Who's been practicing their "pick Policy when available" strategy ?

[ImperialGuard]

With the new patch forcing you to "pick Policy when available" ... I've been trying to figure out some strategies for this.

As my first Policy pick:

I usually pick the Honor one first, allowing me to go deeper if/when necessary.

I sometimes pick the ?? (forget name...one that allows +1 food in Capital).

I have also experimented with holding off on culture buildings, to slow # of policies generated, until some of the later options open

Also, experimenting with running straight to other "eras" to open up the tree and then backfilling my techs.


What other policies/approaches are people taking?


I think there is an option with the patch to not "force" you to take a policy, but I assume most of the time HOF and GOTM will not allow you to turn that on, because it might be considered an exploit

 

[Antarion]

i always do and done it, with every tree except autocracy (because im not such a big fan of perma war)

 

[ImperialGuard]

i always do and done it, with every tree except autocracy (because im not such a big fan of perma war)

I was kinda hoping you might share the order in which you pick your policies and the rationale for doing so.

I am interested in learning what other people are doing ...

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, I've been practicing too. I wasn't a SP saver until very recently (I used to hold it if I was close to a new era, but that's it. I recently tried saving for Order, which was perhaps a bit overpowered). I don't quite have a strategy yet (although I started to form one with Gandhi, focusing on Tradition and Piety until I get to unlock Patronage. I didn't play long enough to reach Freedom, though).

It's definitely interesting. Requires far more planning ahead. You have to try to time things to get the tech to beat the next policy and, if you don't, you need a backup plan just in case. I fear the second half of the tree will suffer, but I haven't played enough to find out.

 

[Celevin]

A lot of the better strategies revolve around grabbing Liberty first anyways, so I dunno how much will change there for something ICS-based. It all depends on how significant the nerf is.

Early war strats should play out roughly the same. Grab honour, go to town.

Cultural victory strats will change significantly. I think we'll see even more beelining for Freedom happening as people don't want to waste more culture than they have to.

 

[PawelS]

I usually roleplay, picking those policies that I think fit the civ I play best (for example Tradition as Egypt, Honor as Persia, and Liberty as Greece). But sometimes I pick the ones that allow me to adapt to the situation, like Commerce when most of my cities are coastal.

I never saved policies for later.

 

[Atwork]

My understanding is that the player will have the option of turning off the rule that requires immediately choosing a social policy.

 

[fed1943]

I would like to know what wrong you see in the Liberty tree.

 

[Louis XXIV]

My understanding is that the player will have the option of turning off the rule that requires immediately choosing a social policy.

Yeah, but you also have the option of turning off city-states and barbarians. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea to discuss strategies involving these two things.

 

[Celevin]

I would like to know what wrong you see in the Liberty tree.

+1 happiness per city with a trade route, +1 culture per city. The top strategy involves a large number of cities.

 

[Bezurn]

I have only played a few games where I have held culture. I think an even better fix than to lock the turn until a social policy has been picked would be to put an increasing % modifier on your culture generated for future social policies. This wouldn't effect the rate at which cities produce culture for acquiring tiles though.

So say you are 7 turns away from opening a new era and want to start a new tree, well then each turn you hold onto your social policy pick you would lose 5% of your incoming culture. Meaning at turn 7 you'd only be producing 65% of your normal culture towards another policy. At 20 turns you would be stagnate until you picked a new social policy.

Anyways, either pick most of tradition if I'm a builder civ, which allows me to build wonders faster in most of my well developed cities. Then it's off to piety to work on happiness issues, and typically I can get the two policy at the end pretty close to when I unlock freedom depending on the number of wonders I've built.

Other times I have played liberty, and always get the three policies on the right side. Next would be freedom to help with unhappiness at to unlock the left side of the tree, but if I have to pick one before I get there I'll take patronage.

Holding culture waiting for either Freedom or Order seems like you miss out on a lot of good benefits that the trees provide. 5 hammers is nice and all but you give up a lot of good benefits from the other trees delaying it so long.

 

[attackfighter]

I usually roleplay, picking those policies that I think fit the civ I play best (for example Tradition as Egypt, Honor as Persia, and Liberty as Greece). But sometimes I pick the ones that allow me to adapt to the situation, like Commerce when most of my cities are coastal.

I never saved policies for later.

I do that too, but why Persia as honourable? I read that they liked bribery just as much as warfare, and both their run-ins with Greece seemed less than honourable. I've also heard them described as hedonistic, and they lived very lavish lifestyles, or atleast their upper class did.

My favourite civic is tradition btw, love building wonders and having super capital with extra hammers. I'm more into the sim city aspect of these 3d civ than anything else. in 2d civ war seemed cooler for some reason...

 

[PawelS]

I do that too, but why Persia as honourable? I read that they liked bribery just as much as warfare, and both their run-ins with Greece seemed less than honourable. I've also heard them described as hedonistic, and they lived very lavish lifestyles, or atleast their upper class did.

I don't know as much about history as you, it's just that when I was playing the demo I wanted to connect its 3 civs to the 3 starting policy trees, and Persia seemed the most "warlike" to me.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Persia definitely had a militaristic side to them. But they also had the luxuries, elegant side that being rulers of mesopotamia tended to cause. Tradition actually seems to fit them pretty well (name-wise, at least, there's no question that either Honor or Piety would fit them better gameplay wise).

 

[bryanw1995]

I usually roleplay, picking those policies that I think fit the civ I play best (for example Tradition as Egypt, Honor as Persia, and Liberty as Greece). But sometimes I pick the ones that allow me to adapt to the situation, like Commerce when most of my cities are coastal.

I never saved policies for later.

how is honor more applicable to persia than, say, japan or mongolia? maybe not "honor" itself for khan, but certainly all warmongers should grab honor first then just take whatever is leftover, right?

@louis xxiv, yeah, I always take piety with persia, with other civs it's very situational but usually go rationalism instead.

 

[Beef Hammer]

I've always picked my policy's on the turn they come up, and generally run down Honor till i get double xp, sometimes Liberty if i fell like expanding a bit faster or decide to build the pyramids which i like to pair with the increased worker policy. +1 hammers in cities is also never a bad thing.

 

[JohnnyW]

Recently I saved my policies until Piety rushing the 2 freebies, then saving for Freedom to unlock reduced SP costs and then saving for +5 hammers. It worked well, but I was also on an easier setting than I usually play. Generally I always save for Freedom if I go Piety. This will drastically alter how I acquire SPs. I might delve into commerce for +3 hammers.

 

[biohazard72]

I'd imagine saving SPs (and promotions) will be the competitive norm, simply because it offers more strategic options. I doubt the community believes in punitive measures on strategy as much as Firaxis.

 

[Slowpoke]

You can opt out of it via an options button, so I don't see the need to practice it if you don't like it.

 

[TheHarshax]

I usually go:
Tradition & Honor, depending on my diplomatic standings with neighbors and the closeness of City States.

If I have room for peaceful expansion, I'll take the first 3 tradition policies: Aristocracy, Oligarchy, Landed Elite

If I'm playing raging barbarians, am cramped by CS's being too close, or there is a tasty nearby AI capital, I'll take Warrior Code and Military Tradition

I haven't playing around too much with Liberty. I don't tend to prioritise learning the Wheel, which makes the 2nd tier liberty policies useless without roads.

From there, I'll usually go Piety/Freedom, or Patronage/Reason, or Commerce/Reason.