What policy number is Rationalism for you?

[tibbles]

Say you want to do a tech heavy game and go Liberty/Tradition and into Rationalism as early as possible. Do you manage it by policy #7? Or do you have to take filler because you aren't in the Renaissance yet? For simplicity, let's also not count Oracle or culture CS bonus policies towards this.

If I get the GL and ignore the lower branches of the tree from Classical on, with 3-4 cities I usually either barely make it by policy #7 or more often get policy #7 while researching Acoustics and take the Rationalism opener as #8.

So my question is, should I be trying to tune this to more reliably reach the Renaissance first via faster tech and/or more cities? Or is it normal to not reach it until policy 8-10?

I'm currently on emperor/immortal. I assume once I move up and lose the GL that'd slow me by 1 policy without really tuning my game.

 

[mike678]

It's definitely do able as policy 6 as I've done it. Easiest way to get to renaissance is through astronomy or acoustics. It might not be possible through tradition though as you'll have less cities which means less science. I think the biggest thing that helped was the +2 science from roads as my pantheon and I didn't end up with GL because immortal makes it near impossible .

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

If you pick honor as first policy, do everything to keep culture gain down and tech as fast as you possible can to rationslism you will maybe get it as your 5 or even lower that which means that ýou should be able to quickly finish the rationalism tree. If you play with policy saving, rationalism may be your first policy pick.

 

[dexters]

Policy saving as an option should never have been left it. It severely breaks the game.

It was the first thing patched out too, but I guess they felt they had to honor the early adopters who liked it by leaving it in as an option.

 

[thadian]

broken? look at all the policies all game your going without in order to take it first. Everyone else is gaining bonuses from lib, tradition, honor, patronage, commerce - everyone but you. It is a tradeoff of no bonuses now for rationalism later.

however, if i want rationalism, i build no monuments or temples, REX to 4 cities and take honor tree first. this will let you go far in tech while gaining few policies, then build all your cultural outputs once you are in the ren.

 

[tibbles]

Hmm, true, suppose I take building monuments for border pops as a given, without those I could push it sub #7 too...I guess the problem is I want the early policies ASAP for either the free settler or bonus growth, but after those first few I want them delayed until Renaissance.

Should I just cut the building monuments outside the capital? I could beeline Acoustics a bit harder, but that's dependent on the map not requiring masonry or bronze.

I want to ignore the Honor route and stick with Lib/Trad for now. I'm curious if it's possible to go a more standard opener and still consistently make it by #7.

I wish you could at least save 1 policy. The reason I asked the question to begin with was due to how hard it is to time getting Renaissance before policy x. You can't voluntarily turn off culture and not that Patronage is bad, but I'd rather forgo the bonus than take the Patronage opener and have every single Rationalism policy delayed.

 

[RealHuhn]

broken? look at all the policies all game your going without in order to take it first. Everyone else is gaining bonuses from lib, tradition, honor, patronage, commerce - everyone but you. It is a tradeoff of no bonuses now for rationalism later.

however, if i want rationalism, i build no monuments or temples, REX to 4 cities and take honor tree first. this will let you go far in tech while gaining few policies, then build all your cultural outputs once you are in the ren.

Wow, I never thought about that.

What a brilliant idea for some experiments. In GnK religion and social policies are pretty similar so it might be possible to skip policies until later without falling behind too much.

You probably don't want to wait until Rationalism but opening with Piety, Patronage or Commerce shouldn't be too bad.

Ohhh, the possibilities

 

[Louis XXIV]

Policy saving is still cheesy, though. My first cultural victory saved half my policies until after I built the Cristo Redentor, which made victory very easy because they were half price and still cheap. I just find the game more interesting if you have to plan as you go rather than save and dump once you open the branch you really want.

I don't fault people who turn on policy saving if that's how they want to play. There's obviously trade offs. I'm just glad it's not on by default.

 

[RealHuhn]

Policy saving is still cheesy, though. My first cultural victory saved half my policies until after I built the Cristo Redentor, which made victory very easy because they were half price and still cheap. I just find the game more interesting if you have to plan as you go rather than save and dump once you open the branch you really want.

I don't fault people who turn on policy saving if that's how they want to play. There's obviously trade offs. I'm just glad it's not on by default.

We aren't talking about policy saving here. The idea is to get the Honor Opener and to not build any monuments until later.
That way, culture costs for policies stay low and you can potentially rush through mid/late game trees.

I bet it's worse than it sounds though ^^

 

[Hpuk]

It certainly seems harder to get to Renaissance before policy #7 in G&K than in vanilla.
I've had to go for some other tree quite a few times now. Even REX didn't save my timing in my last attempt.
Seems like I'll have to delay a few monuments and be careful about doing quests for cultural CS from now on.

 

[Louis XXIV]

We aren't talking about policy saving here.

Dexters was.

The idea is to get the Honor Opener and to not build any monuments until later.
That way, culture costs for policies stay low and you can potentially rush through mid/late game trees.

I bet it's worse than it sounds though ^^

I've considered going slow on culture before. I don't think it's a very viable strategy, but I've done it to have fun playing with later policy trees. Even Honor gives you culture these days, though. The biggest problem is the lack of border expansion makes you want to build Monuments anyway.

 

[dexters]

Yes I was complaining about why it was left in response to the post above mine who mentioned it.

IIRC, policy saving was taken out as a standard game feature as part of the first round of patching as Sulla and some expert players used policy saving in-part to show how ICS was possible.

My only comment is that it should have been removed entirely.

 

[Adjuvant]

If piety it's 6.
If rationalism it's 9 or 10.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yes I was complaining about why it was left in response to the post above mine who mentioned it.

IIRC, policy saving was taken out as a standard game feature as part of the first round of patching as Sulla and some expert players used policy saving in-part to show how ICS was possible.

My only comment is that it should have been removed entirely.

I'm indifferent to leaving it in some form as long as people know it's not "standard." Essentially, it doesn't harm me if someone else has it any more than a mod would. I agree it was a good thing to remove as standard, though.

 

[Xotite potancev]

Perhaps i just play a bad strategy but with religion its about 15 for me.

You can cripple your start and get it early but is it really worth it long term i go liberty til patronage opens up get the 20%+ with CS pump them full of priests and have the CS fund my army and empire. Now you can build all the tech improvments you like spy a bit to catch up on things.
Especially now the CS throw alliances at the best faith/cultre producers like knickers at a Tom Jones concert your just giving the other players CS by deliberatley keeping your culture down.

 

[mike678]

Hmm, true, suppose I take building monuments for border pops as a given, without those I could push it sub #7 too...I guess the problem is I want the early policies ASAP for either the free settler or bonus growth, but after those first few I want them delayed until Renaissance.

Should I just cut the building monuments outside the capital? I could beeline Acoustics a bit harder, but that's dependent on the map not requiring masonry or bronze.

I want to ignore the Honor route and stick with Lib/Trad for now. I'm curious if it's possible to go a more standard opener and still consistently make it by #7.

I wish you could at least save 1 policy. The reason I asked the question to begin with was due to how hard it is to time getting Renaissance before policy x. You can't voluntarily turn off culture and not that Patronage is bad, but I'd rather forgo the bonus than take the Patronage opener and have every single Rationalism policy delayed.

You can get rationalism as your 6th policy going liberty and not cutting any monuments. To go into more detail then before I got the +2 science per road and did a 3 city national college buying one settler and a worker.

I almost completely ignored the bottom half except what was needed to get further into science sections. It was extremely close but I made it to renasaunce a few turns before my 6th policy.

Also as long as you don't get thrown next to attilla you can basically fend off any ai with two archers at immortal and lower.

 

[tibbles]

Huh, I haven't tried the Messenger route, but that's about my opener. If you can do it in 6, aiming for 7 should be reasonable then. I do like the free GP from the Liberty finisher. My only regret is having to take that golden age before I've got the pop to take real advantage of it.

 

[Infantry#14]

Policy saving as an option should never have been left it. It severely breaks the game.

It was the first thing patched out too, but I guess they felt they had to honor the early adopters who liked it by leaving it in as an option.

Absolutely love it. So much hassle to micromanage to get what you want otherwise.

 

[Gucumatz]

Depends for me. I tend to fill all of a tree first (either tradition or liberty depending on the game) then go 1-2 policies deep into Commerce/Patronage (2 for commerce 1 for patronage) Sometimes I go a 2nd Patronage if I haven't beelined Ren and my culture continues to grow.

Otherwise all into Rationalism!

 

[Barghaest]

I think I've only taken Rationalism a few times... usually skip it entirely (I'm normally the tech leader and don't need any extra edge - in fact I'd love to STOP researching and let the AI catch up some) and go Piety instead...