.

[Shalvan]

Or buff city connections.

 

[Ninakoru]

Unsurprisingly, as per the logic in your Honor thread, I strongly disagree with this. Your perception (and the perception of many others, as demonstrated by the posts here) is faulty because you're trying to balance to acommodate for the game's broken AI. Tradition is decidedly a small-empire tree (yes, four cities is a tiny empire) and is the worst choice you can make if you plan for expansion or conquest.

And that's you opinion. Fact is that tradition has the most synergistic and solid policies, with lots of buffs that will provide a great setup and great snowball effect only for a single policy branch. And you can play any style once you are set with tradition, even wide or conquest, without problems.

 

[Kurtbob]

I am of the opinion that Tradition is fine and that the other policy trees need to become more viable options with longer lasting bonuses. I'm going to add my own ideas plus those I have seen in this and other threads.

I feel liberty is in desperate need of a science/gold/happiness boost to negate the penalties of early wide empires.

Liberty
Opener: +1 and +1 (moved from Republic) in each city.
Republic: New cities begin with two citizens (get rid of the three citizens from Resettlement). +1 happiness from first four cities.
Meritocracy: increase the -5% unhappiness from non-occupied city citizens to -10%.
Representation: Each city you found will increase the culture cost of policies and the science cost of technologies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age.

Honor needs some money tweaking.

Honor
Warrior Code: Four units are maintenance free instead of the +15% melee production.
Discipline: Provides a free barracks in your first four cities (includes old bonus).
Military Tradition: Double gold received from pillaging tiles and taking cities (includes old bonus).

Piety just needs some additional bonuses to allow the player to get through the tree faster and make some of its policies actually useful.

Piety
Opener: +2 faith from Palace (includes old bonus).
Organized Religion: +1 from shrines and temples (includes old bonus).
Religious Tolerance: +1 from Great Works (+2 if the Great Work is from another civ) (includes old bonus)

 

[Martin Alvito]

The problem here is . Sounds random, I know. Bear with me.

City growth tends to snowball in good locations after Civil Service. Each new citizen is actually additive in food surplus, so once specialists go in a larger city will actually grow faster.

The Tradition finisher puts you in position to take advantage of this effect in ways Liberty's bonuses simply cannot match. About the only way Liberty could be competitive would be if you got one per specialist from the finisher.

Short of that, the only way to make other trees competitive is nerf the Tradition finisher.

 

[Aaron90495]

Short of that, the only way to make other trees competitive is nerf the Tradition finisher.

And that might be what needs to be done. Maybe cut the Trad finisher to 10% growth and require Engineering for the free Aqueducts?

 

[Cbman]

The problem here is . Sounds random, I know. Bear with me.

City growth tends to snowball in good locations after Civil Service. Each new citizen is actually additive in food surplus, so once specialists go in a larger city will actually grow faster.

The Tradition finisher puts you in position to take advantage of this effect in ways Liberty's bonuses simply cannot match. About the only way Liberty could be competitive would be if you got one per specialist from the finisher.

Short of that, the only way to make other trees competitive is nerf the Tradition finisher.

I think just flipping the settler and the hammer would work. Since small cities also grow faster. Being able to average 6 cities on the way to Civil service while Trad could muster 4 bigger ones could easily outshine the 15% bonus. Right now it's more like 4:4.

 

[CraigMak]

IMO tradition is now a little too strong. I think it is because of Monarchy. That policy gives you a ridiculous amount of gold and happiness. With gold being so much harder to get in BNW it is very strong. After getting monarchy you just run all your caravans to the cap and watch it grow like crazy giving you absurd benefits. Negligible happiness hit, tons of gold and a huge science output. Going wide on the other hand now detracts from your science.

The only benefits of going wide are more faith generation and more production. However if tradition can get a cap with ample hills liberty is at a huge disadvantage being equal in production and way behind in science.

 

[Vidszhite]

You build GMs? By the time you get this finisher you should be in modern era at least, when the money from GMs are basically useless. Ditto the gold from land routes - it's minuscule

What Commerce does more than anything is increase the value of gold while simultaneously giving you more of it. Without the trinity from commerce, you might only be able to buy one unit with a Great Merchant mission, but with the Commerce-Autocracy/Order-Big Ben trinity, you can buy five units from a single trade mission, or a combination of units and buildings. That comes in handy quite often, especially if you settle a late city and need to build it up quickly.

Don't knock Land trade routes too much -- they might be slightly less potent than sea trade routes, but they don't all go up in smoke the instant someone declares war on you, and with Commerce, they're honestly almost as good as sea routes anyway. Anyone who puts all their stock in sea routes is cruising for a bruising, since they are all but impossible to defend. You only even get outright better trades from coastal capitals, and not every civ in the game has those, nor are they all in reach for most of the game. I've been in games where most of my land routes were actually all better than my sea routes because none of the AI capitals were on coast.

Getting +1 gold from Trading Posts is also an eye-popper, particularly for a wide empire or a puppet empire. Combine it with Rationalism, and your trading posts are stronger than improved lux tiles. We're talking "largest army in the world and still pulling 600 GPT" levels of cash. Commerce is even better at City Connections, because of the maintenance reductions, and in a wide empire, this is a massive boost.

Basically, Commerce meshes extremely well with wide and warlike empires (Autocracy and Order), in fact, it's one of the best Domination trees in the game. Far better than Honor, to say the least.

 

[Aaron90495]

The problem with Commerce being good for warlike/puppet empires is how much they've been nerfed, specifically puppets.

 

[Ninakoru]

Yeah, If you think in social policies in general, they are generally weaker because:

- Tall is buffed in BNW, not directly but indirectly giving extra penalties for domination and wide styles.
- Tradition extra gold and happiness is best than ever thanks to the early gold/happiness penalties on BNW.
- Some policies are now plit in two, leaving two weaker trees. Piety -> Aesthetics, Commerce -> Exploration.
- Even they added the great ingeneer to tradition instead of liberty, a tremendous fault, not only it makes more sense in liberty, buff the stronger policy already indirectly buffed.

I'm agree commerce is king on domination, you get the most of it there.

 

[Arachnofiend]

- Some policies are now plit in two, leaving two weaker trees. Piety -> Aesthetics, Commerce -> Exploration.

Uh... splitting the policies gave them more focus and makes them better at what they're supposed to do. Aesthetics and Commerce are much better now than they were in Gods and Kings. Piety really shouldn't be as weak as it is and Exploration is weak because it requires a pretty specific setup to be a good option and even then you generally don't NEED it.

 

[katfish]

People praise tradition and bash piety, conveniently forgetting that with piety you can get Wat and University in all of your cities the moment you get education. Other SP seem like poop now by comparison.

 

[Vidszhite]

People praise tradition and bash piety, conveniently forgetting that with piety you can get Wat and University in all of your cities the moment you get education. Other SP seem like poop now by comparison.

Only if nobody else took Jesuit Education.

 

[parts]

People praise tradition and bash piety, conveniently forgetting that with piety you can get Wat and University in all of your cities the moment you get education. Other SP seem like poop now by comparison.

That's gonna last until, like, the next hotfix or so.

No, the guys calling for a boost to piety or a nerf to tradition are right. The currency in this game is and its derivatives - i.e. . Any boost to , or needs to be really pretty damn amazing if they don't directly affect either of the two. I'd like more variety and options in my game, too.

 

[Arachnofiend]

People praise tradition and bash piety, conveniently forgetting that with piety you can get Wat and University in all of your cities the moment you get education. Other SP seem like poop now by comparison.

This would be a valid argument if we didn't live in a patched world. This bug will be gone by November.

Of course, even if it were a valid argument it still wouldn't be a good one. This is one strong utility that requires you to beat the AI to a belief that the AI is quite fond of. Tradition is strong because its safe. Even in those rare maps where you really might be better off with Liberty, Tradition will still be a strong choice. If you pick up a culture ruin or don't feel confident with what the map looks like before getting your first policy you're either going for a significant gamble that will pay moderate dividends or you took Tradition.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

Just remember that it is Food caravans that make traditon so good.
If there were no Food caravans and you did not play Aztecs then it would not be so good.
The other Reason tradition is so good is that it has a lot of happiness for the long term game. And national college is also very good benefitting a good Capitol. Also in a normal game you do not have space for more then 4-6 cities before all good land is gone.
Honor was nerfed by quite a bit when they lost the happiness for defensive buildings.
And Liberty free great person comes so early that it really only saves 67/100 great person Points.

Also going tradition first does not exclude getting the good policies in Liberty/Honor later on.

And piety is just sad. You get such a slow start if you open up piety. May be used as a good secondary tree. mostly if you play wide Egypt.

 

[katfish]

Only if nobody else took Jesuit Education.

Even if ai beat me to it, the next thing i do is to get the most useless beliefs accompanied by pilgrimage or world church(preferably with Just War while i'm at it) and spread them silly and then get myself ai beliefs with jesuit in all of my cities except some backwater or production city. Worst possible situation is that ai might be too far away, but hey, its not always fun if things go the way you want.

 

[Gort]

Thing is, doing that, you're just exploiting bugs to win. The Wat + University thing is a really obvious unintended bug.

It's a bit like someone saying Korea is the best conquest civ if you exploit that bug they used to have where their rocket launchers did 199 damage every time they attacked a city. It might be true, but it's not a playstyle most people would consider valid.