How to deal with Tradition early expansion?

[PapaRockett]

Tradition is a great policy branch, but I really hate the low production. Settling a second city with 1 production is a nightmare. You get no gold bonus, so maintaining those early essential buildings (monument, granary) is very difficult. On top of that, roads are expensive, and isolation plummets my happiness like nothing else.

I don't know how to deal with it. By the time I've eventually connected my cities, I'm very far behind in gold, science and culture because of the unhappiness issues.

Of course I could delay expansion, but I fear of getting forward settled.

 

[CrazyG]

Try building an early stoneworks in your capital and run production trade routes to new cities. Stops isolation, no road maintenance, no need for workers to build roads, and those cities get to build up quickly. One strategy can be taking the engineer policy first and building stonehenge. This should let you generate a great engineer quickly, which you can spend on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, granting a free stoneworks (no maintenance). The short and long term benefits of that wonder for tradition are great

If you can't run production routes, settling on a forest and having enough gold to invest is pretty good as well. I almost always go shrine first in those expansions. You can prioritize tiles with production over food when settling, growing those cities too much can cause unhappiness. Once I hit 2 pop I might work a sheep over a horse, for example. In secondary cities granaries are a low priority in my opinion, because of gold. Shrines, monuments, and councils first.

Hope this helps

 

[PapaRockett]

Try building an early stoneworks in your capital and run production trade routes to new cities. Stops isolation, no road maintenance, no need for workers to build roads, and those cities get to build up quickly. One strategy can be taking the engineer policy first and building stonehenge. This should let you generate a great engineer quickly, which you can spend on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, granting a free stoneworks (no maintenance). The short and long term benefits of that wonder for tradition are great

If you can't run production routes, settling on a forest and having enough gold to invest is pretty good as well. I almost always go shrine first in those expansions. You can prioritize tiles with production over food when settling, growing those cities too much can cause unhappiness. Once I hit 2 pop I might work a sheep over a horse, for example. In secondary cities granaries are a low priority in my opinion, because of gold. Shrines, monuments, and councils first.

Hope this helps

Yeah in my secondary cities I tend to go shrine > monument > granary, but perhaps I'll do what you do and ignore the granaries. They do add up in expense

 

[Bromar1]

Yeah in my secondary cities I tend to go shrine > monument > granary, but perhaps I'll do what you do and ignore the granaries. They do add up in expense

I tend to avoid food or growth buildings before I have decent infrastructure in a satellite city. Higher population leads to more unhappiness which makes it even harder to build up good production

 

[tu_79]

What I do is to expand really slowly. I wait until my capital is strong before commiting to settlings. I build the anti-barb squad first, a wonder perhaps, Mausoleum is a must, though Petra and Piramids are nice too, Stonehenge if you feel like you can race for it. If I'm lucky, I get some friends that give me gold and other goodies. I don't worry for early unhappiness. It's just hurting production a little. Gold is more important. To start making gold, you need your satellites near, very near the capital, 3 tiles if posible, and let the closer cities grow, if you don't have gold to build new buildings, farm meanwhile. Then connect them as soon as they have 5 pop. You'll be unhappy for a while, but in a few turns you'll start making money. Follow the rule of one worker per city and you might be right.

As Tradition, you want to be able to work specialists while growing and you'll need lots of people for that. More people is also safer cities, faster national wonders (which bring +2 happiness each one). Prefer river locations, as your expected big population will make much more from water mills. If you find yourself with +30 happiness, you are growing slowly.

About being forward settled, there is an advantage Tradition have over Progress. It can wage war earlier without crippling itself. A puppet won't hurt your research or policies. Plus, you'll need some room to support your army. If your neighbor goes Authority, bad luck. Beeline a warmonger tech (with fewer cities you should research really fast) and prepare a technological advanced army.

 

[PapaRockett]

What I do is to expand really slowly. I wait until my capital is strong before commiting to settlings. I build the anti-barb squad first, a wonder perhaps, Mausoleum is a must, though Petra and Piramids are nice too, Stonehenge if you feel like you can race for it. If I'm lucky, I get some friends that give me gold and other goodies. I don't worry for early unhappiness. It's just hurting production a little. Gold is more important. To start making gold, you need your satellites near, very near the capital, 3 tiles if posible, and let the closer cities grow, if you don't have gold to build new buildings, farm meanwhile. Then connect them as soon as they have 5 pop. You'll be unhappy for a while, but in a few turns you'll start making money. Follow the rule of one worker per city and you might be right.

As Tradition, you want to be able to work specialists while growing and you'll need lots of people for that. More people is also safer cities, faster national wonders (which bring +2 happiness each one). Prefer river locations, as your expected big population will make much more from water mills. If you find yourself with +30 happiness, you are growing slowly.

About being forward settled, there is an advantage Tradition have over Progress. It can wage war earlier without crippling itself. A puppet won't hurt your research or policies. Plus, you'll need some room to support your army. If your neighbor goes Authority, bad luck. Beeline a warmonger tech (with fewer cities you should research really fast) and prepare a technological advanced army.

If you are building your secondary cities 3 tiles apart, then how many cities in total do you end up with, on average? I had the impression that if you're going Tradition, you only want 6-8 cities. With those other cities close to your capitol, it seems that you're sort of limiting your land.

However I do agree that it would make the city connections a lot more convenient.

 

[tu_79]

If you are building your secondary cities 3 tiles apart, then how many cities in total do you end up with, on average? I had the impression that if you're going Tradition, you only want 6-8 cities. With those other cities close to your capitol, it seems that you're sort of limiting your land.

However I do agree that it would make the city connections a lot more convenient.

You see, a Tradition capital doesn't need much land.
I usually have 4-6 cities on my own. Then, conquered.

 

[peterw1987]

I never build granaries that early. Usually always shrine,monument,council,market,barrack, well/watermill,arena. I can see i am not building any granaries before i mostly build all of this.

Granaries only if my sattelite have immediate access to many bonus resources for granaries.

 

[Starrynite120]

What I do is to expand really slowly. I wait until my capital is strong before commiting to settlings. I build the anti-barb squad first, a wonder perhaps, Mausoleum is a must, though Petra and Piramids are nice too, Stonehenge if you feel like you can race for it. If I'm lucky, I get some friends that give me gold and other goodies. I don't worry for early unhappiness. It's just hurting production a little. Gold is more important. To start making gold, you need your satellites near, very near the capital, 3 tiles if posible, and let the closer cities grow, if you don't have gold to build new buildings, farm meanwhile. Then connect them as soon as they have 5 pop. You'll be unhappy for a while, but in a few turns you'll start making money. Follow the rule of one worker per city and you might be right.

As Tradition, you want to be able to work specialists while growing and you'll need lots of people for that. More people is also safer cities, faster national wonders (which bring +2 happiness each one). Prefer river locations, as your expected big population will make much more from water mills. If you find yourself with +30 happiness, you are growing slowly.

About being forward settled, there is an advantage Tradition have over Progress. It can wage war earlier without crippling itself. A puppet won't hurt your research or policies. Plus, you'll need some room to support your army. If your neighbor goes Authority, bad luck. Beeline a warmonger tech (with fewer cities you should research really fast) and prepare a technological advanced army.

I agree with all of this as great advice, except how close to settle. It is unnecessary in the early game and could lead to problems later. I always go very tall when going tradition. I need those tiles. I avoid cities sharing tiles, and it generally works very well. I do have 6-8 citiues I founded myself, and I usually turtle, so no capturing cities. Seems to work pretty well.