Can ANYTHING beat TARF? (Tradition-Aesthetics-Rationalism-Freedom)

[reddishrecue]

I havent used aesthetics in awhile.
Tradition-Libery-Rationalism-Freedom works out since AI is usually first one to choose Order. You get 2 free policies by being the first one to choose an ideology.

 

[joshua43214]

Ok I definitely am liking LOC and the benefits Liberty and Honor can provide.

I guess the big question is how to match the culture that TARF generates?
The big thing for me is that Tradition civs get the beginning culture than go aesthetics to get MORE culture. On top of that they finish Aesthetics and go Rationalism to get ahead in science to get access to free policy culture wonders.

How do the others keep up culturally and science? Since Honor/Warmongering can take out threats do those players just annex capitals and rebuild them to their best ability?

Thanks for the tips guys. Im starting to think in CIV 6/ a patch they should definitely make another game plan.

By the time you can choose between aesthetics and commerce, the gain from aesthetics is marginal, so commerce is far better. Commerce will help you buy the important buildings, but you can't buy anything with culture. Order + Big Ben + Commerce 3 = Labs for about 500 gold. Aesthetics is nice, but should really only be opened in a culture game unless you really want a timely Hermitage, and you settled a lot of very low production cities, otherwise the gain is marginal.

Honor is just crap, and should even be avoided in a domination game unless you are just goofing around. Tradition or Liberty, Commerce, autocracy or order is the way to go for domination. As for domination tech, on Immortal/Deity, you will get some mileage from Autocracy and get parity around modern era, for Emperor and below you can keep up tech wise with no effort. Even on Emperor, you can go to machinery before education provided you got the NC up quickly.

 

[Barghaest]

Against the AI, any good choices can compete culturally with TARF if you're clever/lucky enough to supplement good religious beliefs or city placement strategies.

I've only ever gone tall once... that was with Gandhi when I was doing OCC for the achievements, other than that I like around 24-30 cities on large or huge maps because I enjoy carving out a grand empire (current game I've got 24 - about to be 30 when I finish razing these last three cities I captured from Carthage - and my smallest city is pop 8 while my largest is 24 at the moment and all are Happiness neutral below 12 or so - by contrast the largest AI city is 27 and that's China who only has 6 cities, Brazil did have a few 30+ cities but Carthage captured them a while back and Rio changed hands so many times it's pop 2 right now).

 

[redwings1340]

Ok I definitely am liking LOC and the benefits Liberty and Honor can provide.

I guess the big question is how to match the culture that TARF generates?
The big thing for me is that Tradition civs get the beginning culture than go aesthetics to get MORE culture. On top of that they finish Aesthetics and go Rationalism to get ahead in science to get access to free policy culture wonders.

How do the others keep up culturally and science? Since Honor/Warmongering can take out threats do those players just annex capitals and rebuild them to their best ability?

Thanks for the tips guys. Im starting to think in CIV 6/ a patch they should definitely make another game plan.

For culture (at least for liberty/commerce style), your answer is in city states. I rarely build amphitheatres until the very end of the game, but since you get a lot of money from commerce and liberty, you can ally cultural city states to make up for this. These city states provide a lot of culture (not tourism, I usually fall way down on tourism, but that's ok if you aren't going for cultural victory), and even on emperor you can make up the cultural deficit and eventually become #1 on culture with no culture buildings besides monuments. Cultural city states are your best friend when you're not going aesthetics. Having city state allies comes in handy later too when you realize you have no tourism and need to pass your ideology as the world ideology in the world congress.

For science, just make sure you still consistently focus on science. Science buildings are important no matter what you do. As we've said, there's probably nothing that can beat TARF (well, I think patronage has a strong case over aesthetics for optimal play), but you can still do decently well in science if you just keep the science up like normal.

 

[Horizons]

Yeah I'd say that Civ5 (with BNW) has been pretty much dumped by Firaxis in a badly optimized state (i.e. only one or two strategies are possible to win the game with) and we'll have to wait for Civ6 for something new ... but no doubt it will end up exactly the same as Civ4 and Civ5 both did (when the devs try something new the community will denounce it and demand tweaks to make it the same as it always was).

 

[georgie]

Guys, you are all doing it wrong. The optimal SP strategy is something I like to call PATCHER PAL. In this strategy you select the opener of every tree that you can. If you can't select another opener, then you go back to the first tree you selected and pick up a policy. Once you get an Ideology, fill out Autocracy then go back to the aforementioned ways to select SPs. This strategy has never failed me.

 

[Talcove]

Anything with Tradition and Rationalism, really, is unstoppable. The rest of the trees are just side dishes.

 

[kaspergm]

If you're talking about Deity-level games, then it's possible that only certain very specific strategies will work, because the AI has a ridiculous handicap. If you mean King or below, then it shouldn't really matter once you're capable of playing proficiently at those difficulty levels because the playing field is tilted in your favor or relatively level.

I think this is a pretty good point to bring to the table here. I think no matter how well balanced a game is, if you're playing extremely focused on winning as effectively as possible, there'll almost always appear some sort of optimal strategy. I play on Emperor level myself, and while I'm pretty confident Tradition/tall is my best pick if I want to win fast, I often choose other combinations just for the sake of variation. Just the other day I started a game as Celts and opened with some Piety and then took some Honor because map was large and there were many barb camps. Arguably this game is going really badly, but I may play it out just to see if I can actually win after all.

 

[GKShaman]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

 

[GhostSalsa]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

Autocracy is fun. It's a better bet than Freedom or Order when you are weak and appropriately it works best with Honor (the Professional Army policy which discounts building barracks*). Freedom only helps you if you are really tall and full of wonders and great works already. And even Order despite its "settling" policies I would only take if I already had a solid empire already. It doesn't have a lot to offer a tiny empire that still needs to conquer a huge neighbor.

Autocracy isn't going to give you a good win time (and also Gunboat Diplomacy is seriously not exploitable on Immortal or above (unless you're at war with everyone their armies are going to be bigger than yours)) but it's the funnest tree imo because you can build level-3 units from every city.

*Autocracy gives you 6 happiness for the XP buildings in each city and since they are only 1 gold maintenance, they become the best happiness buildings in the game.

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

I've never gone freedom (since it seems to me like a "defensive" ideology), but I usually go Autocracy because I almost always warmonger, and when I'm peaceful I go order. Autocracy gives you lots of happiness bonuses and strengthens your military. It's so easy to crush AI with it.

 

[reddishrecue]

Anything with Tradition and Rationalism, really, is unstoppable. The rest of the trees are just side dishes.

This is what I was probably trying to say. Except on water maps where exploration could be useful.

 

[KmDubya]

I really like exploration for the top two picks. On a map with a lot of coastal cities you get +3 happy and +3 hammers per city. The extra sight and movement for ships is nice as well. Louvre is also sweet if you can build it.

With liberty as well you can get +4 happy per city, add coliseums, pagodas and religion of peace and you have +9 happy per city. As long as the city has good resources there is no reason to not keep expanding. Even with the 5% science penalty lots of big developed cities will generate more science than four tradition cities. Having a big strong empire helps you win all of the competitions as well which can really help.

Four city tradition into rationalism is safe and will get you the win but is not the most fun way. Massive expansion with liberty is more fun.

 

[Cpt Oblivious]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

I personally have a love for Autocracy because
a) it helps your (likely) token defense stand up against bigger opponents and
b) Gunboat Diplomacy, dear heavens. It really is bordering on being broken if you play it right.

 

[GoStu]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

It's good if you're going for domination, obviously. In a more general sense it's good for a come-from-behind victories. Clausewitz's Legacy is good when it's time to tear apart a runaway. Sure, it's got an expiry date on it, but that's just a check on its power so you can't kill EVERYONE. By the time it burns out, you should be about one sacked empire richer.

 

[Arachnofiend]

Autocracy gets a really bad rap because most players quit the game in instances where Autocracy would be the best bet (assuming domination isn't in mind).

Industrial Espionage alone is enough reason to take the ideology if you're still hurting on tech by the Modern Era.

 

[Plumfairy]

I've never gone freedom (since it seems to me like a "defensive" ideology), but I usually go Autocracy because I almost always warmonger, and when I'm peaceful I go order. Autocracy gives you lots of happiness bonuses and strengthens your military. It's so easy to crush AI with it.

Although Freedom is commonly used as a defensive "go tall & do lots of research" ideology, it's surprisingly versatile... it's useful in other situations as well. The "get 6 foreign legion" tenet can be really powerful if you want to do a military push, and the "get extra influence when donating units to a CS" tenet is good both for diplomacy VC as well as a general military push. (Getting a CS ally right next to your military target is a great way to tie up some of his military.)

 

[happyturtle]

Play as Vienna.

Tradition > Commerce

Conquer your own continent with a home built army. Use a Merchant of Venice to buy a city-state on any other continents and use your ability to purchase in puppetted cities to buy a Landsknecht army to conquer abroad.

Who needs the rest of the social policies or tech tree?

 

[reddishrecue]

Although Freedom is commonly used as a defensive "go tall & do lots of research" ideology, it's surprisingly versatile... it's useful in other situations as well. The "get 6 foreign legion" tenet can be really powerful if you want to do a military push, and the "get extra influence when donating units to a CS" tenet is good both for diplomacy VC as well as a general military push. (Getting a CS ally right next to your military target is a great way to tie up some of his military.)

Their finest hour is also a good defensive social policy that could be useful for freedom since it lacks most of the military social policies that autocracy and order have.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Odd might be a silly question - but I have NEVER gone autocracy. How is it? any crazy brokenness to it? Personally Ive conquered with Freedom's Volunteer Army. Whats so great about Autocracy? Which beliefs help?

I think Ghostsalsa is right it's good for come from behind victories.

Use futurism and cult of personality and target civs that are producing a lot of tourism. Steal their works and wonders and you can really get a ton of late game influence. Somebody else dubbed it a predatory CV and I like the name. It can be a fun way to win and Autocracy is perfect for it. It's a good way to get real use out of Brazil's UU if you got beat to a lot of early wonders.

Lightning warfare is good for Germany or any civ that has a mounted UU with carryover promotions. I especially like it with Austria because it makes flanking a breeze for upgraded Hussars. Tanks and planes can totally dominate the late game.

Play as the the Ottomans and use gunboat diplomacy to get an easy diplo win. You'll have a huge cheap navy you can just place outside all the CSs on the map. It's almost exploity.