I think one of the most interesting things you can do in Civ 5 is mixing social policy trees. It makes the game much more interesting and I think there are certain times when it is the optimal way to play. Usually, one will start a policy tree, finish it, and go on. What I mean by mixing is going through multiple trees at the same time. I'm wondering how you all have tried this and whether it has worked for you guys or not. I have been doing this in some of my games, but it takes so long to finish the trees sometimes that I wonder if what I am doing is practical or not. Note that all of this discussion is centered around Deity, although I'm sure it is applicable to immortal too. Anything below immortal is so easy I don't think your social policies really matter too much, so you won't really suffer from using subpar strategies.
Liberty + Honor:
I tried using this as a warmonger because honor is amazing for warmongers and collective rule lets you do 2 settlers for less than 1/4 the cost of two settlers (extra hammer, one free settler, one made faster with extra hammer) than without productive rule. This allows you to build lots of archers / spearmen / chariots early game so you are ready to take nearby capital(s) in classical era. The three liberty policies allow you to still expand while building the army, so you actually have an empire going by first war. Everything in honor is good for warmongering, but professional army is what I waited for before going to war to save money on archer --> composite bows. I opened honor for the barb culture first, but it took me a long time to get to professional army so I'm not sure if this is the optimal way to do it, maybe I should have gone for military tradition, or just gone to war. After the first war, I went back and finished both trees, I went to liberty for the golden age and happiness boosts first.
I mixed liberty and honor with dedicated war civs: Huns, Mongolia, Germany, Zulus, Denmark, Shoshone, America, Rome. The strategy was different for Huns because I didn't need to upgrade archers early game, so I went down the left side of honor to get the XP boost on horse archers.
Liberty + Piety:
I used this strategy with the idea of the early cultural victory with pagodas, mosques, and the +2 tourism per religious building piety finisher belief. I successfully did this as Spain, but I had great barrier reef and Kilomanjaro so I think that game was a guaranteed win. I also tried this as Maya, but it didn't really work. It was still a cultural victory, but not a very quick one.
The idea is to go to collective rule, then go through piety to get the additional belief with the tourism. I think the best way to use this is to completely spam <snip> cities even if they have not much going for them, use faith to buy mosques and pagodas (or cathedrals if you have to) which can help with the happiness problem from lots of cities. I had real science / culture problems though because even when I had Mayans with pyramids science was not going well with so many 3-4 population cities.
I think this one can work but it might only work with Spain, not really sure.
Liberty + Aesthetics:
This sort of worked for me, but I think it could have gone better. I used this strategy with Brazil for a cultural victory. Again, I went to collective rule. Brazil can have good starts but is usually stuck in low production jungle, so the +1 hammer from liberty actually really helped. This and the settler production boost allowed me to get an empire going, although I'm really not sure if this was the best way to do it. I ended up going through tradition later in the game just because it would boost infrastructure, I didn't build aqueducts because I planned to go through tradition, I built monuments but I just used the culture building bonus for the next one in line. The idea behind this was to save the golden age and free GP from liberty to get two golden ages very late in the game, once I had gone into freedom so you can get the 1.5x length. This gives 24 turns on standard game of double tourism and increased GWAM production, it actually worked but my mid game as a cultural civ lagged a lot because I built liberty instead of tradition. I think this is situational, but it worked.
I don't know if there are any others that could work, the whole idea is using collective rule then doing something else. If you're playing Poland I guess you can use the free policy from medieval and classical to go through liberty and tradition for infrastructure. I don't think you can rally warmonger so good with tradition, but I might try to do something with Aztecs Honor + Tradition. It will slow you down later game but having both the tradition and honor openers will blow through those trees at first, and you can build some decent 2x promoted jaguars by killing barbs. Doesn't really set one up for big wars though...
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Liberty + Honor:
I tried using this as a warmonger because honor is amazing for warmongers and collective rule lets you do 2 settlers for less than 1/4 the cost of two settlers (extra hammer, one free settler, one made faster with extra hammer) than without productive rule. This allows you to build lots of archers / spearmen / chariots early game so you are ready to take nearby capital(s) in classical era. The three liberty policies allow you to still expand while building the army, so you actually have an empire going by first war. Everything in honor is good for warmongering, but professional army is what I waited for before going to war to save money on archer --> composite bows. I opened honor for the barb culture first, but it took me a long time to get to professional army so I'm not sure if this is the optimal way to do it, maybe I should have gone for military tradition, or just gone to war. After the first war, I went back and finished both trees, I went to liberty for the golden age and happiness boosts first.
I mixed liberty and honor with dedicated war civs: Huns, Mongolia, Germany, Zulus, Denmark, Shoshone, America, Rome. The strategy was different for Huns because I didn't need to upgrade archers early game, so I went down the left side of honor to get the XP boost on horse archers.
Liberty + Piety:
I used this strategy with the idea of the early cultural victory with pagodas, mosques, and the +2 tourism per religious building piety finisher belief. I successfully did this as Spain, but I had great barrier reef and Kilomanjaro so I think that game was a guaranteed win. I also tried this as Maya, but it didn't really work. It was still a cultural victory, but not a very quick one.
The idea is to go to collective rule, then go through piety to get the additional belief with the tourism. I think the best way to use this is to completely spam <snip> cities even if they have not much going for them, use faith to buy mosques and pagodas (or cathedrals if you have to) which can help with the happiness problem from lots of cities. I had real science / culture problems though because even when I had Mayans with pyramids science was not going well with so many 3-4 population cities.
I think this one can work but it might only work with Spain, not really sure.
Liberty + Aesthetics:
This sort of worked for me, but I think it could have gone better. I used this strategy with Brazil for a cultural victory. Again, I went to collective rule. Brazil can have good starts but is usually stuck in low production jungle, so the +1 hammer from liberty actually really helped. This and the settler production boost allowed me to get an empire going, although I'm really not sure if this was the best way to do it. I ended up going through tradition later in the game just because it would boost infrastructure, I didn't build aqueducts because I planned to go through tradition, I built monuments but I just used the culture building bonus for the next one in line. The idea behind this was to save the golden age and free GP from liberty to get two golden ages very late in the game, once I had gone into freedom so you can get the 1.5x length. This gives 24 turns on standard game of double tourism and increased GWAM production, it actually worked but my mid game as a cultural civ lagged a lot because I built liberty instead of tradition. I think this is situational, but it worked.
I don't know if there are any others that could work, the whole idea is using collective rule then doing something else. If you're playing Poland I guess you can use the free policy from medieval and classical to go through liberty and tradition for infrastructure. I don't think you can rally warmonger so good with tradition, but I might try to do something with Aztecs Honor + Tradition. It will slow you down later game but having both the tradition and honor openers will blow through those trees at first, and you can build some decent 2x promoted jaguars by killing barbs. Doesn't really set one up for big wars though...
Moderator Action: Please help keep the forums family friendly by making your point without swearing. --Jon
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
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