories using Liberty with no Tradition, although no science victories without Tradition that I can recall. I find the best way to do this is build the cities quite close to each other so they can't get too huge. This way your happiness from population stays under control making monarchy less important. Then you will build short roads between cities asap and make up the lost gold from numerous trade routes while not spending it all on maintenance due to the short distances. Meritocracy will boost your happiness significantly as well thanks to the routes.

You should be able to get the roads out fast with the extra worker and construction speed bonus from citizenship. Since the cities are closer together, tile gaps close faster and the Tradition opener loses importance. Sure you won't expand to grab lux outside your city radii but, you're a liberty civ, so build a city by it!

If you're truly worried about food from the Tradition closer still, even with a tight knit net of smaller cities, use the closer to spawn a GM and/or the honor closer to get rich by attacking a nation with obsolete units that die fast, get some money and ally a maritime CS to keep them in your corner for as long as you need to grow.

::Off topic but finishing my thoughts::

If I remember correctly I actually grabbed both openers for Liberty and Honor with my 1st and 2nd SP so I got culture for every single barbarian I killed which really helped me get deep into liberty quickly. Patronage meshes well with a Liberty strat in my opinion; I find you rely a lot on militaristic CSs to gift units due to your small average city size and maritime CSs earlier in the game until you can get your food production up via buildings and techs. Granted you could instead go for Peity early, get shrines and temples in all the small cities quickly and dominate the religious side of things and get units that way. Again it depends on your victory goals. Order is another obvious choice to compliment Liberty thanks to the Opener, Communism and the Finisher, also United Front is excellent if you went with the Patronage approach. Freedom seems to compliment tall empires the most so I avoid it unless using Tradition.

Browd said:

I know some like to take the Tradition opener before opening Liberty, but I recall some careful analysis in this forum showing that approach takes longer to get to the Liberty finisher (7th policy) than just opening and plowing through Liberty (6 policies). So, unless I'm playing a culture game, if I open Liberty or Tradition, I don't find myself backtracking to open (much less complete) the other, given the significant benefits offered by other policy trees.

Click to expand...

I love grabbing the Honor opener while going Liberty, I haven't crunched the numbers but it seems to me that if you kill 15+ barbs over the course of the game you should make up for taking the SP. Especially once the barbs get higher strengths ie pikemen, musketmen and you get a significant amount of culture from the kill. Of course if you're going to expand all over your land mass super fast then this might be wasted, but on larger pieces of land with lots of potential for barb camps it works quite well.