Tradition opener really is amazing

[noto2]

Back when I was new to Civ5 I had this habit - I would open Tradition even in games where I planned on going Liberty, simply for the enhanced border growth. I concluded this was a bad noob habit of mine and stopped doing it, for years.

Just yesterday I played a game as Rome and, as usual with the Romans, went Liberty. The thing is, I was short on cash and at the happiness cap. There were a lot of luxury resources near my cities but not yet within my borders. I saw no other solution than to simply take the Tradition opener (after I was about halfway through Liberty) so I could hook up those resources. I didn't have the money to buy the tiles and amphitheaters would take too long to build. Also, it was urgent - I was at -2 GH.

I opened Tradition and the turns to acquire my next tile dropped from 12 to 8 in my smaller cities, and dropped from 9 to 3 in the capital. I never had to spend a single gold on a tile after that. The Tradition opener really saved my butt, allowing me to work luxury resources and get back into positive GH while resuming my conquest of the continent.

I think my old habit wasn't so bad after all. The Tradition opener really is truly amazing. By adopting it, one can completely avoid paying any money for tiles. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my wide games I end up spending a lot of gold on tiles, and some times they cost 100-150 gold each. I easily spend well over a thousand, perhaps thousands in a game. And often when I go wide, in the early-mid game my budget is strained, what with building and unit maintenance, so I don't have much gold left for purchasing tiles anyway.

The Tradition opener is easily the best policy opener in the whole game, and one of the best policies overall.

 

[beetle]

Good for you trying to make Liberty work! I am of the opinion that three in Liberty then Tradition opener is strong play. The Liberty finisher can afford to be a bit delayed, and there is not much harm in waiting on effects of the Tradition opener to start.

 

[noto2]

My thoughts exactly. Getting that free settler is key, so even if one were inclined to take the Tradition opener, it should probably wait until after the settler and/or worker.

 

[aafritz17]

I've been messing around with some HOF games on lower levels. Maps are huge, Inland Sea, so a lot of ruins. I've come to the same conclusion as OP, and (because of Prince or lower) almost always open Trad with first culture ruin, then onto liberty. Even at Emperor I would at least consider doing so (but would probably go for the Seller/Settler-discount first).

 

[beetle]

I've come to the same conclusion as OP, and (because of Prince or lower) almost always open Trad with first culture ruin, then onto liberty.

I fail to see why the difficulty should make a difference. Even at Prince, Tradition opener after Liberty settler and worker has to be stronger play. Please experiment and report back!

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

The tradition opener reduces an exponent found in the plot cost function, which exponentiates a multiplier applied for each tile already expanded. This exponent is reduced from 1.1 to 0.8. Knowing the first thing about mathematics, this changes the multiplier from being exponential to being sublinear. In other words, the multiplier matters less and less the more your cities grow. There is absolutely no comparison with how fast Tradition allows borders to expand. If you can't settle in true city spam fashion with everything in first ring, it cannot be overlooked.

edit: And then there's all those oil tiles out there in ring 4.

 

[aafritz17]

I fail to see why the difficulty should make a difference. Even at Prince, Tradition opener after Liberty settler and worker has to be stronger play. Please experiment and report back!

I think you’re right – the difficulty shouldn’t matter.

Say you found your cap, and then immediately start building a monument. The 1 culture from the palace, plus 2 from the monument, then plus 1 from Liberty will result in getting SoPols as follows:

Turn Activity
00 Found City (1 Cpt)
06 Monument (3 Cpt)
13 Open Liberty (4 Cpt)
20 Republic (4 Cpt)
35 Collective Rule (4 Cpt)​

In this scenario, inserting Tradition at T15 pushes Collective Rule to T42. Clearly weaker, but maybe not as much as one might think. However (as you know), most of us never build the monument first, delaying it at least until after some of the scouts we intend to train. This is sort of an “earliest case”.


So let’s say you don’t build a monument right away, but you do get a culture ruin (20) on T6, and immediately open Liberty. You get this:

Turn Activity
00 Found City (1 Cpt)
06 Open Liberty (2 Cpt)
21 Republic (2 Cpt)
51 Collective Rule (2 Cpt)​

Now, instead of opening Liberty with the ruin, open Tradition, then move on to Liberty. You get this:

Turn Activity
00 Found City (1 Cpt)
06 Open Trad (4 Cpt)
14 Open Liberty (5 Cpt)
26 Republic (5 Cpt)
48 Collective Rule (5 Cpt)​

Looks to me like ya can’t beat insta-building 1.5 monuments. Three turns quicker to CR, and only two turns slower than wrecking your build order with a too-early monument. I guess you’re right - maybe we should open with Trad at every level!

(On the other hand, millions of players have been through this before, and nobody says “do this”. I MUST have missed something…)

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Monument is +2 culture

 

[aafritz17]

Yep. Knew I had something wrong, couldn't see it. Thanks, I'll rework it, edit the first post

 

[beetle]

Looks to me like ya can’t beat insta-building 3 monuments.

Yes, but at that point you might as well finishing out Tradition for the four free aqueducts, which is just about as powerful as the four free monuments, but only if they are early. Which kind of defeats the point of trying to make Liberty work!

I guess you’re right - maybe we should open with Trad at every level!

I do not see how the math argues for opening Tradition versus getting the Tradition opener after Liberty free worker and settler.

 

[beetle]

One thing that only just now occurred to me is that you often get your first policy before figuring out that you have, unlike most games, space for 6+ cities. So opening Tradition can be thought of as win/win or as a way to keep your options open. As a builder, you really needs the Tradition opener in every case, so it is not wasted. The biggest downside is probably needing to build the first settler without the 50% discount, so not too harsh a penalty.

 

[aafritz17]

One thing that only just now occurred to me is that you often get your first policy before figuring out that you have, unlike most games, space for 6+ cities. So opening Tradition can be thought of as win/win or as a way to keep your options open. As a builder, you really needs the Tradition opener in every case, so it is not wasted. The biggest downside is probably needing to build the first settler without the 50% discount, so not too harsh a penalty.

This is mostly why I said Prince or lower - if there's a delay to beginning your expos (whether by building w/o discount, or by waiting until the discount), it isn't so bad. But I guess NOTHING is "so bad" if it's on Prince, is it? (Duh).

 

[beetle]

@aafritz17, I am not sure I correctly understood your “insta-building 3 monuments” comment. Where you still talking about the Tradition opener? The free monuments was never the Tradition opener, but it used to be available as the first policy pick in Tradition.

Agreed, nothing is so bad if it’s on Price, but that is probably not a reason for playing poorly. One thing that is nice with Prince though, is that one can reliably plan from the start to have a wide Liberty game (since there is less competition from AIs for space). If I am in a mood to play wide, I would open Tradition after three picks in Liberty. The difficulty is not so much a factor, it is being confident about carving out space for my empire.

Unlike you (judging from your sig), I enjoy replaying maps. So if I went Tradition (like I do almost always), but it turns out there was space, I might well replay the map to see if I can’t make Liberty work about as well. Wide Liberty is more fun than 4-city Tradition!

 

[aafritz17]

@aafritz17, I am not sure I correctly understood your “insta-building 3 monuments” comment. Where you still talking about the Tradition opener? The free monuments was never the Tradition opener, but it used to be available as the first policy pick in Tradition.

Yeah, that was part of what I was "missing" in the original post. I had calc'ed the values using 1C for the monument. Ten minutes later @Horseshoe_Hermi quietly points out that it should be 2C. I edited all the calculations, but I didn't see that one. Thanx, edited that too.

 

[aafritz17]

I do not see how the math argues for opening Tradition versus getting the Tradition opener after Liberty free worker and settler.

I don't get this one. How is 48 turns to Collective Rule and 5Cpt not better than 51 turns and 2Cpt? Is there something else I missed?

 

[beetle]

I am valuing the Tradition opener for the border expansion much more than the 3 cpt. I am also picking up the free worker to chop out the Pyramids before Collective Rule, since an ancient Wonder is one of the perks to opening Liberty. But maybe that is a mistake on my part? I also like scout, scout, shrine, monument as my opening BO. Shrine can be much later at lower difficulty levels, but needs to be early for Deity play.

According to this table, for CR as third pick, one needs 320 culture (running total). For CR as fourth pick, it’s 565. At 3 cpt, the Tradition openers needs 80 turns to makes up that difference!

EDIT: @aafritz17, I would be interested in seeing the turn numbers for 4 and then 5 picks out (three picks in Liberty plus two openers). Assuming monument as first in BO, but skip the culture ruin. (I agree that it likely more often than not, but it is too variable as to when you hit it. Turn 6 for the culture ruin is close to a best case scenario.)

 

[Browd]

According to this table, for CR as third pick, one needs 320 culture (running total). For CR as fourth pick, it’s 565. At 3 cpt, the Tradition openers needs 80 turns to makes up that difference!

That formula was from vanilla Civ V and is out of date. In G&K and BNW, the formula is

Cost of Policy Number N (for one city only) = (25 + (3 * (N - 1 ))^2.01

When you add in the per city penalty, policy costs rise, of course.

As for the Liberty/Tradition opener debate, there is no question that opening Tradition does not get you to Liberty's free settler faster than beelining Liberty.

Without culture ruins, if you beeline Liberty to Collective Rule (as your third policy), when you get Collective Rule will depend on when you put a monument in your build order and whether you have a 4, 5 or 6 hammer start, but the range of number of turns is narrow.

• If you go scout => monument and have a 6 hammer start (settle on hill and work a food-giving single-hammer tile, like stone or plains wheat), you will finish your monument on turn 11 and will open Liberty on turn 15, take Republic on turn 23 and get Collective Rule on turn 38.
  
  
• On the other hand, if you build monument first, with the same 6-hammer start, your monument pops out on turn 7 and you get Collective Rule on turn 35 -- 3 turns faster, but at the cost of 5-7 turns of early scouting (when you might have picked up a culture ruin and/or gotten more first-to-meet-a-CS gold).

If you use these same assumptions (no culture ruins, 6-hammer start and monument first), opening Tradition before opening Liberty pushes Collective Rule back 7 turns (from turn 35 to turn 42).

Punch line is: Do not be seduced by the Tradition opener's 3 culture--if you want to open Tradition for the border pop or to tee up a Legalism play later in the game, that may be beneficial (particularly Tradition's border pop benefits), but don't do it because you think it will get you your free Liberty settler more quickly -- it will slow you down -- a bit.

 

[beetle]

That wikia page is out of date. According to this post, the first few SP costs (single city) are: 25, 30, 60, 105. My math may be bad, but here is what I find…

Building a monument first (complete on T8), then going straight Liberty (opening T13, for 4cpt from then on) gets to the 2nd Liberty pick on T36 and the 3rd Liberty pick at T62.

Building a monument first (complete on T8), opening Tradition (again T13, but for 6cpt) then Liberty (T18, for 7cpt from then on) gets to 2nd Liberty pick on T42 and the 3rd Liberty pick at T66.

Hitting a culture ruin (after T13) saves 5 turns for straight Liberty, or 3 turns for Tradition opener into Liberty. (So, makes the Tradition opener relatively worse.)

If success is being judged by turn-time-to-Collective-Rule, running straight Liberty is strictly faster than opening Tradition first.

EDIT: Ninja’d by Browd.

 

[aafritz17]

...If you use these same assumptions (no culture ruins, 6-hammer start and monument first), opening Tradition before opening Liberty pushes Collective Rule back 7 turns (from turn 35 to turn 42).

Punch line is: Do not be seduced by the Tradition opener's 3 culture--if you want to open Tradition for the border pop or to tee up a Legalism play later in the game, that may be beneficial (particularly Tradition's border pop benefits), but don't do it because you think it will get you your free Liberty settler more quickly -- it will slow you down -- a bit.

This is right - the math I posted above requires an all-important culture ruin to enable opening Trad before Liberty.

 

[beetle]

@aafritz17, please double check your calculations.

...the math I posted above requires an all-important culture ruin to enable opening Trad before Liberty.

That is not correct. Hitting a culture ruin, no matter the turn, does not change the mathematics that the Tradition opener only slows down the the second and third Liberty pick.
I think if one does not build a monument until after the 2nd Liberty pick, then the Tradition opener might get you there sooner; but, of course, that is terrible play.
If you like, I can run the exact numbers for my preferred scout-scout-shrine-monument BO.