Aesthetics Policy Tree

Thanks for posting it on the top post.
Basically this amounts to a renamed Vanilla Piety.

It's usefulness in a main game depends upon weather or not its exclusive with Rationalism. If it's exclusive, it won't see much use in normal games.

But if it can be used; then it might, but only if you either start the game in the Classical era or turn save policy on since it may be impossible to reach the Classical era before the palace brings you to the threshold to choose the first policy.

However, I think that even then that both Tradition & the new Piety would be a more useful first tree most of the time.

I will however play a game in which I choose it just or the achievement.
 
@joncnunn IIRC, there are no mutually exclusive policy trees in BNW. Only the ideology branches are mutually exclusive.
 
-50% production costs for culture buildings sounds amazing, especially for ICS.
Although it isn't a no-brainer because Piety is a strong competitor now and also offers production boosts.

Combining both bonuses might be a very strong wide strategy, indeed. For the cost of three policies, you can generate a considerable amount of faith, culture and tourism for "half the prize". :)
Although I suspect that building maintenance will be a problem.

Edit: Also. culture buildings do look a lot weaker now when you don't have enough great works to fill the slots. So spamming them might not be worth it.
 
It strikes me as a very weak tree overall, and a little tad bland too, just like exploration. First, many of the "moved" policies are weaker than its original counterparts, second, many of its policies have recieved an indirect nerf due to SP being easier to acquire in BWN and thus, cheapening the usefulness of the easier access to them.

Third and finally, while this is suppoused to lend you a hand into the cultural game, it fails to account that said game has changed: where are the tourism bonuses? The great work bonuses? How is recieving more policies conductive to a cultural victory now that said victory has nothing to do with them but rather with tourism?

This SP tree seems ill designed, really. But alas, let's go into a deeper analysis:

- Opener; 25% faster production of Great Artists, Musicians and Writers. Allows building of the Uffizi. => A classical era Uffizi has no sense or whatsoever, but the really bothersome thing is the other effect: this is a souped down Equality opener. Clearly inferior to its original version that helped you to produce very single kind of great person, instead of being restricted to 3 of them. Weak (effect) and a little tad nosensical wonder.

- Fine Arts; 50% of excess happiness is added to culture. => The original SP was weak already, and this further cements it since now extra culture only helps you gain more policies

- Artistic Genius: A free Great Artist appears. Requires Fine Arts. => Hard to tell how much powerful an early great artist is, but the Liberty finisher utterly trounces this one. Then again, a capped version of an already existing SP

- Cultural Centers; Monuments, Amphitheaters, Opera Houses, Museums and Broadcast Towers are built 50% faster. => This surely is useful for a wide type of empire, which is kinda strange to see in a cultural focused SP tree. Building production bonuses are extremely bland, yet this is undoubtely handy.

- Flourishing of the Arts; 33% culture in cities with a WW. Starts a Golden Age. Requires Fine Arts and Cultural Centers. => It was a really good policy back then as it is right now

- Ethics; -10% culture costs for policies. Requires FotA. => Holy SP nerf Batman! Not only the cost decrease is much less than the original version, but its value is even further dilluted by the already lowered costs of policies and penalties for going wide. Garbage.

- Finisher; Doubles the Great Work Theming bonus you receive from Museums and World Wonders. Allows purchasing GWAMs with Faith in the Industrial Era. => A nice and original bonus to have, probably one of the best ones in the whole tree

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Now, taking the aforementioned criticism into account, this is how I would remade the tree:

- Opener: 25% faster production of Great Artists, Musicians and Writers. Your palace gets 2 extra great work slots. Allows building of the Uffizi. => The Uffizi rebalance would be pending of new information, but a boost to the opener would be in order for the aforementioned reasons. A good way to do it so would be to increase the great work slots of the palace, thus giving you earlier possibilities for acquiring great work themes since it seems that the buildings with more than one GW slot comes a little tad late in the game. This way you could be messing with the themes earlier, but without them being too overpowered since there's only one palace per civ.

- Fine Arts: 50% of excess happiness is added to culture => Leave it as it is

- Artistic Genius: A free Great Artist appears. You gain one free Great Artist after gaining 4 great people. Requires Fine Arts. => A way to boost this SP without being too OP, me thinks

Cultural Centers; Monuments, Amphitheaters, Opera Houses, Museums and Broadcast Towers are built 50% faster=> Leave it as it is

- Flourishing of the Arts; 33% culture in cities with a WW. Starts a Golden Age. Requires Fine Arts and Cultural Centers. => Stay as it is

- Cosmopolitanism (previously Ethics): +1 tourism, culture and happiness in your capital per adopted SP and tennet. Requires FotA. => SP are already gained fast enough in BWN, me thinks, so why not turn the concept of the original SP around and give instead a reward for adopting more SP? Furthermore, give it a reward actually related with the cultural victory (tourism)

- Finisher; Doubles the Great Work Theming bonus you receive from Museums and World Wonders. Allows purchasing GWAMs with Faith in the Industrial Era. => Stays as it is
 
Ikael: Er, there are Tourism Bonuses all over the place.

Opener: 25% more GWAM = 25% more Great Works, which is a primary source of Tourism.

Cultural Center: More Culture buildings = more slots for Great Works = more Tourism (from above). Also, I'll note that there is nothing to show that a Cultural Victory in BNW is biased towards Tall rather than Wide empires.

Flourishing of the Arts: This might be a Tourism bonus, if the 33% increase actually increases at the tile level rather than the city level, or if Tourism is calculated from city culture yield and not on a per-tile basis.

Finisher: Double Theming bonuses = double Tourism from those bonuses?

I don't see how they could have made a much better tree for a CV short of giving out a free 50% or so bonus to all Tourism. I might point out that the 10% reduction in policy cost probably applies to Tenets, and therefore Aesthetes should have the most-developed Ideologies, all else being equal.
 
I might point out that the 10% reduction in policy cost probably applies to Tenets, and therefore Aesthetes should have the most-developed Ideologies, all else being equal.

Assuming they go tall, yes.

It's interesting to me that one of the greatest benefits to going tall in BNW seems, not to be the CV*, but the race to ideologies. I think this will be very fun.

I won't be surprised if we see Gandhi the ideologue, making an impact in world politics in many a game!

* -- The CV seems at first glance to be fairly balanced between tall and wide now to me.
 
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