France the policy rusher: does it matter?

[Big J Money]

I researched this thread on the math of using France's UA to go wide: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487587&highlight=france&page=5

Simply stated, the conclusion I draw from all the math done on this subject is, France can policy rush. I didn't find anything about policy rushing in a search, ergo this thread.

(Here is how I reached my conclusion, if you care to know)

Spoiler :

Taking my head out of the numbers, what are the real implications; the possibilities revealed by the research done?

I felt they had yet to be discussed.

The main idea by the end of that thread was:
"France can be 'policy cost' efficient while expanding, with the caveat that this is only true while there aren't better non-city culture bonuses available (i.e. in the early game)".

But this efficiency is abstract and doesn't automatically reveal any advantages. In fact, one poster made the absurd (but true) observation that France can continue to expand efficiently throughout the game, as long as you neglect gaining culture from other sources!

So, to begin reworking the research into something useful, let's restate the conclusion: "France is punished less on the policy tree by going wide"

And again let's restate that to: "All other things being equal, when you play France and go wide, you'll get policies a little faster than if you'd have picked another civ."

But what does this mean? Anyone have any ideas how winning a "policy race" would be useful?

Some ideas:

You could finish out liberty and get a GP before anyone else, which means
- Have the first academy, manufactory, great admiral
- Beat anyone else who is completing liberty for GE and a wonder rush

But that's all I got, lol. Unlike Science, rushing policies just doesn't seem useful. Additionally, this strategy might be done better by someone who gets a good mission next to a cultural CS.

Here are some notes about the method I'd try (if you're interested)

Spoiler :

I haven't done the new testing yet, but I'm predicting:

The fastest policy rush method will be REXing with liberty opener.
The second fastest will be tradition opener and no need to REX.
The caveat being that it depends on exactly what you're rushing to (because there will be a curve).

And if you want more discussion on France's UA aside from this policy rush concept, here are some more implications I drew out of the UA

Spoiler :

- France can choose to pass on cultural buildings where another wide empire would have chosen to build them.

- France's cities' borders can expand faster than other civs

- France's cities' borders will expand without any buildings or the need to take liberty.

 

[budweiser]

I've been meaning to play game as France. But, my computer has been getting hot after about 20 minutes of civ lately.

A great merchant could extend or cement a key CS alliance.

But, I'm thinking tradition opener then left side liberty would give the most culture. Then back to Legalism after you research D&P.

 

[Big J Money]

Sure you can choose great merchant, yet what advantage does rushing to one provide?

I.E. Is the advantage good and reliable enough that you would pick Napoleon and utilize this policy rushing strategy? The GM suggestion strikes me as quite situational.

But, I'm thinking tradition opener then left side liberty would give the most culture. Then back to Legalism after you research D&P.

"Give the most culture" is relative to what you're rushing toward. In that example what are you rushing toward with that culture?

 

[Justice1337]

There are certain policies that are great to get early.

In culture games, getting something like Representation or Religious Tolerance very early can save you a pretty good amount of culture since the culture costs of the next policy are somewhat based on the costs of earlier ones.

The Aesthetics > Pledge to Protect combo has much more impact in the early stages of the game where Gold is scarce. Timed well on a fully explored map, you get up to Friends at around the point that you get a bump from hitting the new era. That's not to mention the impact of early Great People from Educated Elite.


I've experimented in Wide-style culture rushing too. Oddly enough, the left side of Commerce is just crushing when you get it around T100. You have a very early Great Admiral for awesome scouting, and tech bonuses come with that. It's quite easy to claim those islands for yourself this way too. Merchant Navy is really quite good early as well, map specific of course. It allows you to get infrastructure up really quickly in any new cities you create, and can modestly boost the production in your main cities provided they are coastal. Completing Commerce early is great for Trading Posts also. Being able to hit it before Economics gives you enough reason to build TPs before then, so that when you do hit Economics you're already set up. And since the right side of Commerce isn't as good early, you can get left side first, fill in the right just at the point you want it, and then not be stuck in this limbo where you're debating after Protectionism whether it's worth is to complete the tree by taking basically empty policies. After all, they're not nearly as empty early. Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, it obviously takes a lot of planning to hit Medieval early for Commerce opener. Ideally, I won't generally want to finish the first Policy tree in games where I do this. And aside from saving policies, which a lot of players take issue with, options are available like delaying Legalism, or even opening Honor and adjusting Culture from Military Caste a little bit. But the main thing is hitting the Medieval era early enough to pick the premium policies. I've had some success with Maya because of their benefits to a Theocracy beeline, but I suppose there are benefits to a Metal Casting beeline as France.


Otherwise, I do think that Culture per city is really underrated for Wide empire play. I always see experts like MadDjinn building Ampitheatres in border cities, and then the onlookers asking why. Of course the reason is that you actually want to be able to make progress on your late era policy tree. The same players complain that the powerful, late era policies come too late to affect the game.

I think the original thread is interesting in one observation - the more culture your Capital and core cities are producing, the less sense it makes to found new cities because they will increase your policy costs by X%, while not being able to contribute that same X% of your empire's total culture per turn. What I find is that this mentality is hopelessly frozen in the "I want as many SP's as possible" mentality. A normal game won't care about opening a 4th and 5th tree at all, which is where most of the culture on a culture VC is spent. Consequently, a non-cultural game doesn't care about overall empire SP speed, and if it ever does get to over 30 culture per city (which it won't), then SP's have actually been sped up by much more than they needed to be in the first place.

Better thinking is this. The flip side of that metric is when your capital only has Monument and Ampitheatre, it makes more sense to colonize up to 100 / X cities, precisely because you'll be able to make Monument/Ampitheatre there and "break even". I think X = 7% on a large map, so that is like 13 cities(!!) that you can colonize without slowing policy aquisition, and each one before that can actually speed it.

I find this is contrary to what most people think. The line of thinking seems to be that you are either "playing culturally" (as per the tooltip), in which event you're bulding everything up to Museums, or you're not "playing culturally", in which event you're bulding nothing other than what's necessary for city borders, then you're scratching your head at why non-cultural Industrial Era policies even exist. I think that the correct even in Wide is to at least build Ampitheatres in each city, sometimes Opera Houses in your main ones. France just gets 2 on top of the 2 and 3 of Monument-Ampitheatre, which is +40%. And 40% more policies by game's end is really nothing to sneeze at with a wide empire. In a lot of games I see players struggling to even open Autocracy/Order, while in France you easily fill those trees.

It will be interesting to see players evaluate the strength of Poland's UA in BNW - one free Policy at the start of each era. To me, it just seems like a more back-loaded version of what France already has. Of course France is getting an overhaul in BNW, but honestly I think that if player perception is that France is currently a weak civ, it's just because so much of the sophisticated player base is reading culture wrong and can't properly evaluate Anciene Regime. Lots of players really do feel that since culture games don't go wide, the per-city UA is at cross-purposes with itself. This assumes that Culture is only useful in Cultural VC's, and that idea is just plain wrong.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

I've always thought of france as a pretty strong civ. Both their UUs are formidable for their era under the right circumstances, and more than anything the free early game culture is worth a lot more than people give it credit for.

If france is considered a weak civ, I think it has to be weighed in the equation that anything you do is amplified multiple times in the early game. A few extra gold, food, hammers or , in this case, culture can be an absolutely massive change in the potential end result of the game. Rolling France and opening tradition for the extra culture gets you well on your way to a strong early game start with +6 culture per turn when everybody else is still without it's first civic and producing 1 culture per turn. That's a big, big difference early game and over time it can compound very quickly.

 

[Deau]

Unlike Science, rushing policies just doesn't seem useful.

Rushing policies is a double edged blade but can impact your game as much as rushing techs. The gains are just more subtle and harder to put a number on.

Let's take a typical liberty opener game.

Napoleon's UA will get you your first settler 10-15 turns earlier. That alone accounts for 10-15 more science for those turns but also an extra science for the next 8 turns because then your earlier founded city is size 2 instead of a normal civ city being size1. (can be extended some but eventually turn-to-grow gap between 2 different sizes nearly evens out). This clears out one extra ancient era tech alone.

That also adds those extra hammers for the same turns. This can account to 1-2 archers or an extra hard built infrastructure that you avoid purchasing.

There is also the same pattern for ~1-2gpt added value, whilst fairly minimal, can cut a few additional turns of a rush-bought worker or settler for even more snowball effect.

There is also an indirect gold saving because of natural border expansion being improved. That is too situational to actually measure but it is quite useful to enhance opener. That also tends to allow you to put luxuries online earlier instead of waiting on natural border growth further compounding to the gold gain.

Last but not least, you also shove 15-20 turns off of the free worker & 25% speed improvement, getting your land improved significantly further than with other civs. This will generally allow you to improve luxuries early enough to not have to halt your expansion from happiness. Also help further increase growth from getting farms up earlier etc. etc.

In other words, rushing SPs has a snowball effect similar (but not quite as strong imho) as that of Babylon's UA.

However, unlike Babylon UA, it can backfire. SP cost increase exponentially whereas the UA bonus doesn't. As such, getting to renaissance with say already 8 policies instead of the ideal 5 or usual 6 of a standard civ means generally that the turn-to-next policy from 8-9th for france will be longer than for 6th-7th for other civs, even with the UA, effectively backfiring by delaying the science gained from mid-game SP trees. This, however, is not very bad if your non-france strategy would've had you take 2-3 SPs in a tree between liberty & rationalism though. It is just very costly for say a firmly tuned univ rush to oxford->renaissance to hit 6th policy + hard built oracle into getting 2 points into rationalism around turns 95-105 (extremely brutal to achieve if you don't play Babylon).

Anyway all this to say, there can be a snowball effect from SP rushing. It is just harder to visualize or put numbers on but its there. At least if you strategize accordingly.

 

[Big J Money]

Anyway, it obviously takes a lot of planning to hit Medieval early for Commerce opener.

I wonder if France's boost makes them superior for rushing this far forward. I'd bet we're now in the territory of someone playing a true culture game actually winning this race. This would be fun to play out.

Better thinking is this. The flip side of that metric is when your capital only has Monument and Ampitheatre, it makes more sense to colonize up to 100 / X cities, precisely because you'll be able to make Monument/Ampitheatre there and "break even". I think X = 7% on a large map, so that is like 13 cities(!!) that you can colonize without slowing policy aquisition, and each one before that can actually speed it.

I'm reading that you've fallen into the fallacy that you pointed out. The fallacy that just because you're efficiently filling out an equation that you've made good choices.

Example: I'm France with 13 cities (including capital), each producing 9 culture. Yes, another 9 culture city is efficient according to the silly equation on a huge map (because its contribution to the whole is greater than the 7.5% cost increase). That's 117 cpt, by the way.

But if I make an ally out of a cultural civ, or build a few wonders, and start generating 12 more cpt, all of a sudden it's no longer considered efficient for me to found another 9 cpt city!

The equation is only useful when you've already done your best to maximize your culture along all other avenues that you're planning to. If you use it as an excuse to neglect culture growth in the capital or through other means, you are fooling yourself into playing an equation, not the actual game. 129 cpt is simply better than 117 cpt with the same number of cities. It doesn't make any sense to avoid getting the 12 cpt from the city state simply because it "makes" the next city inefficient.

I was really surprised at the folks who were coming to this conclusion. Taken to the extreme, you'd never build even a monument in your capital. In addition, you'd neither build new cultural buildings in your established cities because that would lower your "new city efficiency" as well!

I have to admit, one of the nice things about the equation is I've created a spreadsheet that I can easily use to calculate whether a new city will be efficient or not, given my current number of cities and total CPT. And I can easily plug in numbers to answer questions like, "well, what if I friend a maritime CS in 4 turns, will it still be efficient then?"

I find this is contrary to what most people think. The line of thinking seems to be that you are either "playing culturally" (as per the tooltip), in which event you're bulding everything up to Museums, or you're not "playing culturally", in which event you're bulding nothing other than what's necessary for city borders, then you're scratching your head at why non-cultural Industrial Era policies even exist. I think that the correct even in Wide is to at least build Ampitheatres in each city, sometimes Opera Houses in your main ones.

Yes I do agree with your main conclusion here. Culture is worthwhile even outside CV.

France just gets 2 on top of the 2 and 3 of Monument-Ampitheatre, which is +40%. And 40% more policies by game's end is really nothing to sneeze at with a wide empire. In a lot of games I see players struggling to even open Autocracy/Order, while in France you easily fill those trees.

Also agreed. For someone who's going wide anyway, this is good. And for someone who wouldn't even build monuments or amphitheaters, even better.

 

[Moriarte]

But what does this mean? Anyone have any ideas how winning a "policy race" would be useful?

Rush to Aesthetics, rush to Protectionism.

Rush build NC between t.60-75 (with GE), while mass building composite bowmen in order to kill everyone who is around you.

Rush GS for Crossbows/Frigates.

 

[tommynt]

obviously does more culture and direct and faster boarder expand for cities matter.

Its more like "how much does it matter"?

Mathematicly it doesnt matter that much in long run.
But as civ is a multiplicative game - i.e. early gains pay off later again and again it matters quite a lot ..

The most obvious way to look at things is the earlier liberty settler which effects have been described allready

As such, getting to renaissance with say already 8 policies instead of the ideal 5

this is utter nonsense btw, the slighter higher costs in policies are more as covered by the gains from other policies

 

[Light Cleric]

You left out one big use of the Liberty finisher as France: a Prophet. Unlike other civs that might not be able to finish Liberty before the slots are all filled on Deity, France can get in there and use it to found their religion that way and then use the first "generated" Prophet to enhance which speeds things up significantly.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

there are certain points on the culture tree that I find very useful. Basically the whole Tradition tree is the perfect foothold for tall empires and an early game food, gold and culture boost. The 25% city state science bonus in the patronage line (along with most others if you're snapping up city states) is a huge boost if you have even only a handful of city states under your hat.

If you have a city in the jungle than the rationalism's +17% university and +1 beaker for trading posts(assuming you've already built trading posts on those tiles) give you a tile that, on average, can produce 3 science and 1/2 gold on top of the 2 food it's producing anyways. That's huge.

TL;DR I think there are certainly "clincher" civics just as there are techs. While not being as mission critical as science, culture provides a great way to bolster your empire and should not be ignored.

 

[LastSword]

It's more about ignoring monuments and still getting important hexes + policies, while playing wide.
It seems you figured it out.

Policy rush still matters, because every turn matters. 3 turns of extra food will result in x extra turns of , etc. for every new citizen. This is good example.

 

[Justice1337]

@ Big J Money

Yes, I would never decide to just "not build" an Opera House or Museum in the Capital, just because I wanted to keep some equation balanced. More culture per turn is always better than less.

I just think that Monument + Ampitheatre is a pretty good baseline for 'average' culture per city. That leads to the conclusion that you can actually make a lot more cities than people think without slowing down the acquistion of social policies, provided you build Amiptheaters and not just Monuments like a lot of people do. It's useful to have that in mind when debating whether to found another city and increase your empire's culture output (whether by Ampitheatre in new city or Opera House in Cap), or doing neither of those things and keep on-time for Social Policies. Obviously, you want more cities and you also want SP's, so people should keep in mind that you can do both.

With France UA, you can either get 40% more CPT than the Monument/Ampitheatre baseline, or you can found 40% more cities without becoming slower on SP's than a normal Civ. In practicality, you will probably find yourself somewhere between these two points on the line, and of course, you will also have extra from anything you have above this baseline, which is a good thing.

 

[budweiser]

This is what I am into now with France:

writing>math line>Drama and Poetry while you go Tradition>3 Liberty>Legalism

You get the free city around t35-t40. Buy the monuments if you can, buy the third city if you can. By the time you have 3 cities up with 3 monuments, you are ready to pick legalism. Sometimes it comes out even, last time i had to wait 8 turns to finish the research. If you have a positive food gain, you can put artists in city 2 and city 3.

This is about the most culture you can get, the earliest unless maybe you did a Terracotta Army/Great Wall combo. The math line gives archers, food and hammers while you are unlocking the Classical age.

 

[Justice1337]

This is what I am into now with France:

writing>math line>Drama and Poetry while you go Tradition>3 Liberty>Legalism

You get the free city around t35-t40. Buy the monuments if you can, buy the third city if you can. By the time you have 3 cities up with 3 monuments, you are ready to pick legalism. Sometimes it comes out even, last time i had to wait 8 turns to finish the research. If you have a positive food gain, you can put artists in city 2 and city 3.

This is about the most culture you can get, the earliest unless maybe you did a Terracotta Army/Great Wall combo. The math line gives archers, food and hammers while you are unlocking the Classical age.

The problem here is that you're spending Culture to get more Culture.

Aside from saving hammers, the flat amount of increased culture you get from this is equal to the culture you produce from this point until the time you would've naturally built the Ampitheatres otherwise. Judging by the effectiveness of the shortcut, this amount is large, certainly more than those who open Tradtion early just for the +3 culture. But just like that run-around, there will be a point where the cost of the next policy > the amount you earned by getting Ampitheatres early, and at that point you will have hurt yourself.

So I think the advice still stands that you shouldn't open Tradition unless you plan on completing Tradition. In cultural games then, this is probably a great opening. But since I can't see any other game where you would want to go both Liberty and Tradtion, I think the usefulness of this opening is limited.

 

[Fluffball]

France was one of my early favorites and still is but i actively play other civs to experience them at least once.

France's advantage is an early bump which you can then accumulate from.

I must admit i never tried playing for culture and i found France to be an excellent expander which can use the early UA to spam out cities and still get a lot of early policies which can boost your happiness and build a solid base from which to build your empire very quickly.

In the early game you can almost ignore culture.e.g. not have to build temples early on in each city which allows you to pump out more important stuff like military to fend off the early DoW's (much more important in the higher levels) and get your pop growing with granaries. In effect you can do a lot more 'and' rather than 'or'.

Once my empire was established and i had built the important things i would then look at culture buildings in anticipation of me losing a good chunk of culture at some point rather looking to build on my existing culture.i.e. my culture building are to replace culture i know i m going to lose and any extra culture i get in the meanwhile is just a bonus.

By the time you do lose the UA you should already be in a position to win or lined up for the eventual win off the back of your early boost and it's escalation from there. You should also have the vast majority of your main policies by then, in part off the back of all your puppets as you will be doing a lot of fighting by expanding fast and early (meaning the AI will DOW you a lot).

In simple terms you save gold and hammers early on not having to build culture building and when you can least afford to expend them and instead can build them later when they are relatively quick and cheap to build as you will have a lot more spare hammers and gold while also gaining other bonuses when you need them most.i.e. at the start such as extra happiness.

I would start with liberty and honor openers then go straight for the free worker then fill out liberty and the right side of honor (SP order after the worker would depend on my situation.e.g. need to plant a city quick then go for the free settler, if i was expecting a big early war i would go into honor more quickly.

Rationalism was my next tree although i often didn't finish it (added with the order opener) but what i did get was only to speed up my eventual win as my science would be huge through my size anyway.

 

[Deau]

this is utter nonsense btw, the slighter higher costs in policies are more as covered by the gains from other policies

I have to disagree, strictly because of how powerful rationalism opener and +2 science per specialist are. I very often use commerce/mercantilism in generic strategy for emergency late-game air war to shut down runaway civs. The benefits from the first 2 SPs in commerce, even for 50 more turns, do not compound to the gain from shoving 10 turns off rationalism opener and 15 more for the +2 science per specialist. Especially since most often than not, the delay means significantly weaker results from the first wave of RAs

 

[flairin]

I really really enjoy playing France cause of their policy rushing... Haven't played them for a while but if I remember correctly you should probably go Liberty and just $$ rush cultural buildings. Certainly focus on cash. I would go for the free worker before the free settler... that way you wouldn't have to rush buy the worker, instead using that money on monuments much earlier. Of course sell you gpt for lump sums. I would probably tech pottery first then go for them horses so I could sell them off (France seems to almost always have horses). If there is some mining luxes I would go for those first before teching for other luxes since mining would be quicker and I should have a worker ready to work on it by the time the horses have been worked. I would first build a scout, then 2nd a shrine, then prob a military unit so I could go about making friends with CS, hopefully cultural ones (quests). As for the free GP I may just go for the Great Merchant so I could guarantee the $$ plus allied status with a cultural CS

 

[flairin]

I'd say that doing this you should have at least 3 cities up between t30-t40

 

[joncnunn]

I think the "Policy Rushing" via France was referring to when your empire wide culture per turn is low enough (e.g. you DON'T have cultural allies) that founding a city and cash rushing a Monument the same turn (or being granted it being Legalism) could result in your city bringing in more culture than the cost increased by (a least initially); this is most likely to occur on a Huge map which has a discount to increased city portion of the culture policy costs.

As to how I play France; I play it like I do any other civ and just get more culture per turn doing so. This mostly results in a very fast first policy and significantly faster second policy. The addition advantage does start to fade, but that's still something like 20 to 30 turns ahead of where I would have been.

If NOT going for cultural victory, you probably wouldn't want to stack it with the Oracle unless you really wanted a 3rd filler policy between your first tree & rationalism.