I have no idea what to do as tradition

[GodDamnItAlexander]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

[Gokudo01]

With the CrazyG's advices, I start to like tradition more and more.

First everybody point out the deficit of production but nobody talk about the best part outside of the obvious one, ( great capital and specialist)

You have the best culture output per city until renaissance. you get + 4 culture monument and + 4 bath(river only) and garden which generate +2 culture . it's +4(+6 if river) per city. to get +4 per city before renaissance, progress needs to get 1 building every 2.5 turns(ancient/classical) and at medieval 1 building every 5 turns.
I don't understand people which absolutely wants to pick cultural pantheon with tradition although it's the tree which has got no issue without it.
Not only that but you swim in happiness until you over over over over expand. I mean before entering medieval, you get + 2 from :

- Palace
- Circus Maximus
- Heroic Epic
- National Monument
- School of Philosophy
- Scrivener's Office
Those buildings are already top tiers and should be your priority. the extra happiness is the ice on the cake.

It's a total of 12 extra happiness in classical, you need to have 12 cities with garrison in order to match it with authority.
progress needs to get 192 citizens to match it ^^


You get great early tourism output and, because your tourism and culture flows are steady(unlike progress for example which only generates culture through bursts) ,it increases the effects of caravansary and you get steady tourism to keep the effect longer.

you get + 2 science per city( council and herbalists ) and justice makes your cities hit like trucks.

So picking tradition is super flexible, you can go super tall (3-4 cities), semi-tall ( 5-7) or even semi-wide while staying competitive. you can support war because your capital generate so much happiness some satellites are able to ignore happiness building to build units without hindering yourself. you are better than progress to defend your cities and you can ignore many buildings without any second thought. You can pick up some wonders.


Tradition is super super flexible and its weakness can be tempered with religion.
you don't fear to get boxed, you don't need to chain buildings in order to generate culture, it's easier to defend and you can take some opportunity war without any second thought.

Outside of civs, like arabia, which work better with tradition, I like to pick it more and more with civs which has got their power spike later in the game.

 

[CrazyG]

Glad I helped!

 

[Galbias]

Yeah, I really like everything that Tradition does for you early, Happiness in particular (I've always thought it's kind of weird that Progress has happiness based on population when Tradition is the growth tree). I've tried Progress a couple times but it's hard to see how much you get out of it total because so many of the yields are instant and era-scaling, which also don't help with unhappiness.

 

[tu_79]

Yeah, I really like everything that Tradition does for you early, Happiness in particular (I've always thought it's kind of weird that Progress has happiness based on population when Tradition is the growth tree). I've tried Progress a couple times but it's hard to see how much you get out of it total because so many of the yields are instant and era-scaling, which also don't help with unhappiness.

Tradition is my go to early policy. I need some reasons to choose anything other. But I'm quite a peacemonger myself.

 

[Muminus]

Hi, thank you for interesting tips on tradition gameplay. Can I ask you for one more advice?
I'm having troubles founding religion when playing tradition. Even with shrine first and ancestor worship I am usually 5-15 turns late to fould the last religion (on emperor). I haven't had troubles with fouding religion playing progress (probably due to faster shrines).
Any tips on what to optimize to be able to get a religion? Which pantheon do you use?

Also: are there any intresting (and preferably recent, due to some balance changes) tradition playthroughs that you recommend to watch to learn?

Muminus

 

[tu_79]

Hi, thank you for interesting tips on tradition gameplay. Can I ask you for one more advice?
I'm having troubles founding religion when playing tradition. Even with shrine first and ancestor worship I am usually 5-15 turns late to fould the last religion (on emperor). I haven't had troubles with fouding religion playing progress (probably due to faster shrines).
Any tips on what to optimize to be able to get a religion? Which pantheon do you use?

Also: are there any intresting (and preferably recent, due to some balance changes) tradition playthroughs that you recommend to watch to learn?

Muminus

It helps a lot if you can get faith by other means: pathfinders may find a revelation and perhaps a religious city state, you may find some natural wonder nearby that yields faith, or any of the faith luxuries, incense, tobacco.
Think that secondary cities will take a lot to build any ancient building, and if you don't have cultural resources, you are better picking monuments first. So, your best bet is in pantheons that reward more your population than your number of cities.
Desert and tundra pantheons are good, since you may improve resources in those terrains quite soon, and you only need a worker unit and spare population. If you have a good resource like deer or many wheat, you can try their suitable pantheons. If you have natural culture, your borders will expand often, and if you have natural growth, you can go for a newborn pantheon.
Don't forget to push for your faith trigger. If you get rewards for newborns, go for food and growth as often as you can.

Anyways, if you plan on staying tall, your faith won't be enough to expend faith points on anything, so go for passive bonuses when choosing beliefs.

 

[CrazyG]

I don't really like ancestor worship as tradition (even though it can be amazing for the other two trees), unless your civ is faith strong.

My first choices are the faith for terrain options, like desert, mountain, tundra, camps, etc. Fertility is a decent back up choice I end up taking often if my cities aren't on rivers.

 

[Txurce]

Hi, thank you for interesting tips on tradition gameplay. Can I ask you for one more advice?
I'm having troubles founding religion when playing tradition. Even with shrine first and ancestor worship I am usually 5-15 turns late to fould the last religion (on emperor). I haven't had troubles with fouding religion playing progress (probably due to faster shrines).
Any tips on what to optimize to be able to get a religion? Which pantheon do you use?

Also: are there any intresting (and preferably recent, due to some balance changes) tradition playthroughs that you recommend to watch to learn?

Muminus

You have a good chance if you get at least four cities up fast enough with God of the Expanse, assuming the nearby territory doesn't favor a specific pantheon.But it's a lock if you hit the right ruin -- so you can hope to get lucky, or get Fishing in time and go off-shore for more a ruin with a Prophecy. I almost never miss if I do all that (and usually less than that).

 

[GodDamnItAlexander]

Anyways, if you plan on staying tall, your faith won't be enough to expend faith points on anything, so go for passive bonuses when choosing beliefs.

Can you explain this?

 

[Owlbebach]

The pantheon that gives faith on border growth + tradition (right policy first) is almost a guaranteed religion, also build cities on hills and forests and invest shrines. I am pretty sure that all this together guarantees a religion to you on any difficulty

 

[tu_79]

Can you explain this?

Unless you are very very lucky, it's very difficult to found a religion with a pantheon than can scale well when you settle just 3-4 cities. You can found with a terrain focused pantheon, but by mid-game your faith production will be quite small compared to other, more extense civs. This limits a lot what you can do with your religion. If you choose to convert your neighbours, you'll lack faith to faith-purchase anything. If you faith purchase buildings, it would be difficult to purchase more than a couple great people.

The only way out to increase your faith production would be acquairing more cities, usually by puppeting them, otherwise your tradition bonuses would dilute.

 

[CrazyG]

Can you explain this?

I think by passive bonus, he means something like Divine Inspiration. These beleifs are passive in that they do not require you to spend faith to spread your religion to get benefits. Another example would be taking mastery instead of cathedrals, you don't have to spend faith to get mastery to start working

The largest disadvantage of a tall empire is low faith generation

 

[Chandler]

I wanted to ask... Do you think Mausoleum of Halicarnassus is still worth it without the GP bonus as Tradition?

 

[Magean]

Dropping by here... How do you spread out guilds in your tall Tradition empire? I assume the capital is going to have all guilds, then so will another city... That leaves one guild of each. Do you have a third city to stack all guilds in, or do you spread them over multiple places to alleviate boredom?

 

[tu_79]

I wanted to ask... Do you think Mausoleum of Halicarnassus is still worth it without the GP bonus as Tradition?

I think that's only good for Tradition cities whose capital happens to not have stone, marble or lapis, or maybe for any city with lots of stones. You see, that stone works is the only thing that let your secondary cities develop, caravans from your capital sending production in Ancient can change a lot how they develop. In the other case, you want a stone works anyways, so why don't get it for free and earlier (and a bit of culture) with a little more investment?

Dropping by here... How do you spread out guilds in your tall Tradition empire? I assume the capital is going to have all guilds, then so will another city... That leaves one guild of each. Do you have a third city to stack all guilds in, or do you spread them over multiple places to alleviate boredom?

Capital: All guilds.
Non capital: check city food availability and check whether the city is a production center. Idle cities with spare food get a brand new guild.

 

[Galbias]

Unless you are very very lucky, it's very difficult to found a religion with a pantheon than can scale well when you settle just 3-4 cities. You can found with a terrain focused pantheon, but by mid-game your faith production will be quite small compared to other, more extense civs. This limits a lot what you can do with your religion. If you choose to convert your neighbours, you'll lack faith to faith-purchase anything. If you faith purchase buildings, it would be difficult to purchase more than a couple great people.

The only way out to increase your faith production would be acquairing more cities, usually by puppeting them, otherwise your tradition bonuses would dilute.

Some things help even with Tradition. I really like Sainthood's Faith on GP use, Ceremonial Burial has some too but it scales with cities converted, Fealty's Faith from specialists, etc.

Dropping by here... How do you spread out guilds in your tall Tradition empire? I assume the capital is going to have all guilds, then so will another city... That leaves one guild of each. Do you have a third city to stack all guilds in, or do you spread them over multiple places to alleviate boredom?

All guilds in the city with National Monument (usually capital), others are spread out depending on population.

I wanted to ask... Do you think Mausoleum of Halicarnassus is still worth it without the GP bonus as Tradition?

The nerf was pretty harsh (if deserved), I'd probably only build it if I'm running a WLTKD strategy, though the ability to send Production with the free Stone Works is really nice too now that I think about it.

 

[Txurce]

I've been playing England lately with Tradition (this will change), and just tried Korea for the first time in a long time. Both games went well enough that what didn't raises questions. In both games (5 cities in both, one with 3 puppets), I have lagged well behind on policies, whereas I do very well there playing as progress. (I had all six guilds asap.) This threw me more than issues with the supply cap (seems low late, but I make it work), and even bigger, with gold. My military is small but highly promoted. But how do you pay for upgrades with 5 cities, when you're talking about cruisers and battleships? And if you don't upgrade them, how do you replace them with just 5 cities? It made me wonder whether Tradition civs should limit their coastal exposure.

 

[tu_79]

ut how do you pay for upgrades with 5 cities, when you're talking about cruisers and battleships?

Why so bothered? Your army is smaller, it should be easier to upgrade than a big army. You get relativelly more gold from trade routes, have one of your cities highly populated with many trading buildings and foreign civs will love to send trade routes to you. Where I really have problems is upgrading into a unit that requires a strategic resource which I may be short of. Then I check if there is any city state that could gift it to me and make an effort to ally it, else try to trade for the resource, but it's risky.

It made me wonder whether Tradition civs should limit their coastal exposure

By all means. And I'd add that it's worth to have all your coastal cities in the same sea, so you can protect them all with the same fleet.

 

[Owlbebach]

I do not think that i will build it because of the increase of costs of other wonders. If you pursue Tourism Victory - you need A LOT of wonders and this 10% really are a big deal when a wonder costs 4000. And if you do not pursue Tourism Victory - do you really need it? There is plenty of other useful stuff