I think that Liberty and Tradition are now more closely balanced but Liberty is better for stronger religion influence with increasingly wide empires. That doesn’t make liberty better; it is just something to think about when avoiding building a wide empire.
I don’t think that Honor really is even remotely as good as Tradition or Liberty and that, that tree needs to be re-done.
Just my opinion folks...
The opinion of someone who either doesn't warmonger or hasn't otherwise exploited Honor to full effect, I think. Honor is a very much more focused tree than the other two - you need to be a warmonger pretty much full-time to get the full payoff (literally), but its finisher is far stronger for a warmonger than a few aqueducts or a single GP is for the strategies that use Liberty and Tradition, you get a maintenance-free chain of happiness buildings, very quick build times for units in the early game and quick promotions that will last through all their upgrades (and you'll likely get those benefits earlier than with the other branches due to the big early culture boost from fighting constant barbarians). Most of the bonuses from Liberty you'll notice in the early game and then not much afterwards, while Honor's are game-long in their effects. You can also get away taking Honor as your second policy tree whereas Liberty would be pointless as a second tree. So it's wrong to think of Honor as directly competing with Liberty simply because they both unlock at the same time.
As for later trees, I'm still inclined to favour Patronage less than Commerce or Rationalism (even as Siam - largely because Siamese benefits stem from CS friendship rather than alliance and are often more lucrative as a result of friendships with many states rather than allies with a few, while key Patronage benefits don't take effect unless you're allied), and Freedom (essential for Cultural Victory, and valuable for anyone who uses specialists or GPs - since I play Korea a fair amount I get a lot of use out of this) more than Order or (unless I'm warmongering) Autocracy.
Piety is useless and a mess. Even more so since it isnt compatible with rationalism where almost everyone puts 1 point into it because the bonus you get from that is already huge. So piety needs a complete rework. It doesnt help that its bugged too (go full rationalism then put 1 point in piety, after anarchy switch back and u get 2 free techs AGAIN). This should be reworked into a starter policy tree.
I think it's notable that I completely forgot about Piety in my above comments. And I used to take it routinely pre-G&K.
The Super-Versatile group I call this because they help with at least 3 of the four victory conditions. The free settler from Liberty makes taking at least the left side a must in most games
This is the one that gets the attention, but don't discount how valuable +1 production and the boost to building production is now that you can take it right at the start of the game, so there's a reasonable incentive to take that first regardless of the settler, while as ever getting the worker too early just means he spends a lot of time with nothing to do while you reach the relevant techs.
Patronage's 2nd policy allowing you to be friends for the rest of the game with any CS makes it good for Diplo bc it's less gold to buy them off later
This has been weakened a lot by the greater variety of ways to gain and keep influence through quests, and the changes to "resting influence" (so you no longer get 20 influence no matter what, you can still piss the CS off if you've been at war long enough, elections are rigged, you trespass whole your influence is below 30 or whatever) - you'll gradually crawl back up to +20 (+30 with pledging), at a normal rate of +1 influence a turn, but if you start from 0 it will still take you 30 turns to get back into friendship territory. For instance in my current game I have actually taken Patronage, but Zanzibar is currently very angry with me because of some long-term trespassing while I was engaged in a long-running attack on Coventry (CS territory was the best place to site the trebuchet, as well as on the route for my other units).
I now rarely use Patronage even for diplo victories - insofar as gold is still useful for securing them (which has been overstated), Commerce offers a better way to get that bonus from the opener alone (as my capital tends to be my main gold farm anyway). Most of the advantages you list come from the CSes, not from the patronage tree, and fully three of the Patronage policies - science, extra happiness/resources, great people - are wholly reliant on being full-time allies with as many CSes as possible to be useful, although the rest of the Patronage tree doesn't really give you any advantages in making alliances any way other than spending gold - which again comes down to "which is better, increasing the effect of gold payments to CSes specifically, or increasing the actual amount of gold I have to play with?".
a culture victory isn't really a victory you would go for in multiplayer its more a achievement or for fun in single player wich seems a little bit wierd it is a part of the victory right?
In a single-player game, what's the difference between a "victory" and "an achievement for fun"?
Besides which I've won it many times in single-player on levels up to Emperor, and lost in multiplayer only to a last-minute rush I was unprepared for, not because of my victory condition, but because it wasn't what I expected from that particular person, who usually just rushes his own science victories.
