How to quickly choose a good policy ?

[Jabulani]

Which is your quickest way to choose the best policy ? I can't remember them and each time I have to read them all to know which is the best.

How to sort them by date of availability? At least I would know which ones I obtained later.

How to choose them each time without reading them all ?

Thx

 

[redwings1340]

There's a little exclamation mark on the upper left hand corner of any new ones you just got this turn.

Aside from that, its just memory and rereading. A lot of them are variants of the same card, like +100% adjacency bonuses for (campus/theatre/industrial/commercial/holy site) district, or +50% creation for (ancient melee/ranged, medieval and renaissance melee/ranged), extra builder charges/production, so you can mentally group them together in to those types of categories.

 

[Jabulani]

There's a little exclamation mark on the upper left hand corner of any new ones you just got this turn.

Aside from that, its just memory and rereading. A lot of them are variants of the same card, like +100% adjacency bonuses for (campus/theatre/industrial/commercial/holy site) district, or +50% creation for (ancient melee/ranged, medieval and renaissance melee/ranged), extra builder charges/production, so you can mentally group them together in to those types of categories.

Yep I noticed the exclamation mark, btw thx for your answer, but I was referring after the exclamation mark has gone when you have a lot of red cards f.i and there is pretty much no variants like wild cards.

There should be a card ranking number from 1 to 6 to highlight the policy " tier " to ease up the choosing process

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

A "good policy" is totally relative to your current situation and there's really no way for the game to "tell you" what's appropriate. Colonization would be a "Tier 1" card but there's plenty of times throughout the game you may want to run it when going for a new wave of expansion.

At the end of the day you just have to play and start familiarizing yourself with what policies are there, when they unlock and when to use them. You'll start to develop some go to policies for your various strategies, like my obsession with getting Serfdom asap.

 

[Draco84]

The old tier versions disappear when they become obsolete.

It would be nice to have a filter, but I'm not sure how much help that would be since I'm not sure what you would filter on?

 

[redwings1340]

So, here's an example of a thought process I go through when I choose my military policies (it helps to look at each type of policy individually then choose whatever card you really wanted in your thought process but didn't manage to get as your wildcard.

So, am I currently building units, encampments, or walls, or will I want to start building units during my next few turns? If yes, what do I want to build? If I want to build a big army quickly, I'll choose the production policy, saving production time is always great.

Do I have a big army? If yes, that reduction of maintinence cost is really good.

If I don't want those policies, some defaults I go to are +1 movement for units that starts in your territory (gives builders 3 movement points and helps your troops respond to barbarian raids better, which is still very nice in peacetimes) or +1 ammenity for each unit garisoned in a city (always useful if you have the extra units to sit there or are at peace).

Then, by the time I've considered those categories, I've usually gotten a military policy in place. Then I go to the economic policies and do a similar process. Look at your empire. Do you want a builder wave or a settler wave? If you do, take a builder or settler policy. Do you have lots of specific districts? If you do, then take a policy that makes these districts better. Don't have many districts and aren't creating builders/settlers? +1 production per city is pretty nice. God king is good until you get a pantheon, then I don't use it much after that.

The diplomacy card is usually relatively simple to fill. Just choose the one that suits your empire. You want to place an envoy in a city state you don't have any in yet? Why not make it two envoys. You don't want to do that? Get more envoy points, they're great. Want more gold? That +gold per envoy policy gives out a lot of gold and is pretty good.

Then, for the wildcard slot(s), choose either a great person policy (if you want a great person, the great prophet policy is almost necessary if you want a religion), or choose a policy that you looked at earlier and wanted but didn't have the space to take.

 

[isau]

Unique icons for the policies would go a long way. I didnt realize how badly I wanted them until I started playing later eras and just going "yeah whatever" on the policy screen just to get it out of the way. It's not the managing policies is a bad task exactly, it's that everytime a new policy loads in, all the cards shift positions and nothing is where it was a moment ago.

 

[Heikki Mustonen]

I agree what redwings1340 said earlier. You should not think that policy is the best. You should think what you want to do in in next few turns. The time you want to plan forward is the time which it takes you to get your next policy. Usually there is a card or two that will help your plan and you should change for that.

How I use policies it that I usually have selected a lot of "general" policies that give more gold, envoys, culture, science, great person points, etc and then I have one or two more specific cards selected that aim to help the next few turns. Like I may put on a card to make builders better and then I make or buy several builders during that time. I may then take off that card and put card to speed up melee and ranged unit production and do few extra crossbows during that time. After that I may change to settler production and add that card and so on.

 

[kampori]

Basically what redwings said above. A good post.

Just to add some more examples-

Military:
Are there lots of barb camps around you early game? Pick the combat strength vs barbs.
Have a big army? Maintenance cost.
Need a big army? Production cost.
Have a big army coming towards you? Encampment and building bonuses, or +production to defensive buildings (walls)
At peace? +amenities for garrisoned troop

Economic:
At peace? Pick the +production in each city.
Need housing or amenities? Pick the ones that give those for each 2/3 districts.
Need gold/science/culture/production/faith? Pick the ones that give your desired district adjacency bonus 100%.
Building wonders? +wonder production.
Have lots of improvements/farms to build? +worker charge (I almost always have this one active, as I never manage to get pyramids anymore).
Mid-late game (can't remember policy) and need a big injection of income? +gold for each envoy you have in CSs, or if a lot of trade routes pick +4G+1F policy.
Once you unlock democracy and communism- +housing/amenities & -gold in each city (mix this with envoy and triangular trade and adjacency bonus to commercial district and you don't lose any gold and gain a huge amount of free housing and amenities)
and communism gives +4 food to internal trade routes which is amazing

Diplomatic:
I almost only ever have the +envoy points, as it goes very well with the above economic policy. By mid-late game I usually have 50-70 envoys.

Wildcard:
Any of the above that you need but don't have space for in current setup.
Or if you're all good, then the +2/+4 points to great people are excellent. Mixed with Divine Spark pantheon (by far my favourite and I consider OP), I get great people every 10-20 turns. Brazil hates me with a passion every game.

 

[dunam]

I think the wonder economic policies are really weak and should be avoided. 10-15% production bonus? I'll take 30% for workers instead and chop some woods to quickly finish whatever wonder I'm building.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I just go by memory now after playing a couple of games. I know there is a search or filter functionality on that policies screen, but I've never used it. I do agree with what others are saying that the "tiers" don't really matter since it is completely situational.

I do wish that they make this screen a lot easier to see with less reading. They could probably draw some new icons to represent what is typical of these policies (production boost or gold boost.etc).

 

[isau]

I think the wonder economic policies are really weak and should be avoided. 10-15% production bonus? I'll take 30% for workers instead and chop some woods to quickly finish whatever wonder I'm building.

I agree, although I believe Wonder discounts stack. Cleo building on a river can get the cost down pretty low. The Wonder discount can work well if you can manage to have it in play with good timing so that Builders are already built. Alternatively, buy Builders with Gold and chop, to get the best of both worlds.

 

[CoconutTank]

I actually prefer not to use the policies for amenities and housing all that much (with the exception of New Deal, which I usually leave in my gov't for the rest of the game). Sometimes I need to rotate my policies for better production and/or more gold, and when I swap out the +amenities/+housing policies, suddenly my cities are in withdrawal and very unhappy lol. I don't think this causes the cities to revolt immediately, but they do nag for quite awhile.

 

[fotonut]

I do wish that they make this screen a lot easier to see with less reading. They could probably draw some new icons to represent what is typical of these policies (production boost or gold boost.etc).

I wish that you could see the effects of the policies on your current situation as you rolled over them with your mouse. The ones in effect could show you what you will lose if you remove them, and the ones in the right could show you what you will gain.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

Some might be tricky to show though, like the discount to tile purchasing. Not sure what the mouse over preview would be.

 

[dturtle1]

I agree, although I believe Wonder discounts stack. Cleo building on a river can get the cost down pretty low. The Wonder discount can work well if you can manage to have it in play with good timing so that Builders are already built. Alternatively, buy Builders with Gold and chop, to get the best of both worlds.

Yeah exactly, now your choppers are 15% more powerful .

The whole game really relies on forward planning and comparing Early Rewards Vs Efficiency. Sure you build your +2 Adjacency Industrial Zone now but if you wait 10 turns you can buy that tile and get a plus 4 adjacency Industrial Zone....which one is better ?, etc. I have been timing my non critical Cultural techs so as line up policy changes with production times. Switching in Gold Policies before i am ready to Purchase Tiles with Surveying etc..It has taken a bit to get used too

 

[fotonut]

I wish that you could see the effects of the policies on your current situation as you rolled over them with your mouse. The ones in effect could show you what you will lose if you remove them, and the ones in the right could show you what you will gain.

Some might be tricky to show though, like the discount to tile purchasing. Not sure what the mouse over preview would be.

I guess in those cases you can't show something. But in many you could...

 

[Jabulani]

I am glad to see I am not the only one who waste time choosing the policies not because I do not know which is/will be the best for certain circumstances but just because there must be some sort of differentiation between them otherwise it is necessary to read some of them more than one times.

Wildcards are easy instead because they don't rely on Johnny Mnemonic skills

 

[c4c6]

Maybe it could help to be able to separate the "unused" fraction of cards in 2 groups: "interesting, possible candidate next time" & "uninteresting, probably for a longer time"?
So the frequent re-readings (when switching possible without cost) would only be performed on the smaller "interesting" group. The re-readings in order to differentiate "interesting" from "uninteresting" would be more seldom.

Options to 'sort them by XXX' would certainly support memory (i.e. diminish need for re-reading).
(Also adding some kind of marks (e.g. coloured dots) to the cards could help.)